Critical Infrastructure Security, Network Security, Threat Management

Forrester: The good and bad of security technologies

Businesses are using a variety of technologies to help reduce the impact of threats, prevent breaches and meet compliance -- but some of these products are more beneficial than others, according to a new Forrester report released Wednesday that examines the state of network threat mitigation.

“Current attacks are very complex, and enterprise teams struggle to keep up,” the report states.

The report studies the benefits of many of the most popular technologies that business are using to secure their networks. Web application firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) are said to be necessary technologies for many businesses. At the same time, network access control (NAC) and unified threat management (UTM) technologies will continue to struggle to find a foothold, the report states.

Meanwhile, intrusion detection systems and network behavior anomaly detection technologies have been widely adopted but are declining in popularity because they fail to make a strong business case, the report states.

By comparison, businesses are buying technologies that help them meet compliance regulations, including web application firewalls and firewall auditing tools.

“The most important technologies remain your core firewall,” John Kindervag, a Forrester senior analyst and report author, told SCMagazineUS.com on Friday.

In addition, the report found that some organizations are wary of implementing new and innovative technologies meant to respond to today's threats. Specifically, some organizations are reluctant to implement an IPS because they are worried that some benign traffic will be flagged as malicious. But, the report says, this fear is “unfounded.”

The report recommended that organizations think about security as part of the overall network design and consider technologies that respond to threats in a proactive manner.

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