Software Security
Cisco | September 25, 2023
Cisco and Splunk are joining forces to advance organizations from reactive threat handling to proactive threat anticipation and prevention.
Together, they will emerge as a major global software entity, boosting Cisco's shift towards recurring revenue.
This collaboration unites two esteemed workplaces with shared values, robust cultures, and skilled teams.
The synergy between these pioneering companies positions them for leadership in AI-driven security and observability.
Anticipated to yield positive cash flow and improved gross margins in the initial fiscal year following the merger, with non-GAAP EPS enhancement expected by year two.
Cisco and Splunk, the leader in cybersecurity and observability, today announced a definitive agreement under which Cisco will acquire Splunk for $157 per share in cash, representing an equity value of approximately $28 billion. Gary Steele, president and CEO of Splunk, will join Cisco's Executive Leadership Team upon completion of the acquisition, reporting to Cisco chair and CEO Chuck Robbins.
Chair and CEO of Cisco, Chuck Robbins, remarked,
We're excited to bring Cisco and Splunk together. Our combined capabilities will drive the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability. From threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention, we will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and resilient.
[Source: Cision PR Newswire]
Every company relies on data to operate its business and make mission-critical choices in today's hyper-connected environment. Accelerating and adopting generative AI, growing danger surfaces, and different cloud environments offer unprecedented complexity for enterprises. To be digitally resilient, organizations must better manage, preserve, and unleash data's value.
Gary Steele, president and CEO of Splunk, stated that they would together form a global security and observability leader that will harness the power of data and AI to deliver outstanding customer outcomes and transform the industry. Steele added that they’re eager to join forces with a trusted and long-time partner who shares their passion for innovation and top customer experience, and they expect their community of Splunk employees to benefit from the greater opportunities as they bring together two purpose-driven and respected organizations.
Cisco and Splunk will give insight across hybrid and multi-cloud systems, enabling clients to provide seamless application experiences for digital enterprises. The companies can help other organizations responsibly use AI due to their scale, data visibility, and trust. These two firms will unite to invest more in innovative products, accelerate innovation, and expand globally to serve clients of all sizes. The transaction is expected to be cash flow positive and gross margin accretive in the first fiscal year post-close, with non-GAAP EPS accretive in year two. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions, including approval by Splunk shareholders.
Advisors for the Cisco-Splunk acquisition include Tidal Partners LLC, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP Cravath and Swaine & Moore LLP, among others.
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Network Threat Detection
Business Wire | October 20, 2023
Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), the leader in secure, AI-driven networks, today announced the expansion of its Connected Security portfolio with new products and capabilities that empower organizations to seamlessly extend security services and Zero Trust policies across distributed data center environments. The new Juniper Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture uniquely integrates Juniper’s unified security management paradigm with best-in-class routing and AI-Predictive Threat Prevention to bring much-needed operational simplicity and scale to data center security. In addition, four new high-performance firewall platforms deliver unmatched performance in a compact footprint that minimizes cost, space and power consumption.
With the adoption of edge computing, multicloud, 5G and IoT, business data is increasingly distributed across geographically dispersed locations, making it harder to secure and manage. To adapt to this changing environment, organizations need a new modern data center architecture that delivers reliability through automated data center operations, scalable performance to support the most stringent workloads (e.g., AI model training) and comprehensive data security, regardless of where the data resides.
The newest enhancements to Juniper’s Connected Security portfolio provide a secure bridge for customers to facilitate their transition to a modern data center, at their own pace. This is achieved via the following unique innovations:
Juniper’s Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture: Juniper is the first in the industry to deliver an architecture design that fully decouples the forwarding and security services layers that have traditionally been combined in a single firewall appliance. By decoupling these layers, customers can utilize their existing Juniper MX series routers as an intelligent forwarding engine and load balancer. This unique design gives customers independent scaling flexibility without chassis limitations, multi-path resiliency and cost efficiency. When coupled with Juniper Security Director Cloud, the operational experience is as simple as managing one logical element, regardless of the quantities and form factors of any additional firewall engines added to the architecture.
AI-Predictive Threat Prevention: Building on Juniper’s Adaptive Threat Profiling and Encrypted Traffic Insights, AI-Predictive Threat Prevention automatically generates custom signatures unique to the customer’s environment through a proxy-less architecture. Coupled with AI, customers gain even more effective malware prevention at line rate. Additionally, the enhanced URL filtering solution provides more granular control, with more than 200 categories to choose from and support for up to 200 languages, as well as a new portal for better insights on web content and easy recategorization. The AI-powered security solution enables customers and partners to predict and find real threats faster, leaving human experts to focus on more strategic security tasks.
