The Never-Ending Cat and Mouse Game

Paula Musich

Summary Bullets:

• Two legs of the security stool’s people, process and technology equation are routinely underserved.
• Progress toward more relevant and actionable threat intelligence sharing is inching forward.

Cyber thieves continue to improve their game, bringing great creativity, technical skills, good organization, communication and financial backing to their illicit endeavors.  In a fine example of life imitating art, an Ocean’s 12-style gang robbed the UK’s Barclays bank last April, blending a creative mix of system compromise with social engineering in the flesh and technical skills to make off with about $2 million.  As reported in CSO Magazine, the gang sent one of its members into a Barclay’s branch, posing as an IT guy to fix a computer problem.  While there, he installed a KVM switch linked to a router, which in turn was attached to a computer at the branch.  The installation allowed the gang to transfer money from the bank to other accounts under their control.  When they tried a similar heist at another London bank not six months later, they were caught.

Next-Generation Firewalls Poised to Eclipse Intrusion Prevention Systems

P. Musich

Summary Bullets:

• Readers who are considering adding new IPSs to their network should ask what their suppliers’ plans are for next-generation firewall (NGFW) features and how far along they are in delivering those.
• Additional features that come with a NGFW make it a more complex security tool to manage, and enterprises should be prepared to invest in training should they plan to add NGFWs to their arsenal.

Are standalone IPSs becoming the next stateful packet inspection firewall (i.e., an old perimeter security technology that is required but no longer sufficient for protecting enterprise networks)?  Sophisticated and well-financed malware writers consistently find new ways of getting around existing and well-understood security controls such as the firewall and IPS, even as those suppliers race to keep up with the constantly changing threat landscape.  The result has been a constant stream of breach headlines (too many being rather spectacular) that all point to the rise of the so-called ’advanced persistent threat’ (APT).  Enterprises looking to address such threats are coming to embrace the NGFW and the greater application and user context it brings to the fight against more sophisticated cyber attacks.  The NGFW integrates the functions of a stateful firewall and IPS with the ability to identify applications and application-level attacks and apply granular policies to applications usage.  One forecast puts the IPS market at $2 billion by 2014, while the NGFW market is projected to reach $4 billion by 2014.