CIOTechOutlook >> Magazine >> April - 2015 issue

Beyond Security: Uncovering Known and Unknown Vulnerabilities in Network Products

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Without a security policy and provision, the accessibility and availability of the enterprise network can be compromised quite conveniently. And over the past few decades, we have been hearing several big stories concerning network outages. Gradually, after witnessing such glitches in the network along with burgeoning vectors coming for various quarters, IT bigwigs and CIOs started realizing the significance of network security and started viewing network security of products much more in a holistic manner rather than one time affair to satisfy the compliance bodies. But the challenge of performing security test against threat vectors manually and regularly by a consultant pinched every enterprise. Understanding this quagmire, Beyond Security, headquartered in Cupertino, United States assists enterprises in testing both known and unknown vulnerabilities by allowing enterprises to carry out network security via cloud and through in premise appliances for end point security. “We are in an advantageous position to help the product vendors to build robust products while helping Enterprises to protect their critical assets and sensitive business data from a security perspective”, says Ravi Prakash Regional Director, India.

Improving Security Practices and Managing Vulnerabilities
With the growing internal and external threats, enterprises are finding it gruelling to meet myriad of security policies and regulatory compliances. Elaborating further, Ravi says, “It is even more challenging for large enterprises that are geographically dispersed given the internal end point security challenges. In addition, mobile users who log into network occasionally also face end point security challenges as they are not a part of the network”. However, with Beyond Security’s AVDS Vulnerability Assessment and Management, an organization can identify vulnerabilities with precision and eliminate network’s most serious security weaknesses. “AVDS with its lowest false positive feature help enterprises manage vulnerabilities efficiently”, adds Ravi.

Additionally, AVDS with its distributed architecture helps enterprises to deploy appliances in geographically spread organizations and manage both internal and external vulnerabilities from a single location, thus obliterating chances of long distant breach.

Being a PCI/DSS Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV), the venture conjures AVDS’s full blown automation features and couples it with cloud offering to allow enterprises website testing both quarterly and Half yearly . “Our PCI/DSS testing methodology follows stringent parameters and passes tests only when the websites are free from vulnerabilities, else subjects it to repeated tests until vulnerabilities are closed”, proclaims Ravi. This approach aids in smooth online payment transactions between the Enterprise and the user.

Comprehensive Security Testing for All Networked Applications
Security is the most critical parameter for all software developers who are undergoing high pressure of producing application that efficiently meets both functionality and security requirements. No developer wants to see his/her application being taken out because of an unforeseen breach or vulnerability. In parallel, failing to kill the potential vulnerability during software development lifecycle can become a costly affair. And this is when Beyond Security’s be STORM–a Software Security testing tool comes handy. beSTORM does dynamic security testing of products during development and can be used by developers and testers as part of security assurance testing. “It essentially identifies protocol implementation error and finds programming errors/anomalies such as buffer overflow, integer overflow, off-by-one error. Majority of the OEM’s including Microsoft, Ericsson, Juniper, Cisco incorporate beSTORM as part of the secured software development life cycleprogram(SSDLC)”, says Ravi. In addition, beSTORM follows black box testing methodology and it is independent of the programming language. Organizations from the defence, aviation, telecom and banking sector can deploy beSTORM as a security assurance testing suite to test home-grown products and active network components procured from third party vendors.

Way Forward
After establishing a strong foothold as a niche security product developer and successfully acquiring marquee clients such as US defence, Bank of America and Royal Bank of Scotland, Beyond Security is keen to add immense value to Indian organizations and help them construct robust security measures. Ravi believes that the industry today has evolved from the security perspective as a “good to have” to a “must have” and has gradually been embracing robust security into their IT practices. Going forward, Beyond Security anticipates active participation from many medium and small enterprises willing to strengthen their network security infrastructure and applications. Targeting the aggressive network threats, Beyond Security like many other security product developers is dedicated to help enterprises in building robust defence in many critical areas and enable them to grow beyond every security impediments.

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