Has Network Security Stood Still For 15 Years?

In this recent article on The Inquirer discusses Nir Zuk's assertion that that the corporate world is still protecting its networks with core security technology that dates back to 1995.

Nir Zuk is generally credited with creating stateful inspection technology, the first commercially viable firewall, and the world's first intrustion protection system (IPS).

Zuk's argument was that all web applications are dangerous, even big enterprise ones like WebEx and Microsoft Sharepoint and that today's security vendors can only secure web and email traffic rather than crucial applications like Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn and Twitter.

But contrary to his argument if you visit any of the big web security vendors, all of them are talking about web application control. As applications move to the web, we're seeing the traditional web security vendors moving to control web applications, and this trend is likely to continue. While Zuk is correct that the traditional network security vendors aren't protecting the users when they use web applications, at least the traditional web security vendors appear to offer that protection today.

Blue Coat has been touting "application visibility and control" since their Packeteer acquisition a few years ago, and specifically mentions the ability to block Facebook games without blocking Facebook, something Zuk mentions can't be done with a network security vendor. Cisco, likewise just recently announced the same tag line of "application visibility and control" by adding in additional knobs to their AsyncOS 7.0 for social media including Facebook.

So even if your network security is from 1995, just make sure your web security comes from one of the leading web security vendors.