IBM Technology Lifecycle Services (TLS), the IBM worldwide provider of client support services, is expanding its capabilities to offer comprehensive firewall and network solutions in partnership with Cisco.
Cisco Secure Firewall, a key component of the Cisco Hybrid Mesh Firewall, is engineered to help organizations strengthen enterprise data security by providing visibility into the network and threat protection against zero-day attacks using Snort ML, backed by Talos Intelligence and AI-assisted automation, the companies said.
According to Cisco, its firewalls innovation includes Encrypted Visibility Engine (EVE) to catch threats embedded in encrypted traffic without the need for decryption and to provide selective decryption option for high-risk network traffic. With the Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW), IBM TLS can now support the lifecycle of these firewalls, whether physical, cloud or virtual, by planning, designing, purchasing, installing, de-installing, and supporting them, helping clients to optimize their core or AI infrastructure.
SnortML is a machine learning-based exploit detection that does not depend on signatures. Where traditional IPS signatures fall over are embedded threats such as SQL injection attacks that can be embedded in places where traditional controls do not catch.
The solution is designed to modernize the network and security infrastructure with the latest features, to help protect the environment against emerging threats and vulnerabilities, address breaches and contribute to mitigating cyberattack risks that can cause data loss, costly downtime, and reputational damage, the companies said.
Serving as a component of defense against cyber threats, firewalls historically shielded data centers from the Internet, with the attack surface limited to a single point of entry into a building. However, the advent of bring-your-own-device policies, cloud-based services, IoT devices, branch architectures, and remote workers has drastically expanded this attack surface, according to IBM.
These frameworks, incorporating protocols, rules and architectural designs, aim to help enhance breach, user, and AI protection while seeking to assist stakeholders in adhering to evolving compliance requirements
The expansion of the IBM TLS firewall security offer aims to address this considerable market demand. As organizations migrate workloads to the cloud, virtual firewalls can provide scalable and flexible protection, in addition to integrating seamlessly with cloud-native tools, offering enhanced visibility, and helping to simplify management across complex hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructures. By emphasizing virtual firewall capabilities, enterprises can fortify their cybersecurity defenses and address the risk of breaches in an evolving threat landscape, IBM said.
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