Month: February 2017

Posted on

Announcing PAN-OS 8.0 – Our Biggest Launch Yet!

It’s no secret that attackers and their methods have become more targeted, sophisticated and automated. What follows is an evolution in the needs and demands of security teams to tackle new threats and risks. To address the ever-changing threat landscape and provide organizations with the best security capabilities possible, security vendors must continue to evolve as well.

With that, we are proud to announce PAN-OS 8.0, the largest product and feature release in the history of Palo Alto Networks.

The launch includes more than 70 new security features that enhance all aspects of our Next-Generation Security Platform. We are building upon the existing capabilities of our natively engineered cybersecurity platform to provide organizations with the ability to safely enable applications, content and users regardless of location, prevent successful cyberattacks, simplify security operations, and safely embrace the cloud.

The new capabilities in PAN-OS 8.0 will help customers:

Enable Cloud Adoption

Enhancements support migration to diverse, multi-cloud environments, providing consistent, scalable and advanced security, as well as industry-leading integration with key providers, such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, for operational agility and automated scale out. Greater visibility, policy enforcement and actionable dashboards improve security capabilities for SaaS applications, and an expanded lineup of VM-Series virtual firewalls meet a variety of performance needs and use cases.  The new VM-50, VM-500 and VM-700 provide industry-leading performance of up to 16 Gbps for small remote offices to data centers and service provider deployments.

Detect and Prevent Evasive Malware and Credential Theft

PAN-OS 8.0 includes several first-ever innovations focused on advanced threat prevention techniques and the prevention of credential theft and abuse. These include a new 100 percent custom-built anti-evasion analysis environment for WildFire; a heuristic engine to dynamically steer highly evasive threats to a bare metal analysis environment for full hardware execution; a fully automated, payload-based command-and-control signature generation and delivery mechanism; and the new MineMeld application that’s integrated with AutoFocus for automated action driven by correlated threat intelligence.

Prevent the use and abuse of stolen credentials by providing a policy-based multi-factor authentication framework natively in the next-generation firewall. This new and unique capability makes it very easy to enforce multi-factor authentication from the firewall to stop cyber adversaries from moving laterally in a network and accessing sensitive resources with the help of stolen credentials or compromised endpoints. This is achieved by working at the network level in conjunction with authentication and identity management frameworks, such as single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, and integrating with a number of next-generation identity access management vendors, including Ping Identity, Duo Security, and Okta to enforce policies.

Scale With Predictable Performance Across a Variety of Use Cases

Designed to handle increasing throughput needs due to increased SSL-encrypted traffic and data center consolidation, as well as increased traffic at the internet gateway, six new models of appliances: PA-5260, PA5250, PA-5220, PA-850, PA-820 and PA-220 enable advanced security protections for large data centers to smaller environments and branch offices.

Management features that provide administrators fast and accurate insight delivered by Panorama, and include ingestion of Traps (advanced endpoint protection) logs, as well as additional firewall logs to enrich correlation of indicators of compromise and automate actions to update the next-generation firewall with new automated actions to prevent adversary lateral movement and alert IT via IT service management and security response systems, such as ServiceNow, lowering operational burden for security teams.

Below are links to additional resources to learn more about PAN-OS 8.0

[Palo Alto Networks Research Center]

Posted on

New COBIT 5/CMMI Tool Goes Beyond Traditional Mapping

ISACA and CMMI each have a deep well of expertise and rich sources of guidance and leading models in the areas they cover: ISACA in the world of governance of enterprise IT (GEIT) with COBIT, and CMMI in the world of enterprise process maturity.

Together, we have teamed up to create a new product that leverages the deep guidance available within each of the models. Specifically, COBIT 5 and the CMMI maturity models each have extensive guidance in establishing practices that permit users to better align stakeholder requirements with the utilization of IT-enabled investments; using them both together can yield a resultant value that is greater than the sum of their respective parts.

