FireMon has released its patented
Risk Analyzer technology that helps customers accurately simulate cyber risk and allocate resources where they can have the greatest risk reduction impact. The innovative technology extends FireMon’s uniquely scalable automation and analysis platform to risk vulnerability management, calculating the risk of network attack angles and scoring firewall rules to allow network managers to efficiently reduce their exposure to risk.
From the ransomware attacks and sophisticated malware threats of late to simple user configuration error, security practitioners need to be able to see the full picture of where the weaknesses lie in their network infrastructures. FireMon Risk Analyzer was developed for large enterprises and federal agencies in response to the overwhelming number of vulnerabilities on the network at any given time that could be exploited to reach business-critical assets.
To achieve best-in-class risk and vulnerability management, Risk Analyzer overlays vulnerability data from leading scanner technologies on network security configurations collected with the FireMon Security Manager platform to identify exploitable hosts. With this analysis, the application is able to:
- Provide a vulnerability score ranked by severity and business risk impact
- Score firewalls by the level of risk they expose
- Trend risk over time to understand the impact of their remediation efforts on security posture over time
- Reduce the time it takes to identify attack paths to vulnerable systems by 90%
- Ultimately reduce risk by 35%
- Decrease response time to protect assets by 50%
In a recent report from Gartner,
When You Can’t Patch It, Protect It From the Network (Nov 2016), by Claudio Neiva, Adam Hils and Prateek Bhajanka, the analyst firm states: “Most organizations face a series of challenges to keep all systems patched, and need to plan on alternative measures to reduce the risk of vulnerabilities being exploited when security patches cannot be installed in a timely manner.” FireMon agrees that security and risk management leaders need to broaden their threat and vulnerability management strategies to apply alternate risk mitigation measures to critical systems and applications that cannot be patched.
“Effectively, cyber attacks today start inside the network via spear phishing or other means. Many network teams have undertaken segmentation as a way to limit accessibility of data from those potential scenarios. However, that is only effective if the implemented policies correctly control access. Determining which systems are vulnerable and accessible through the segmented network is now a critical exercise,” said Matt Dean, Vice President of Product Management for FireMon.
With the continued impact of more sophisticated cybersecurity attacks, enterprise and government security leaders are looking for new technology to help them identify where in their complex network infrastructure attacks would succeed. FireMon’s second-generation Risk Analyzer product combines data from disparate systems in a new powerful way that makes eliminating attack vectors easier and more effective.
“We hear all the time from customers and potential customers the value of being able to assess risks before they become real nightmares for the organization,” explained Dean. “CISOs want to quickly identify the weakest points in the network and remediate them appropriately in accordance with business priorities. For example, if it is a retail organization, then any attack threatening payment card data will be scored the highest and given immediate priority.”
With the technology, available only from FireMon, users can view a map of possible vulnerable paths attackers might use to move across the network layout and see how each asset is exposed or accessible to an attacker.
From there, they can calculate how easy it would be for an attacker to reach the network through different network hosts and internet-facing segments to assess the potential damage, score attack simulations for risk impact and re-score once improvements have been made. Crucially, Risk Analyzer allows for patching systems virtually with the ability to re-run a complete analysis in seconds and compare various patch scenarios to ensure the safest impact is achieved.
