Infosecurity @ 2007: where we go from here?

Nir Zamir, VP Marketing, Yoggie Security Systems™

The Information Security business space today is a multi billion Dollar industry, and keeps growing. This is testimony to the consistent effort by the world’s enterprises to identify, develop and deploy means with which to safeguard their information systems, and define effective tools for thwarting Internet threats from penetrating their corporate networks and machines.
It is also a judicious indication of the fact that commercial enterprises have come to accurately asses the disruptive power these threats hold over their chances to survive and succeed, and internalize that the inherent damage associated with malicious code attacks to the integrity of their information systems, data bases and networks is one that merits the highest levels of investment and innovation combined.

In that context, both the complexities of the threat as well as of the antidotes being generated by the relevant technology vendors have evolved considerably in the last decade. Online criminality now employs significantly more sophisticated tactics, making it harder and harder to detect and deflect. Information security vendors, for their part, are introducing better and more effective technologies to meet the challenge.

But one more fundamental component of this ensuing battle has also changed dramatically over the last decade. While in the past enterprises focused their attention – and resources – on devising robust and full-proof solutions designed to ‘stop the enemy at the gate’ by installing fortified appliances that made their networks’ perimeters safer than ever, the very nature of the enterprises themselves, and the way they operate and function, has rendered much of these solutions only partially relevant.

Over 50% of today’s commercial organization’s workforce is either mobile or remote, or both. Already in January of 2006 the number of laptops sold around the world has surpassed that of stationary PCs. This is a reflection of the way modern enterprises function, with their staff spending much of their professional time on the road, away form their respective fortified corporate networks, and often working from home.

Another key phenomenon is the fact that many organizations rely on a web of regional, inherently smaller offices (SOHO). Many of these organizations cannot invest the same level of resources in protecting every such subsidiary with the same level of budget allocated to safeguarding their corporate headquarters, where a substantially larger teams regularly work, and where a heftier portion of their information assets reside.

The combination of de-centralized organizations and the decisively growing percentage of the mobile workforce have resulted in serious loss of perimeter security and practical exposure of mobile machines to cope with internet security hazards heightened by internet access having become an expected commodity.

An appropriate level of protection, however, can now be achieved with a new breed of security appliances like the Yoggie Gatekeeper™, on the market since January 2007, offered by Yoggie Security Systems™. The Yoggie™ solution is a comprehensive security solution for the enterprise, comprised of two components – the gatekeeper™ itself, a powerful miniature security appliance the size of an i-Pod, which connects to the laptop via USB, includes 13 robust security applications including day-zero defense applications, and designed to stop malicious code outside the PC, rather than let it execute on the PC itself while battling it;
The second component in the system is the Yoggie Management Server, integrated at the core network, enabling the IT manager to consistent reports on every platform under their care regardless of where it may be, as well as allowing consistent updates to each gatekeeper in the field so as to keep mobile platforms up to par with the organization’s dynamically changing security policies and rules.