Many users of framework products look for mapping tools to assist them in using both models or to reduce initial planning and implementation resources needed to bring the second model into use. Mapping tools serve a useful purpose in that regard but have always had one significant drawback: They only attempt to reveal direct connection points between the models being mapped. That serves to speed up implementation time for the second model, but is limiting in the degree to which it unlocks the additional value that using that second model could bring.

The other issue that comes up with traditional mapping tools is that they are designed to be used in one direction only. That is, a user looks up an element in model A and finds which element or elements in model B relate are related. What if you want to start with an element in model B? That element likely exists in multiple places throughout the map and isn’t easy to isolate to determine what in model A is related. These traditional maps are unidirectional.

ISACA and CMMI saw an opportunity in this gap to produce a tool between COBIT 5 and the CMMI maturity model. Called the COBIT 5 CMMI Practices Pathway Tool, users will now be able to quickly and easily navigate from either COBIT 5 or CMMI and uncover relevant guidance in the other model. This bidirectional capability is unique and will permit users greater flexibility in deriving value from the tool.

The tool is built in Excel to provide access to a larger number of people. It takes advantage of native functionality in Excel and uses filtering to provide a quick and easy means of selecting elements of interest. There also is a guidance document with the tool to better describe its function and use.

The end result will be the ability for business IT practitioners to deliver additional value to their stakeholders.

Peter Tessin, Technical Research Manager, ISACA

[ISACA Now Blog]

Posted on

Traps Named A Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms

Gartner has just released its 2017 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP), and we’re honored that Palo Alto Networks is named a Visionary in this report. This marks the first year that Palo Alto Networks has been included in the EPP report – we believe this is further proof of Traps’ recognition by top-tier, independent third parties and analysts.

Here are a few highlights from the report that should be of interest to endpoint security professionals:

  1. Gartner’s report cautions customers against overreliance on reactive indicators of compromise. According to Gartner, “With the exception of some of the emerging Visionary vendors, too many EPP solutions’ malware detection techniques remain overly reliant on reactive indicators of compromise (i.e., IP address, URL, file hash, partial hash, registry key values). These static indicators are the easiest part of the kill chain for the attackers to change rapidly.”
  2. The report offers guidance to customers on what endpoint protection capabilities they should assess when evaluating potential solutions. Gartner observes that “Most attacks exploit well-known unpatched vulnerabilities, use social engineering to trick users to install trojan malware, or use interpreted code such as Java or Visual Basic to download and install malware.“
  3. Gartner reflects on the utility of standard testing and the need for improvements in their test by stating that, “Standardized testing, such as AV comparatives and AV tests, are still the best indicators of effectiveness; however, they still overreward reactive solutions and undertest detection of new attacks.”

Our view at Palo Alto Networks is that enterprises will continue to seek more effective endpoint security offerings that can prevent security breaches, whether they are initiated through the exploitation of application vulnerabilities or via new and unknown malware.

I encourage you to read the complete Magic Quadrant report to learn about all of Gartner’s findings.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, Eric Ouellet, Ian McShane, Avivah Litan, January 2017. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

[Palo Alto Networks Research Center]

Posted on

How to Win the IT Advisory Talent Battle

Demand never has been higher for the IT advisory skill set. At our firm, we’re seeing more competition now than even existed in the SOX boom of the mid-2000s. Positions across the United States are re-maining open for months at a time. Your company wants to make sure it’s not settling on the first ap-plicant who knows the difference between CISA and COBIT and, instead, wants to attract the brightest talent that will really make a difference to your team.

We’ve seen some common themes among our clients who consistently attract the best candidates, and I’d like to share them with you so that you can win the talent war in 2017 and beyond.

Impact
The number one motivation for making a job change that I hear time and time again goes something like this: “I don’t feel like my position really makes a difference. I just check up on everyone else.” You need to make sure you’re marketing your position as one that allows the applicant to see the meaning and purpose of his or her work. Tell them success stories about your department and paint a picture for them about how you are perceived in the organization.

