Juniper Networks Closes Software-Defined Security Loop

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At a NXTWORK 2016 user conference today, Juniper Networks unveiled extensions to its software-defined security architecture that enable security policies to be enforced all the way down to specific network ports.

Scott Miles, senior director of cloud, enterprise and security portfolio marketing for Juniper Networks, says new Policy Enforcer software both automates the enforcement of security policies across and quarantines infected endpoints by invoking a Junos Space Security Director software that Juniper Networks previously developed.

At the same time, Juniper Networks announced a SRX4000 series of firewalls aimed at the midmarket, along with announcing that Juniper Networks Sky Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) software is now available on both the vSRX Virtual Firewall as well as across the SRX Series Services Gateways.

Miles says that IT organizations today need to be able to dynamically apply policies and quarantine systems in response to changing IT security conditions.

“IT organizations want to be able to act in real time,” says Miles.

For the moment, Policy Enforcer only works with networking gear and security appliances manufactured by Juniper Networks. But Miles says it’s only a matter of time before Juniper Networks makes use of industry standard application programming interfaces (APIs) to extend the reach of Policy Enforcer out to third-party networking and security equipment.

As IT security threats increase in volume and sophistication, IT organizations are clearly going to have to embrace software-defined approaches to IT security that allow a limited number of IT security professionals to combat an ever increasing number of threats as quickly as they can be discovered. After all, there’s a direct correlation between how long it takes to fix a vulnerability and the potential damage that might be inflicted.