Juniper Networks, on Thursday announced the powerful new capabilities in its Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) solutions for protecting the enterprise edge, offering added security, control and efficiency while being easier to deploy and manage.
 
As security threats to enterprises continue to get more advanced and targeted, organizations need firewalls to provide added layers of security without adding complexity. Yet, the bulk of organizations are only now beginning to consider what NGFW can do for them. According to Gartner, less than 20 percent of enterprise Internet connections today are secured using NGFWs, and that by year-end 2014, this will rise to 35 percent of the installed base, with 70 percent of new enterprise edge purchases being NGFWs.
 
“Juniper Networks is committed to providing enterprises with security technologies that deliver the performance, flexibility and control needed to protect against the ever-evolving threats they face. The new capabilities in our Next-Generation Firewall products give our customers even more options to manage and secure the enterprise edge with improved control and efficiency”, said Nawaf Bitar, senior vice president and general manager of Security Business Unit, Juniper Networks.
 
“Juniper is addressing some of the most significant challenges companies face when securing the enterprise edge by providing simple, centralized management of both virtual and physical firewalls, along with improved control over applications”, said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.
 
The capabilities introduced as part of Juniper Networks NGFW enable large organizations to manage a broad range of deployments and use cases while simplifying administrative overhead. Juniper’s solution also offers simplified and centralized management and an open services platform for essential security features including intrusion prevention system (IPS), unified threat management (UTM) and application visibility. Further, the technology helps optimize enterprise resources for business-critical activities by prioritizing who gets access to what applications and what applications get prioritized on the network.
 
Juniper Networks is introducing new enhancements to its SRX Series Services Gateways that provide next-generation security to help customers protect against threats and control what’s on their network without adding a heavy administrative burden.
 
Main Highlights:
 
• Centralized management of Juniper Networks SRX and virtual Firefly Perimeter firewalls is made easier with Junos Space Security Director’s integrated logging and reporting, and role-based access controls that manage next generation security services including user firewall, application security (AppSecure) and UTM. A single, central management platform delivers a simple method for managing all Juniper Networks firewalls, eliminating the complexity and time needed to support multiple management platforms.
 
• Juniper Networks SRX now integrates directly with Active Directory to apply user role-based firewall policies without requiring any additional devices or agents. This integrated solution will simplify deployment of user role-based firewall capabilities in cases where a customer doesn’t need a full end-to-end user security solution such as Juniper’s Unified Access Control service.
 
• For organizations looking to combine security for the data center and enterprise edge into a single box, AppID delivers granular management of application visibility and control on a per policy basis. These controls allow AppID to be used to protect enterprise edge traffic where it’s most needed, while not being applied to the data center where it is less needed and could add unnecessary complexity.
 
• The new AppID engine includes a heuristics engine optimized for identifying evasive or tunneled applications. This feature is important for blocking risky applications such as peer-to-peer applications or adding control over social, video and communications applications such as Skype™ or BitTorrent®. AppID will also identify nearly twice as many unique applications as before.
 
• Firefly Perimeter, Juniper’s virtual firewall, now supports NGFW capabilities like IPS and UTM. These services enable Firefly Perimeter customers to layer additional levels of security into their networks to protect against exploits trying to compromise weaknesses in applications and protect against malware, spam and other content-based threats.
 
• Juniper Networks NGFW solution is open to customization by customers to meet specific security needs. AppID and IPS signatures are written in an open language so customers can write their own signatures that may not be in the standard application database. This offers a unique ability for customers to insert signatures for their custom-built applications or add IPS signatures to protect against exploits they discover. This capability helps organizations increase the amount of control they have over home grown application traffic in their network and it enables increased protection against exploits targeting these custom applications. The ability to add custom app and IPS signatures is popular in financial and government use cases.