Infosecurity Europe 2010: Arbor Networks gets virtual on security

Tom Bienkowski, director of product marketing, told Infosecurity that the software - Peakflow X Virtual - runs on VMware ESX and ESXi hyperviser environments and gives companies the same features as Arbor's hardware appliances, but in a virtualised environment.

"As this is a VMware offering we've made some significant changes to our licensing programme. It's now very easy for users to upgrade their licences on demand", he said.

"We've seen a lot of changes in attack profiles in the last 12 months or so. Attacks are not slowing down - they're increasing. As a result we're now seeing cloud-based data centres becoming very attractive to hackers. This is why we developed a VMware version of our security technology", he added.

According to Bienkowski, hackers are starting to target cloud-based resources owing to the fact that gaining access to them can generate the hackers a lot of money.

The hacking industry, he explained, is all about ransoms and extracting revenue from frauds. It's all about money", he added.

Arbor Networks says that Peakflow X Virtual allows hosting and network service providers to quickly and cost-effectively deliver new, scalable, cloud-based managed security services to their enterprise customers.

In use, the software is billed as analysing flow statistics to define normal network behaviour. Then, in real-time, the software's embedded network behavioural analysis (NBA) technology identifies abnormal activity that can indicate a developing security attack long before its signature is created.

And, says the company, since Peakflow X detects network anomalies and threats using NBA technology, it is complementary to signature-based security products such as IDS/IPS, anti-virus and firewalls.

Bienkowski said that the software also taps the security data feeds from Arbor's global intelligence network known as ATLAS, which stands for active threat level analysis system.

ATLAS, he says, draws on data that is pooled anonymously from the company's security customers around the world and seeks to spot network plus internet security threats at their earliest stages, and before they become a major threat.

 

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