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Big Data and Machine Learning concepts usher in Proactive Security

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Shrikanth
New Update
George Chacko

George Chacko, Principal Systems Engineer & Lead Technical Consultant, Brocade India in an interview to DATAQUEST talks about the changing security landscape. Excerpts 

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In the last few years, due to the nexus of forces reshaping the IT Organizations calls for a new and radical security paradigm - per se enterprise security - what has changed and what are the key best practices required for the new normal digital economy?

Security has always remained a major concern for organizations across verticals and organizations worldwide have ranked IT security as one of their priorities due to increasingly sophisticated attacks. Businesses across verticals are moving beyond traditional boundaries and are embracing latest technologies. As adoption of cloud and virtualization technologies continues to increase, we expect attackers to develop malware and seek out vulnerabilities that can further compromise host systems. With huge penetration of mobile devices and at the same time increase in the usage of various forms of broadband connectivity has amplified the need of network security. Similarly technologies like new mobile OS, SaaS, BYOD are also throwing challenges into the organizations.

The New IP which is a modern approach to networking allows you to deploy security in such a manner so that the network itself can be vigilant, ensuring the security of both data-at-rest and data-in-flight.  If you combine New IP security principles with the storage networking best practices of isolating storage traffic (building separate storage fabrics for IP or Fibre Channel), encrypting data, and instrumenting capabilities within the storage network, you will improve your overall security posture. With networks constantly under attack, securing data through encryption is an effective counter measure to ensure data security. Using fabric allows the east-west traffic among virtual machines instead of transiting through multiple segments of the network and this simplified architecture inherently increases security by design.

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What is your company’s approach to security and what are your focus areas?

Brocade takes product security very seriously and is committed to minimizing the risk of exposure to customers' networks. We have one of the best of class solutions for security and network infrastructure to deliver visibility and control over every single connection to our customers’ networks while ensuring a high-quality user experience. The New IP emphasizes open, automated, software-defined elements to increase agility and reduce costs while meeting the challenges of the Third Platform. And the great news is that the New IP provides a new way to architect networks that accelerates business changes and growth while maintaining or increasing high levels of security. Through virtualized network function, security can be distributed where needed or distributed ubiquitously, and services can be removed when no longer needed and this gives the ability to truly customize security by geography, function, group, and by application. Using flow technologies and a programmable SDN controller, allows a centralized view of network behavior which provides real-time view of the entire network which is a critical capability to recognize and immediately react to security threats within the infrastructure.

The security system in New IP architectures is more agile, continually learning and self-optimizing. As it monitors behavioral patterns and looks for preliminary attack activities, the system can predict the likelihood of an attack. We are working on intelligent designs that are built-in versus bolted-on, providing a learning system that is unassuming, adaptive and data driven which is self-organized with automated processes Security posture improves with scale and thereby produces active/proactive self-defending systems. Applying Big Data and machine learning concepts to network behavior allows you to go from a reactive to a proactive security posture.

security brocade
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