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Tag: firemon

  • FireMon Announces Agreement to Acquire Lumeta

    Technology integration enables customers to discover, secure and monitor previously unknown applications, networks and endpoints, both on-premise and in the cloud

    SOMERSET, N.J. – May 29, 2018 – FireMon, a global leader in network security policy management, today announced the company has reached an agreement to purchase Lumeta Corporation, a leader in cyber situational awareness for delivering complete real-time visibility into the extended network and across all connected endpoints.

    FireMon created the network security policy management market nearly 20 years ago. However, in today’s dynamic environment where new devices, cloud resources and other assets can join, depart and move within a network at any moment, it can be difficult to achieve full cyber situational awareness. Security teams often struggle to identify all assets on their network and understand how they are connected and how they communicate in real-time. And, for enterprises and government agencies with large-scale network operations that extend into the cloud, this challenge is significantly magnified.

    Lumeta’s technology solves this problem by discovering, mapping and analyzing all enterprise connectivity, both on-premise and in the cloud. This continuous identification of new devices, routers, cloud connectivity and more, enables FireMon customers to extend the capabilities of the FireMon platform to previously unknown network elements and cloud resources. This reduces enterprise attack surfaces and exposes elements and activity that represent a security risk.

    The addition of Lumeta’s technology advances FireMon’s mission: to improve security through the implementation of intent-based security. Intent-based security bridges the traditional gap between business and security by enabling business owners and DevOps teams to determine the business intent of applications (and the related security and compliance requirements) and automating the generation of rules required to enforce that intent. The FireMon platform accomplishes this by translating business language to the language spoken by the variety of firewalls, UTMs, load balancers, etc. in corporate environments. This results in more effective and compliant security, while allowing DevOps teams to focus on growing the business.

    Lumeta’s technology will enable FireMon customers to extend intent-based security to on-premise and cloud assets that were previously unknown and ensure the right security measures are in place in an automated way utilizing an organization’s existing security infrastructure.  This will result in significantly improved security without adding an operational burden on security teams.

    The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to be completed within the second quarter of 2018. Upon closing of the transaction, FireMon intends to continue operating Lumeta as a stand-alone business, while infusing additional resources to accelerate Lumeta’s continued technology development and integration with FireMon. Reggie Best will continue as Lumeta’s president and serve on the Executive Leadership team at FireMon.

    About FireMon

    The FireMon platform delivers continuous security for hybrid enterprises through a powerful fusion of vulnerability management, continuous compliance and orchestration. Since creating the first-ever network security management solution 15 years ago, FireMon solutions have continued to deliver visibility into and control over complex network security infrastructure, policies and risk for more than 1,500 customers around the world. For more information or a free 30-day trial, visit www.firemon.com.

    About Lumeta

    Lumeta delivers real-time cyber situational awareness that quickly and effectively identifies and remediates threats before a breach impacts an organization. The company’s cyber situational awareness platform, Lumeta® Spectre, reduces the risk to companies by streamlining network response and change, and adding security intelligence to dynamic network elements, endpoints, virtual machines, cloud-based infrastructure, policies and segmentation changes. Lumeta complements and optimizes existing network and security product investments by feeding them accurate, comprehensive network intelligence. Headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, Lumeta has operations and clients throughout the world. For more information, visit http://www.Lumeta.com and follow us on Twitter at @Lumeta.

    About Insight Venture Partners

    Insight Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $18 billion and invested in over 300 companies worldwide. Insight’s mission is to find, fund and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a core belief: growth equals opportunity. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

     

  • Gartner’s dirty dozen worst network security practices

    Gartner’s dirty dozen worst network security practices

    The folks at Gartner recently published a research note authored by Andrew Lerner and Jeremy D’Hoinne that highlights their dirty dozen worst network security practices for 2015. This is based on their interviews with over 3000 customers. I would give you the link to the report but it is not publicly available. However if you are a Gartner customer (and most of you probably are for good or bad) you can grab a copy of the report.

