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AC Ganesh
Juniper Networks is eyeing a portion of the vast Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) space in India. Talking about the company’s activities in this segment, Nagendra Venkaswamy, Managing Director, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks, in an e-mail interview to CIOL Bureau says “One key concern for SMB is that they usually lack in-house IT security expertise.”
Can you give a quick summary of Juniper's SMB strategy?
We primarily help SMBs save cost by managing a wide variety of security threats. We have, for example, introduced the SSG product range to specifically address SMBs' needs. With a single device, the SSG can defend against different attack mechanisms including viruses, Phishing, email spasm, etc. with low TCO, low training/admin overhead.
With fewer resources, SMBs face similar security challenges as bigger organizations. So how can their IT managers be more cost-savvy in budgeting for new security measures?
Enterprises are facing ever increasing security threats; no matter they are large corporations or SMB enterprises. Protecting the confidentiality of corporate information, preventing unauthorized access, and defending the network against attacks remain primary concerns of all enterprises. The high number of increasingly sophisticated attacks makes network security very challenging.
Like any enterprise, SMB enterprises need to adopt a comprehensive security solution to well protect their information and IT resources. At a minimum, it should include firewall, deep packet inspection, anti-virus, secure remote access, etc.
What are the areas of concern for SMBs?
One key concern for SMB is that they usually lack in-house IT security expertise. This makes SMB more difficult to implement a thorough security solution; even they have the right security appliances and tools. SMB may consider outsourcing their network security to managed security service providers.
When SMB enterprises purchase security products, they are more concerned on price and ease of use, while less concerned on product performance. Note that although SMB can tolerate lower product performance, they still require a thorough security solution to protect against any possible sophisticated security threats.
Unified Threat Management devices have come on the market; they do not require admins/users to buy separate solutions; this saves time/cost of implementation and training (e.g., Secure Services Gateway - SSG platform)
What should SMBs know as they invest in their mobile networking infrastructure?
The key point is that traffic can be intercepted over the air; it is very important to encrypt the traffic with a robust solution such as an SSL VPN. It is also important to authenticate the connecting mobile devices (whether WLAN access or cellular) and SSL VPN technology is an excellent choice to augment the basic authentication mechanism, be it WPA or other WiFi access technology.
In your experience, what has been the top three recurring security mistakes made by SMBs in Asia?
First, it is very important to keep system and application software up to date. Security patches must be installed and kept updated, but some SMBs fail to do so. Second, users might not be educated/ properly trained on Internet malware / phishing attacks, and inadvertently download or otherwise fall victim to such threats. Third, because of lax security measures, "guests" or unauthorized users are allowed or otherwise gain access to the enterprise LAN.
How can one mitigate these challenges?
Automate patch processes and keep an eye on maintaining the most up to date security patches for your OS or applications (including Web browsers). At the gateway level, network admins need to turn on anti-virus and anti-spam/spyware tools to prevent threats reaching end users. Users should also be trained to understand how phishing attacks occur, or to be wary of running downloaded executables, etc. Use Enterprise Infranet access control (e.g., Unified Access Control policy) to create granularity in access between different user types (staff or guest) so each category of user is restricted to certain groups of network resources.
How has the IT threat landscape changed over the last two years, and how will it continue to change in the next few years?
Enterprise IT admins used to think threats only come from outside the environment, but now we are realizing that due to mobile access and home use, threats can come from insiders as well. The new challenge is to look at network access not in an inside/outside manner but treat each accessing user differently and grant access privileges based on who they are and where they are connecting from and assume every connection is a potential source of threat.
What are the products catering to the SMBs?
As a market leader in network security, Juniper Networks provide a full range of network security products and solutions for any size of enterprises. For SMB market, Juniper's NetScreen-5GT integrated security appliance, NetScreen-RA 500 SSL VPN appliance, Juniper Networks Secure Services Gateway 500 Series, Juniper Networks Secure Access 700 SSL VPN Appliance are some of the products for the SMB segment.
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