Some 30 billion text messages and 40 billion e-mail messages are
transmitted across the network every day and it only takes one to
wreak havoc. The annual cost to a typical corporation for recovery
from the most common types of intrusion can exceed tens of millions
of pounds, writes Jas Tremblay, director of enterprise and SMB
marketing,LSI
Corporation.
This increased threat has led to the convergence of a broad
spectrum of security technologies including IT security and
surveillance - creating new opportunities for intelligent, real
time connected security capabilities.
Company security is a major concern to today's business and
spans a broad range of potential threats. Issues include the
leakage of critical information, physical threats such as robbery
and abuse, and the protection of
critical information infrastructure.
Adding to this concern is personnel protection. More and more
employees are working remotely and because of this, the issue of
protecting remote workers is becoming increasingly important to
businesses of all sizes.
On the other hand, fraud and theft protection has become a key
concern for non-remote workers, with figures showing that 80% of
all retail credit card theft is perpetrated by employees inside
companies, not by outsiders.
These threats suggest there is an increasing need for IT
security and surveillance. However, IT security and services
represent only a fraction of the annual spending on
security-related functions: about 15% of the $185bn security
market.
Something that companies need to be looking at is real time
connected security, which is designed to deliver fast co-ordinated
security at a reduced cost.
Systems should ultimately display three main characteristics.
They should be fast operate in an integrated fashion and be
designed around a converged infrastructure, helping companies
reduce the cost of security compliance.
Real time connected security is a diversified and decentralised
architecture that puts more information into the hands of local
response personnel, accelerating the pace of response. This
constitutes multi-source detection, the result of which is
co-ordinated, focused impact.
So, how do companies achieve real time connected security? By
using new low cost encryption IP for integration in Lan and San
switches, which allow operators to encrypt all links and all
data-at-rest. Also, companies need to closely watch industry
leaders in hardware accelerated content inspection. The transition
from software-based content inspection to hardware accelerated
content inspection boosts performance by 10 to 100 times while
reducing power and costs.
Today, only a handful of companies have a firm foundation in
general purpose digital signal processors and a well-evolved
product line, offering multi-service functional modules that
support the varying requirements of voice and video. Efficiency is
still key. Having said that, many companies have yet to recognise
the benefits of a multi-core virtualised DSP, which relies on
hardware offload to increase overall system efficiency.
These innovations translate into an ultra-secure network and
data storage environment within which traffic on all links
(data-in-flight) and all archived data (data-at-rest) is encrypted.
All data is inspected for threat profiles before being processed
for transport or storage, and complex and capable analysis and
decision-making engines are distributed across the network to
ensure the real time processing of security threats is a
reality.
To conclude, the real value of this approach to real time
connected security is that it creates the platform components upon
which OEM vendors can execute a solution that best meets their own
needs and those of their customers, thus taking advantage of the
vast stores of knowledge that exist in the industry today.