The more I read this discussion the more I'm tempted to utter a highly generalized opinion, and the more I come to realize that a succinct couple of statements would never suffice. I did a little pulling on the Narus string and came across the press release below from the company that I thought ya'll'd be interested in (with apologies in advance if you've already covered it):
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Narus Launches NarusInsight 5, Widens Lead in Carrier-Class IP Security, Intercept and Traffic Classification
Wednesday April 5, 12:14 pm ET
New Release Powers Industry's First Entropy-Based IP Security Algorithms
Dramatic Speed Enhancements Drive Superior Price Performance
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 5, 2006--Narus, Inc. today announced the next generation of NarusInsight(TM), the only carrier-class IP traffic processing system that provides the complete, real-time network visibility essential to secure, manage and deliver Services over IP (SoIP).
As the foundation for the industry's most advanced IP security, intercept and traffic classification applications, NarusInsight is unique in its ability to simultaneously provide deep-packet inspection from layer 2 to layer 7 and complete correlation across every link and element on the network -- all at core carrier speeds. NarusInsight 5 now processes full-packet layer 7 traffic at speeds up to OC-48 (2.5Gb/sec) and layer 4 traffic at speeds up to OC-192 (10Gb/sec), providing carriers with the flexibility and superior price performance benefits associated with deploying at both the network edge and the high-speed core.
In addition, NarusInsight 5's new security application modules (the NarusInsight Secure Suite) feature the industry's first entropy-based security algorithms, providing telecom carriers with unprecedented early detection of sophisticated new-breed anomalies such as low-volume and polymorphic worms, layer 7 protocol attacks, and application attacks.
Transitions occurring in the telecom industry have created a "perfect storm" of issues for carriers:
* As carriers begin their migration to the IMS architecture and Services over IP such as VoIP and IPTV, they are faced with new challenges around cost-effectively securing and managing those services while maintaining the flexibility to quickly provision new services or tear down unprofitable ones.
* Carriers are faced with a new breed of more sophisticated, commercially motivated network attacks that propagate much more quickly, are much more difficult to detect and have the potential to cause widespread damage.
* Terrorists and criminals are utilizing IP services such as VoIP, e-mail and Skype to communicate, leading to government mandates for the monitoring and lawful intercept of these services by law enforcement agencies.
"While the IMS architecture provides a blueprint for the standardization and simplification of provisioning these new real-time services, it lacks any specification for the security or the management of quality of service and billing activities around these services," said Brian Partridge, senior analyst, The Yankee Group. "Therefore, carriers have traditionally been faced with legacy, stove-piped security and management solutions that not only fail to scale as carriers add additional services, but can actually add significant complexity to architecture that was supposed to be simplified. NarusInsight completes the IMS vision by offering one common, scalable system that is easily extended by sophisticated application modules that provide the essential insight required to support both the rapid deployment of new services and the tear-down of unprofitable ones."
"NarusInsight 5 represents a huge step forward for carriers as they migrate to IMS," said Steve Bannerman, vice president of marketing, Narus. "NarusInsight 5 delivers today on the promise of one common system for the security, management and intercept of IMS services, coupled with the speed enhancements that drive unequalled price performance. In addition, the NarusInsight Secure Suite's entropy-based layer 7 security algorithms again raise the bar, leaving the rest of the industry further behind."
NarusInsight 5 features include:
* A total network view across the world's largest IP networks that includes both deep-packet inspection and full correlation of layer 4 and layer 7 information across all the links and elements -- The breadth of this unrivaled view provides the knowledge and insight required to secure and manage all IP services from a single system. NarusInsight's total network view completes the IMS vision by providing the same reduced complexity to the security and management components of real-time services such as VoIP and Peer-to-Peer as they are provisioned.
* Industry-leading packet processing performance that supports network speeds of up to OC-192 at layer 4 and OC-48 at layer 7, enabling carriers to monitor traffic at either the edge of the network or at the core. This ability provides much greater efficiency with far fewer monitoring devices, significantly lowering costs.
* Unsurpassed scalability to support the world's largest, most complex IP networks -- Installed by Tier 1 carriers around the world such as AT&T, KDDI, Vodafone and Korea Telecom, NarusInsight has the field-proven ability to meet the most stringent requirements of the world's largest networks.
* Unparalleled flexibility and extensibility -- NarusInsight's functionality can easily be configured to target a particular activity or IP service such as security, lawful intercept or even Skype detection. It can also be expanded without a system upgrade to provide broad functionality across many activities and all IP services.
NarusInsight's extensible application modules include:
* NarusInsight Secure Suite (NSS):
* Behavior-based security algorithms go well beyond the typical volume or signature-based attacks such as DoS, DDoS, viruses and worms detected by today's security appliances. By continually monitoring the entropy of the entire network, the NSS's modules can detect even the lowest volume or latency threats, and even polymorphic worms -- hours or even days before previously possible.
* Advanced VoIP security providing port-independent, layer 7 security for scanning, targeting and flooding attacks as well as call hijacking and protocol exploit attacks.
* The NarusInsight Intercept Suite (NIS):
* CALEA- and ETSI-compliant modules for lawful intercept featuring a robust warrant management system. Capabilities include playback of streaming media (for example, VoIP calls), rendering of Web pages, examination of e-mails and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols.
* Proprietary directed analysis monitoring and surveillance module offering seamless integration with the NSS or other DDoS, intrusion or anomaly detection systems, securely providing analysts with real-time, surgical targeting of suspect information (from flow to application to full packets).
* The NarusInsight Discover Suite (NDS):
The NDS supports detection of the following services and protocols for the purposes of billing, quality of service, planning and provisioning as well as blocking:
* VoIP (SIP, H.323, MGCP, RTP, RTCP)
* Skype
* Streaming media (RTP, RTSP)
* Peer-to-peer (Gnutella, BitTorrent, KaZaa, eDonkey, etc.)
* Web (HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP)
* Messaging (IM, MMS)
* Push-to-talk
About Narus
Narus software solutions provide the real-time traffic insight essential to profitably manage, secure and deliver Services over IP. Today, large IP-based networks are transforming the traditional circuit-switched world of telecommunications into a dynamic, ever-changing world of IP-based services such as VoIP, IPTV and others. In order to secure, monitor, bill and provide excellent quality of service for these IP-based offerings, service providers must simultaneously capture, normalize and correlate IP traffic across all layers of the network. Only NarusInsight is capable of providing companies with the means to capture, normalize and correlate IP traffic at the speed required for carrier-class networks. With its patented technology and processes, Narus helps customers like AT&T, Korea Telecom, KDDI, Telecom Egypt, Saudi Telecom, France Telecom and T-Mobile in areas of network security, traffic classification and monitoring. For more information, please visit www.narus.com.
Contact:
Narus, Inc.
Lucia Mikasa, 650-230-9311
lmikasa@narus.com
or
Schwartz Communications
Susannah Beckwith, 415-512-0770
narus@schwartz-pr.com |
