“Every company has at least one employee who will click on anything ,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft president and chief legal officer, at a company conference in July.
Although employees may be the weakest link in an organization’s cybersecurity front lines, the evolution of malware and cybercrime are putting even the most security-conscious organizations at risk. Traditional approaches to security, which typically focus on keeping the bad guys out, often lead to too many layers and components, and too much complexity.
A more effective cybersecurity strategy comprehensively builds security from end to end, using automation and intelligence to stay ahead of the cybercriminals’ game. “To achieve cybersecurity that truly defeats cybercrime, you need an innovative approach,” says Amy James, Lead Portfolio Marketing Manager for Security, Juniper Networks. “For example, Juniper’s Software-Defined Secure Network (SDSN) protects your cloud, virtual and physical environment with end-to-end, automated and intelligent capabilities that detect and remediate threats faster, safeguarding your business from today’s cyberthreats.”
The cyberthreat landscape is growing: more than 390,000 new malicious programs are registered every day, and the number of new malware specimen is expected to reach more than 7.4 million this year. Last year more than 4 billion records were stolen by cybercriminals, and by 2019 cybercrime is expected to become a $2.1 trillion problem.
Meanwhile, the WannaCry ransomware attack in May — which infected 250,000 machines in less than 30 minutes, and more than 2 million computers in over 150 countries within 24 hours — demonstrated that cybersecurity isn’t the priority it should be. According to a survey conducted by E1 among 400 IT professionals in the United States:
• 86% of respondents say they weren’t ready to deal with WannaCry
• 73% of management teams have not made additional cybersecurity resources available
Businesses need a network-based security solution with centralized controls that responds rapidly to emerging threat data. Juniper’s SDSN platform extends security to every layer of the network, including switches, routers, and wi-fi access points, as well as the firewall layer. Built around an open, multi-vendor ecosystem, it allows enterprises to keep most of their existing networking gear while transitioning to a more secure environment.
SDSN also includes the Junos Space Security Director with the Policy Enforcer module, which orchestrates and automates enforcement policies across the entire network. Juniper’s cloud-delivered anti-malware service — Sky Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) fueled by machine learning — can detect known and unknown threats faster. It uses in-house threat intelligence and third-party sensors to deliver effective, adaptive threat remediation. “Machine learning fundamentally changes the security equation by dramatically improving the accuracy of malware detection and risk classification,” adds James.
For example, Sky ATP would have protected companies against the WannaCry outbreak. It is designed to identify malicious files and propagate this information to the on-premises SRX device, which in turn will quarantine the malware at the network level. With WannaCry, Juniper’s Sky ATP examined 24 unique samples as of May 12 and all were caught within 30 seconds.
Staying ahead of the cybercriminals won’t be easy. However, innovative approaches such as Juniper’s SDSN platform, machine learning and automation, will better equip businesses to stay secure as the threatscape continues to expand and evolve.
