This company has been making the headlines over the last few months as they have a good product offering which has made quite an impact in the recently concluded RSA 2008.They seem to have what we know as the next generation firewall. Below is the extract from a web site.
Palo Alto Networks is marketing what it calls next-generation firewalls to address the problems described in the report. But the research itself looks quite solid. It is based not on surveys of people but on a study of network traffic at 20 large companies and government agencies over the last six months. Using its software, Palo Alto Networks monitored the computer behavior of more than 350,000 users. The company has pledged to update and publish the results every six months.
Many companies try to block access to peer-to-peer file-sharing services, but programs used to access these services were found at 90 percent of the companies studied. The most popular were eMule and BitTorrent, which are used to share music, movies and software.
Unauthorized proxies, or software agents that disguise applications, were found on 80 percent of the corporate networks. These can be used for corporate espionage or pilfering trade secrets.
Google applications like Google Docs and Google Desktop were used in 60 percent of the corporations studied. And, no surprise, Internet video services like YouTube were consuming large portions of network bandwidth at all the companies.
One conclusion, the report notes, is that users are routinely, and fairly easily, circumventing corporate security controls. And that is because traditional firewall technology was not meant to grapple with the diversity of Internet applications of recent years.
“We see every enterprise leaking from the inside out,” said Dave Stevens, chief executive of Palo Alto Networks.
But the answer, it seems, is not a draconian crackdown on all Internet applications, but a more fine-grained monitoring and sorting of what applications can play in corporate networks and under what ground rules. After all, many Internet applications are seen as vital tools of productivity, collaboration and innovation — the stuff of Enterprise 2.0 companies.
Take Google Desktop, Mr. Stevens noted. It is a great productivity tool for users to quickly search by topic for the nuggets of information buried in their computer files and information. But companies, he said, are deeply uneasy about the indexing feature that links desktop searches back to Google’s computer servers, and the prospect of their corporate data being indexed by Google.
“But companies don’t want to block Google Desktop, they want to use it securely,” Mr. Stevens said. In this case, he explained, the solution is to be able to turn off the link back to Google’s servers. And in general, he added, the answer is for corporations to have that sort of granular control over the new wave of Internet applications.
Many companies try to block access to peer-to-peer file-sharing services, but programs used to access these services were found at 90 percent of the companies studied. The most popular were eMule and BitTorrent, which are used to share music, movies and software.
Unauthorized proxies, or software agents that disguise applications, were found on 80 percent of the corporate networks. These can be used for corporate espionage or pilfering trade secrets.
Google applications like Google Docs and Google Desktop were used in 60 percent of the corporations studied. And, no surprise, Internet video services like YouTube were consuming large portions of network bandwidth at all the companies.
One conclusion, the report notes, is that users are routinely, and fairly easily, circumventing corporate security controls. And that is because traditional firewall technology was not meant to grapple with the diversity of Internet applications of recent years.
“We see every enterprise leaking from the inside out,” said Dave Stevens, chief executive of Palo Alto Networks.
But the answer, it seems, is not a draconian crackdown on all Internet applications, but a more fine-grained monitoring and sorting of what applications can play in corporate networks and under what ground rules. After all, many Internet applications are seen as vital tools of productivity, collaboration and innovation — the stuff of Enterprise 2.0 companies.
Take Google Desktop, Mr. Stevens noted. It is a great productivity tool for users to quickly search by topic for the nuggets of information buried in their computer files and information. But companies, he said, are deeply uneasy about the indexing feature that links desktop searches back to Google’s computer servers, and the prospect of their corporate data being indexed by Google.
“But companies don’t want to block Google Desktop, they want to use it securely,” Mr. Stevens said. In this case, he explained, the solution is to be able to turn off the link back to Google’s servers. And in general, he added, the answer is for corporations to have that sort of granular control over the new wave of Internet applications.
Watch This : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNdrGJsGNx8
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