Security vs Response
Erudine and security group EADS have joined forces to produce a new suite of security tools that offer more flexible responses to today's asymmetric security threats...
The emergence of the internet as the driving technology of the early 21st century has resulted in a growing reliance on highly interconnected Communication and Information Systems (CISs).Information systems are increasingly handling sensitive and critical information, making them points of intense vulnerability to accident, attack, or failure. But interconnected CISs cannot simply be closed off in a bunker somewhere, they are valuable because of the way they allow knowledge to be accessed from all over the globe. CISs need to remain connected but must be made more resilient, reliable, and reconfigurable.
Erudine is working with global security and defence group EADS to develop integrated solutions to this problem. EADS and Erudine are devoted to offering state of the art systems that engage customers’ desires for network-centric operations but remain protected in a world where the threats change every 6 months.
Firewall misconceptions
In the past, web-enabled systems were protected by sturdy firewalls, erected to keep out directed attacks from hackers. If the system required more protection, the owners reinforced their firewalls, sometimes putting in 20 or 30 different layers in an electronic Minoan maze.The repercussions of this are two-fold. Firstly, the focus on a single type of defence, which is expected to be nearly impenetrable, means that once an attack does get through there is very little in the way of automation or rapid evaluation to ensure a quick and effective response. Worse, the response from the systems to a high-level security breach, when there is no one to manually deal with it, could be to simply shut everything down.
Secondly, it largely ignores the reality of the security situation. At least half of all threats to CISs originate internally (40% according to the US Computer Emergency Response Team), and most firewalls offer only limited protection against attacks occurring from within a network. In fact, most internal security breaches are not even malicious; they are the result of poor staff training, incompetence, or accident, such as unwittingly opening an email attachment infected with a new kind of worm.
EADS and Erudine recognise the value in maintaining a secure network ‘perimeter’ but believe the safest and most reliable systems are ones based on a flexible, modular approach, with comprehensive automated detection and evaluation elements.
The focus of EADS has always been to manage all phases of the security cycle: deployment, configuration, detection, reaction, and audit. The synergy of a networked approach is applied throughout the whole system from the very beginning.