Alex Filocca, marketing manager of Alcatel South East Asia has urged Philippine companies to consider these new solutions because security problems can seriously impact on their operations and business.
Alcatel has claimed that there is no other security vendor that has the AQE capability with both the attack prevention and containment solution.
Based on an open standard, Filocca said he wouldn’t be surprised if other competitors would introduce the same solution as Alcatel’s AQE.
Companies have given priority to secure their networks with the fast-growing network attacks worldwide. The traditional perimeter of defenses is not enough to protect networks and the application level against attacks.
Alcatel has expanded its CrystalSec Security framework with these new solutions that would protect the network and prevent attacks at every switch port of the system.
This new solution uses Sygate’s host integrity, protection, enforcement and remediation technology along with the 802.1x technology to ensure that devices accessing the network are secured by antivirus software containing updated virus definitions, a personal firewall, operating system service packs and patches.
Filocca said that the new solution lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by automatically checking host integrity against preestablished host security policies.
It prevents the noncompliant host from accessing critical resources by placing them in a quantitative VLAN (virtual local area network) and automatically upgrading clients to bring them to a fully security and functional state that need no helpdesk intervention or a switch configuration change.
"All PCs are checked by Sygate to ensure the status of each machine before they are connected to the network," said Filocca.
When a virus attack is detected, the AQE locates the offender and implements a network response. The AQE will place the infected device into an Alcatel quarantine VLAN that is applied to the edge of the network.
Using Alcatel’s mobile VLAN technology, the infected machine or device will be blacklisted even infected intruder moves to another location.
Filocca noted that a virus could infect 10 PCs per second once it is inside the network. "Any type of intrusion is detected by AQE once notified. The AQE can talk to the network and detect the infected machine and isolate it from the network in seconds."
The AQE allows network managers to mitigate the source of an attack at the network’s edge before it attacks core enterprise resources and applications.
Unlike single vendor solutions, the AQE works with a wide variety of intrusion detection and prevention systems. It is the first product to allow intrusion detection and protection systems, firewall and network security layers to work as a unit rather than as independent security devices.
Filocca has urged enterprises to put in place detection and prevention systems to protect their networks and take both internal and external security seriously.
Complementing Alcatel’s containment solution is its new partnership with network security leader Fortinet that enables it to offer a wide range of security products including the ASIC-powered Fortigate anti-virus firewalls.
All FortiGate systems are kept up-to-date automatically through Fortinet’s FortiProtect network that delivers continuous and automatic "push" updates and ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans and other threats. (Edu H. Lopez)
