ForeScout’s chief marketing officer sat down with Drew Amorosi last week to discuss mobile security, BYOD and the evolution of network access control (NAC) technology. The two also chatted about the emerging need for continuous diagnostics and monitoring solutions for information security professionals in today’s advanced threat environment.
Gordon explained that, historically, NAC functioned purely as a device authentication mechanism for network access, but that the technology has now evolved beyond this to include access policy evaluations, in addition to limiting or fixing security issues.
Also a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Gordon said newer generations of this technology – such as that offered by ForeScout – also integrate mobile device management (MDM) offerings from several other large vendors who specialize in the MDM market. “That level of integration is unique, and needed, if you are looking at securing BYOD – or CYOD [choose your own device].”
Gordon also highlighted the recent integration of ForeScout’s CounterACT network security platform with fellow security vendor FireEye’s advanced threat protection capabilities. The joint solution was on demo during the Infosecurity Europe 2013 exhibition, which the two firms described as “an integrated approach to dynamically mitigate advanced persistent threats (APTs) and zero-day attacks”.
"FireEye’s goal is to enable companies to advance their security strategies while helping them to stop modern malware and attack methods, such as zero-day attacks and APT. To accomplish this requires that organizations further coordinate their defenses”, said Tim Mather, chief security officer at FireEye, when commenting about the product integration. “By joining our best-of-breed solution, the partnership with ForeScout provides our customers with the level of correlated control and automated response necessary to address a broad array of advanced cyber threats.”