McAfee unveils its Network Security Framework

McAfee has announced its network security framework which integrates advanced network intrusion prevention with essential next-generation controls. The solution addresses a need for security tools to prevent increasingly sophisticated attacks, with sufficient intelligence and automation to take the guesswork out of attack prevention and resolution.

The network security framework includes significant enhancements to the McAfee Network Security Platform, including application visibility and integrated threat-context, aligning it with Gartner's criteria for next-generation network IPS in its report, "Defining Next-Generation Network Intrusion Prevention". According to the report, "Threats are focusing on installing targeted malicious executables onto user PCs, which use advanced techniques to avoid detection and use botnet delivery mechanisms to perform multistage attacks. Simply stopping attacks that are looking for unpatched servers is no longer sufficient in this environment."

Greg Young. Gartner Research said, "Gartner uses the term 'next-generation network IPS' to indicate the necessary evolution of network IPS to deal with changes in network communications and applications and changes in the threat landscape. As a minimum, a next-gen IPS will have standard first-generation IPS capabilities plus application awareness, context awareness, content awareness especially providing full stack inspection."

The McAfee network security framework includes the following aspects: Advanced Network IPS; Application awareness and control; Predictive threat intelligence; Context-aware security; and Content analysis.

Steve Shillingford, President & CEO, Solera Networks said, "To fully understand and eradicate targeted attacks, you need complete visibility of all network traffic, its source and scope, and whether it occurred days, weeks, or months in the past. McAfee Network Security Platform's integration with Solera's DeepSee applications delivers a seamless workflow to security analysts taking you from an alert to irrefutable evidence of the attack, breach or threat, dramatically reducing the time it takes to pinpoint compromises."

By incorporating application visibility, external reputation data, behavior-based threat analysis and advanced malware detection workflows into a single solution, McAfee network security framework delivers next-generation network IPS that allow organizations to streamline security operations while dramatically reducing exposure to new attack types.