Rethinking Security Management

For many IT organizations, the management of firewalls today is a slow, painful process. The rules these firewalls rely on generally were put in place years ago, and subsequent firewall administrators have been loath to change them for fear of making things worse. To make matters more interesting, security administrators now find themselves trying to manage multiple firewalls from different vendors, all of which come with their own arcane management console.

AlgoSec is trying to address these issue with a new release of it Security Management Suite, which, among other things, adds support for both next-generation firewalls and Web security gateways. Nimrod Reichenberg, AlogSec's vice president of marketing and business development, says the firewall management problem is about to become even more difficult with next-generation firewalls that secure IT environments at both the network and application levels. As a result, IT organizations will be managing legacy and next-generation firewalls side by side for years to come. At the same time, many IT organizations must manage the multifunction security gateways deployed at the edge of network.

Version 6.2 of the AlgoSec Security Management Suite, Reichenberg says, is the most comprehensive approach to managing firewalls and gateways today using a common management console. Blue Coat Systems has the first secure gateway products certified by AlgoSec, he says.

Reichenberg notes the rate of change taking place in security environments now is so fast it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. The only way IT organizations can effectively manage that rate of change is to centralize security management.

Reichenberg adds that customers should expect AlgoSec to leverage Web services and application programming interfaces to continue to extend the number and types of devices that can be managed using its platform.

All too often security professionals are relying on manual processes to combat thousands of threats. The security realities of today demand an approach to security management that is both more structured and dynamic. The good news is that next-generation firewalls greatly enhance security. Now IT organizations need to get a whole lot smarter about how they actually manage security.