Nortel Networks, Cisco Systems and Check Point Software have all announced initiatives to tie their own separate products together into networks that would allow for things like central management, integrated reporting and single-step updating.
"Network security is going from standalone intrusion-detection systems and standalone firewalls to security platforms," said John Pescatore, research director for Internet security at Gartner.
The announcements mark the latest moves by security software and device makers to simplify the management of far-flung networks so that system administrators can more easily oversee a company's security.
Today's security devices frequently have their own proprietary control software and lack the ability to correlate information about what potential attacks each device may be seeing. That leaves system administrators with the horrendous job of trying to wade through a flood of data on potential attacks, said Marc Willebeek-LeMair, chief technology officer for network security firm TippingPoint Technologies.
"The general concept of aggregating all this information about what is going on in your network so that your administrators can figure out what to do is significant," Willebeek-LeMair said. The company's UnityOne system combines firewall capabilities with the attack-sensing capabilities of intrusion-detection systems to respond automatically to potential breaches and reduce the workload on administrators.
While smaller network-security firms have already started down the path toward integrating the management of devices, this week marks the first time that some major firms have adopted the strategy, Pescatore said. By the end of next year, he expects all major players to offer an overarching management scheme for their products. By 2006, standalone devices that don't connect to such networks will be all but dead, he said.
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