Four new best-in-class high-performance firewalls: The new Juniper Networks SRX firewalls (SRX1600, SRX2300, SRX4300, SRX4700) are 1RU in size, scale up to 1.4 Tbps and include built-in Zero Trust capabilities, delivering the industry’s highest firewall throughput performance per rack unit. The new platforms feature wire-speed MACsec along with natively embedded TPM 2.0 chips and cryptographically signed device IDs that allow security administrators and network operators to easily verify the trust posture of devices remotely and mitigate the risks of supply chain attacks. These new firewalls, like the whole SRX family, support industry-standard EVPN-VXLAN Type 5 integration, providing full fabric awareness to security operators and allowing them to respond to threats faster.
When combined with Juniper’s Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture, these additions to the Juniper SRX series family offer customers even more options to build and expand their data center architectures securely and with sustainability objectives top of mind.
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Software Security
PR Newswire | October 06, 2023
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today unveiled the next evolution of its managed detection and response service offerings with new AI technologies, including the ability to automatically escalate or close up to 85% of alerts,1 helping to accelerate security response timelines for clients.
The new Threat Detection and Response Services (TDR) provide 24x7 monitoring, investigation, and automated remediation of security alerts from all relevant technologies across client's hybrid cloud environments – including existing security tools and investments, as well as cloud, on-premise, and operational technologies (OT). The managed services are delivered by IBM Consulting's global team of security analysts via IBM's advanced security services platform, which applies multiple layers of AI and contextual threat intelligence from the company's vast global security network – helping automate away the noise while quickly escalating critical threats.
Security teams today are not just outnumbered by attackers, but also by the number of vulnerabilities, alerts and security tools and systems they're tasked with managing on a day-to-day basis, said Chris McCurdy, General Manager, Worldwide IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services. By combining advanced analytics and real-time threat intelligence with human expertise, IBM's new Threat Detection and Response Services can augment organization's security defenses with a capability that is scalable, continuously improving and strong enough for tomorrow's threats.
Intelligently Adapting Threat Defenses
The new TDR Services are underpinned by a set of AI-powered security technologies that support thousands of clients across the world, monitoring billions of potential security events per day. It leverages AI models that continuously learn from real-world client data, including security analyst responses, engineered to automatically close low priority and false positive alerts based on a client-defined confidence level. This capability also automatically escalates high risk alerts that require immediate action by security teams and provides investigation context.
IBM's TDR Services are designed to provide:
Crowdsourced detection rules, Optimized alerts. Leveraging real-time insights from IBM's threat management engagements, the new services use AI to continuously assess and auto-recommend the most effective detection rules – helping to improve alert quality, and speed response times. This capability helped reduce low-value SIEM alerts by 45% and auto escalate 79% more high-value alerts that required immediate attention2. Organizations can approve and update detection rules with just two clicks through its co-managed portal.
MITRE ATT&CK assessment. To stay prepared for ransomware and wipe-out attacks, organizations will be able to see how their environment is covering MITRE ATT&CK framework tactics, techniques, and procedures as compared to their industry and geography peers. By applying AI, the new services are designed to reconcile the multiple detection tools and policies currently in place at an organization, providing an enterprise view into how to best detect threats and assess gaps to update within an ATT&CK framework.
Seamless end-to-end integration. With its open API approach, the new services can quickly integrate with a client's enterprise-wide security assets, whether on premise or in the cloud. Organizations can continue to access their ecosystem while also having the option to connect and collaborate and define their own response playbooks through a co-managed portal. This provides a unified enterprise view, precise remediation capabilities, and consistently enforces security policies across IT & OT.
24x7 global support. Organizations will have access to more than 6,000 IBM Cybersecurity Services professionals across the globe 24/7 x 365 to help augment security programs. IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services' vast global network serves more than 3,000 clients around the world – managing more than 2 million endpoints and 150 billion security events per day.
"Security leaders today are trying to escape the vicious cycle of staff shortages, increased threats, and rising demands from the C-Suite to mature their cyber program without breaking the bank. For many organizations the old playbook of swapping out their tools for a vendor's preferred platform does not work, as they cannot afford to write off prior SOC investments," said Craig Robinson, IDC Research VP of Security Services. "A service like IBM's Threat Detection and Response offering can provide an off-ramp to these concerns, without requiring a full rip-and-replace of their prior security investments and help shift their human capital in the SOC to more of a proactive mode."
To support continuous improvement for security operations capabilities, IBM's TDR Services, which are now available, include access to IBM's X- Force Incident Response Services along with the option to include additional proactive security services from IBM X-Force, such as penetration testing, adversary simulation or vulnerability management. X-Force will also provide guidance to help clients improve their security operations over time, based on the current threat landscape, clients' evolving IT environment, and insights gleaned from engagements with thousands of IBM Cybersecurity Services clients around the world.
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