    I have prepared by “Shimmy view” of these worst practices. I think many of them are right on.  Have a look at the slides and let me know what do you think. Did they leave any out or put ones in that don’t belong there? One mans security worst practices is another’s best.

    [seoslides embed_id=”194407f17459″ script_src=”https://devopsy.kinsta.cloud/embed-script/gartners-netsec-dirty-dozen-worst-practices/gartners-dirty-dozen/” overview_src=”https://devopsy.kinsta.cloud/slides/gartners-netsec-dirty-dozen-worst-practices/” site_src=”https://devopsy.kinsta.cloud” site_title=”devopsy.kinsta.cloud” title=”Gartner’s NetSec Dirty Dozen Worst Practices” /]

  • DevOps – A wake up call to security vendors

    DevOps – A wake up call to security vendors

    DevOps is changing the way IT works.  Through a collaboration of development and IT teams, organizations can achieve tremendous scale at increased speed to deploy and maintain critical applications and infrastructure.  The key technologies of virtualization and configuration automation have made this possible.  Without these technologies, development may not slow down, but deployment would slow to a crawl and the benefits of DevOps would be minimal.

    It is interesting to note that in almost no definition of DevOps is the security process discussed as a key element.  In some cases you will hear mention of improved security through consistent configuration management enabled through automation, but security teams are not at the DevOps table.  Why is that?  I would suggest that for most people security is considered a barrier to IT.  Not surprisingly, DevOps, a practice focused on streamlining IT, security has been left out of the conversation so as to not prevent achieving the goal.

    But if you accept that security needs to remain a part of the story, then it must be just as manageable as the infrastructure or it will never have a seat at the DevOps table.  Take a look at Puppet or Chef; they automate the configuration of the systems necessary to run the applications.  Through automation scripts, systems are deployed, configured, updated, and managed.  Development boxes are configured consistently with production boxes limiting impacts related to deploying an application into production.  So why can’t security fit into this picture?

    One reason, is a lack of standardization.  Every security vendor wants to be unique.  They promote their solution as so incredibly unique from their competitors that there is no way to standardize.  So, creating scripts to manage security would require not only a unique script for each vendor, but a unique solution.  In comparison, the command to edit a route in Linux may be slightly different than in Windows, but the parameters are the same.  When you are managing security rules on a firewall as an example, you can’t even get agreement on that.  Zones are required for some firewalls, not used in others.  Applications define access in Palo Alto, but don’t exist in Cisco.  Even firewalls that share the idea of Applications use non-standard dictionaries of Applications.  So, creating a script becomes a non-standard solution.  Worse yet, the script that worked today won’t necessarily work tomorrow when the vendor changes their solution.

    To make it all unmanageable, is the fact that they are so proud of their uniqueness that they have obscured even how they do it.  If you take all the firewall vendors on the market, not one of them publishes an API on how to fully manage their firewall policies.  Palo Alto exposes some capabilities for object management in a cool SDN sort of way.  Check Point has a very powerful, but proprietary API that allows full management, but they do not recommend it be used in that way.  Cisco is straight up command line with some newly available API’s and should be commended for making it at least obvious how to do it, if not easy.

    The result: security is not a big part of the DevOps picture today.  And if the vendors don’t do something, they will be replaced by solutions willing to operate in this new DevOps world.  Open source firewalls or integrated firewalls in the virtual stack for example are ready to take their place.

    The solution for security vendors: publish API’s to fully manage their systems.  They must accept that their UI is no longer what differentiates them from their competitors, it is the security engine and enterprise manageability.  Make it possible for others to manage their solution through open API’s with their full support.  All the security vendors will not come together and agree on a single API, but each should at least publish a usable API for their own product.  Vendors like FireMon or open source contributors to solutions like Puppet and Chef will solve the rest.

    Security vendors better wake up or they will get left behind.