So you are responsible for IT Security at an organization that just purchased multiple Juniper firewalls (SRX Series Services Gateways), and had them installed (powered up and on the network) at each of your branch office locations. Now what? You will need to have a security administrator configure and deploy security policies to each of the devices, all while making sure you can maintain a sound security posture and maintain regulatory compliance even amidst changes in your network (e.g., new applications introduced on the network, users attempting to access a brand new Web site, software updates, etc.). What could help minimize the burden is a strong network security management solution, one that you can depend on to quickly administer security policies, instantly view the security posture across the distributed enterprise, and easily update policies with.

Junos® Space Security Director, formerly known as Security Design, is an application running on the open Junos Space Network Management Platform. Junos Space Security Director  is essentially a security management building block that provides extensive security scale, policy control, and reach across the network. Security administrators can use it to speed and simplify security administration and reduce management costs and errors with efficient security policy and workflow tools. Additional benefits of  Junos Space Security Director are that you can:

• Scale security policy across multiple Juniper Networks® SRX Series Services Gateways, or manage multiple LSYS instances on a single SRX Series device.
• Centrally configure and manage application security (e.g., AppSecure), firewall, VPN, IPS, and NAT security policy through one scalable management interface.
• Define and enforce policies for controlling usage of specific applications such as Facebook, instant messaging, and embedded social networking widgets through included AppFW management.
• Reuse security policies within Junos Space Security Director for improved security enforcement accuracy, consistency, and compliance.
• Build the infrastructure for further management innovation across the network through the open and secure Junos Space Network Management Platform integration.

While the product has been renamed, it will continue to have all of the benefits it has had to date and we will continue to innovate further based on customer needs.  Whether you have a few Juniper firewalls today and will have many more tomorrow, Junos Space Security Director can help ease the task of managing policies for all.

2011 will go down in history as the year where cyber-criminals and ‘hacktivists’ shook governments and brought many businesses to their knees.

What can we anticipate in 2012?

With the multitude of data breaches in the news lately, it seemed like it was just a matter of time until one of them affected me personally. The proliferation of web services, e-commerce and records automation means that our data is on file at so many locations that the odds of being impacted are growing every day. Sure enough, I received a letter from Stanford University hospital last week letting me know that my medical records had inadvertently been posted on a public internet site for over a year.