Question

D5/ISI: Please make sure the answer should be at least 30 sentences with your own words. Research emerging enterprise network applications and describe 3 that you think are most interesting and briefly explain why you believe this.

Answer 1

1. Hardware authentication

The inadequacies of usernames and passwords are well known. Clearly, a more secure form of authentication is needed. One method is to bake authentication into a user’s hardware. Intel is moving in that direction with the Authenticate solution in its new, sixth-generation Core vPro processor. It can combine a variety of hardware-enhanced factors at the same time to validate a user's identity.

Intel has built on previous efforts to dedicate a portion of the chipset for security functions to make a device part of the authentication process. Good authentication requires three things from users: what they know, such as a password; who they are, such as a username; and what they have, such as a token. In the case of Authenticate, the device becomes the what-you-have.

2. User-behavior analytics

Once someone's username and password are compromised, whoever has them can waltz onto a network and engage in all kinds of malicious behavior. That behavior can trigger a red flag to system defenders if they're employing user behavior analytic(UBA). The technology uses big data analytics to identify anomalous behavior by a user. Visibility into activity that does not fit the norm of the legitimate user can close a blind spot in the middle of the attack chain. “If you think of the attack chain as initial penetration, lateral movement, and then compromise, theft, and exfiltration of sensitive data, the middle links in that attack chain have not been very visible to enterprise security pros, and that's why the interest in user behavior analytics today,".

In addition, UBA can be a valuable tool for training employees in better security practices. "One of the biggest problems in a company is employees not following company policy," Grossman said. "To be able to identify those people and mitigate that risk by training them properly is critical."

3. Data loss prevention

A key to data loss prevention is technologies such as encryption and tokenization. They can protect data down to field and subfield level, which can benefit an enterprise in a number of ways:

• Cyber-attackers cannot monetize data in the event of a successful breach.
• Data can be securely moved and used across the extended enterprise — business processes and analytics can be performed on the data in its protected form, dramatically reducing exposure and risk.
• The enterprise can be greatly aided in compliance to data privacy and security regulations for protection of payment card information (PCI), personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI).

4. The cloud

The cloud is going to have a transformative impact on the security technology industry generally. As more organizations use the cloud for what has traditionally been the domain of on-premises IT, more approaches to security that are born in and for the cloud will appear. On-premises techniques will be transitioned to the cloud. Things such as virtualized security hardware, virtualized firewalls, and virtualized intrusion detection and prevention systems. But that will be an intermediate stage.