Security on the rise

As the company that owns most of the networking equipment behind the internet, Cisco takes its responsibilities very seriously, spending around 10 percent of its entire $US3 billion annual R&D allocation on security.

"The way that threats are evolving means that organisations have less and less time to respond," Fowler says.

Cisco’s response to this problem is a strategy it calls the ‘Self Defending Network’, which is designed around the concept of automated, end-to-end systems rather than a series of point solutions.

The company has also invested heavily in educating it channel partners about issues such as how to align security strategies with international standards such as ISO17799 at the corporate level.

Also, no less importantly, how to actually use the equipment. "We often find that there are key security settings that customers haven’t even turned on," Fowler says.

The industry’s other giant, Microsoft, says that it is ramping up its efforts to improve security as well as awarenes of security amongst its customers and channel partners in Australia.

According to Microsoft’s head of security awareness in Australia, Ben English, the company is spending around half of its $US6 billion annual R&D spend on security. "What we’ve seen is that the number of vulnerabilities in the code is decreasing fairly rapidly -- the ability to exploit them is more difficult," English says.


Two by two

Network Box director Andrew Tune views the security space in terms of what he dubs the ‘Noah’s Ark’ syndrome whereby a security supplier inevitably ends of up having to manage their solution alongside its predecessors.

"We’ve even heard stories of managed service providers looking after more than 30 clients with as many different applications," Tune says.

Seneta's Solterbeck: Concern that strategies are being aligned with corporate compliance

It is this chaotic approach to IT security that Network Box markets itself as solving in the Australian marketplace, largely through a dedicated and remote managed device/services model that requires very little if anything from the customer while they are left in little doubt as to what exactly they are getting.

"Clients often believe that when a company says it will take care of their firewall, it means all of their IT security," Tune says, "when this may not really be the case."

The nature of internet threats today means that probably the most important part of any IT security strategy is to secure the network perimeter, continues Tune. The regularity of threats is such that managed services are often the best option for companies, especially those smaller in size. But the risk is often that a provider may only be checking a client’s network two to three times a week, often because they do not have a proper remote management facility.

"There are some very competitive players in this market but there are some cowboys as well, which is why there are so many opportunities here," Tune says. IT security device vendor SONICWall claims to have revolutionised the network security space with its Global Management System (GMS). The company now has  around 600,000 GMS devices in circulation throughout the world that are able to be managed simply and remotely by its 700 or so global channel partners.

According to the company’s director of product marketing, Sugata Sanyal, one of the greatest drivers of innovation for the company has been through the constant analysis and tweaking of solutions throughout the channel.

"Over the past 18 months, 75 percent of changes to GMS have come from the channel," Sanyal says.

SONICWall's Sanyal: Innovation through tweaking solutions throughout channel

Rich Hlavka with US-based Patchlink boasts that his company enjoys a very strong relationship with its channel, helped by the fact that the company models its approach on trying to be like Wayne Gretski [American ice hockey player]. "He doesn’t skate to where the puck is, he skates to where it’s going to be."

Patchlink maintains one of the world’s largest databases of software patches (currently around 6000) spanning Windows, Linux, Mac, Unix and several other operating systems.

Helping to keep things up-to-date, over half of the company’s 200 staff are engineers.And because the service is subscription based, Hlavka explains, the company’s channel partners gain access to the most current patches, enabling them to develop strong ongoing annuity streams while looking like heroes to their customers.

"We can almost be an annuity to our channel with ongoing selling opportunities and recurring revenues," Hlavka says.