A recent example from one of our clients was a project where the business operations and IT security teams could not agree on the best way to move forward on a large product rollout. The IT audit team (through years of showing its value to the business) was instrumental in making sure both sides came to an agreement in order to release a workable product. Not only does this IT audit team now have the pride and satisfaction from helping shape one of the company’s most important initiatives, but is has also turned into a great recruiting story allowing them to attract top talent. That’s true impact.

Work/life balance
The rise of the Silicon Valley style corporations with unlimited vacation time, a whole year for paterni-ty/maternity leave and game tables in every conference room has made it difficult to win the talent war without offering an appealing work/life balance. At the management level, I know you’re not able to change large policies like I’ve mentioned above, but what you can do is make your department one that embraces technological advances that allows your employees to work when they can, where they can.

I realize that this is more easily said than done, but companies that are doing this are able to attract the best talent. Perks such as working a day a week from home, flexible work schedules (get in early/leave early, etc.,) and making sure on-site time is used to maximize face-to-face encounters with internal customers and team members while the rest of the work is done from a coffee shop, etc., will help you to be much more appealing to the generation that has grown up with information available any-where, on any platform.

Growth
Obviously, your goal is to retain the talent you are able to attract. The best way to do that is to make sure your employees are challenged, able to grow and never bored: “I want to make sure I’m not a (insert job title here) forever.”

It’s a common concern among candidates I speak with and human nature to not want to feel trapped. Candidates want to feel there is a career path for them and know that they won’t be doing the same thing every day. They crave variety, challenge, growth and advancement. If you plan to hire someone who already knows how to do everything in your job description, you’re setting yourself up to have someone leave your department early if there is no significant growth or challenge for them if they stay. In so far as possible, create opportunities for your employees to add to their skill sets, and enable them to advance within and eventually beyond your department. If you don’t have a compelling story about the growth opportunities you can provide for your new team members, you will continue to lose that talent to other companies who can show them a challenging career path.

Use what sets you apart
If you search for the term “CISA” on LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster and CareerBuilder, you’ll find thou-sands of available roles. On ISACA’s own job board, there are 500. With competition like that, you need to be sure your company and opportunity stands out from the rest.

What is special about your company that attracted you to work there? How do you address mentoring younger talent? What processes do you have in place to groom the candidate for future leadership roles? Also, make sure to allow the applicant to go to lunch with potential co-workers, not just manag-ers. Applicants who leave the interview believing they will enjoy working beside the people they meet will be much more inclined to want to work for you.

Highlighting smaller perks doesn’t hurt, either. Do you have a generous 401K match? Does your com-pany offer free lunches in the cafeteria? Have an onsite daycare? Make sure you advertise those.

My goal for this article was to provide value to you and help you identify some things you can do to attract the talent you need to succeed. If I can answer any questions to help you win the talent battle, write your questions in the comments below!

Brad Owens, Recruiting Director, Duval Search

[ISACA Now Blog]

Posted on

Build Your (ISC)² Network through Chapters in EMEA and North America

Are you looking to start an (ISC)² Chapter in your area? The enrollment period for chapters in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and North America regions is now open through February 5. Through the chapter program, (ISC)² members and other information security professionals further advance the organization’s vision to inspire a safe and secure cyber world by sharing knowledge, raising security awareness and advancing information security in local communities around the world.

To be eligible to start a chapter, you will need to meet the following requirements:

  • Be an (ISC)² member in good standing for a minimum of three years.
  • Be a resident of the area in which you plan to start a chapter for at least one year.
  • Have proven leadership experience in a professional setting.
  • Not currently serving as an officer of another security chapter organization.
  • No previous convictions of criminal activity or conduct.

Since lifting the moratorium on chapters this month, we have already received several applications from the two regions, and we look forward to receiving more! The new chapter application process is streamlined and entirely online, making it easier to get started.

To submit a chapter application, visit https://isc2chapters.communityforce.com/

Open enrollment for the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Latin America (LATAM) region chapters will begin in Q2 2017. Keep an eye on our blog for an announcement.

[(ISC)² Blog]

English
English
Exit mobile version