San Jose, Calif., Feb. 5, 2019: The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices is proliferating in every industry. That’s the good news but the bad one is with the increase also comes a growth in risk.
Added to the list of IoT security solutions is now a new solution. To protect enterprise networks, Extreme Networks, Inc. has announced the general availability of Extreme Networks’ ‘Defender for IoT’, a security solution to help organisations secure their unsecured IoT devices. Defender for IoT can be deployed on any network and is also easy to use by even non-technical staff at schools, hospitals, retailers and hospitality venues, claimed the company in a press release.
There are two major security flaws present in today’s IoT devices. Most lack embedded security and device-level security wasn’t required. Manufacturers never considered that the private enterprise network could be connected to the public Internet, and therefore the devices may run on out-of-date operating systems, have hardcoded passwords and/or lack anti-virus and firewall capabilities. And they are typically deployed in a flat or unsegmented network so that if breached, the attacker can gain access to sensitive areas of the network.
Extreme Networks’ Defender for IoT claims to solves these challenges by delivering the following:
- IoT security without the complexity: Defender for IoT is simple to deploy and easy to maintain. Users simply plug the Defender Adapter into an Ethernet port, and run the associated application. The Defender application learns the typical traffic patterns of network devices, and dynamically generates a security policy that locks down what a device communicates with and how it can communicate, automating edge network security for the enterprise.
- Segmentation and isolation of IoT devices: With layer 2-7 visibility, Defender for IoT allows users to easily segment groups of IoT devices into multiple, isolated secure zones, reducing the network attack surface. Users can also centrally monitor and track device usage, location and roaming. This helps customers mitigate the risk of an attacker gaining access to more sensitive areas of the network.
- Deployable on any network infrastructure: Defender for IoT works with any vendor’s IP network, providing in-line protection of IoT devices and segmentation through IPSec tunnels– without network changes.
Image Credit: Extreme Networks