By Espie Angelica A. de Leon
Tech distributor Exclusive Networks has announced its partnership with Internet of Things (IoT) security solutions provider Forescout Technologies at a press conference held at Discovery Primea Hotel in Makati City on February 19.
As Exclusive Networks brings Forescout?s solutions to the Philippines, it also makes 100% device visibility and control possible for local businesses including the extended enterprise ? campus, IoT, data center, cloud and operational technology environments. With active and passive monitoring technologies, cloud-based device intelligence, IoT risk assessment, and device intelligence dashboards, the solutions help mitigate risks, reduce attack surface, and automate incident response.
Delivering comprehensive visibility over every device connected to the network, Forescout?s platform discovers all IP-addressable devices at the time of connect, classifies and categorizes them, and assesses their posture.
?The key big differentiator in the way we do these things is that we do all these three without an agent. Solutions out there will require an agent,? Forescout?s regional channels director for Asia Vincent Oh said during the press conference.
Businesses and government agencies then gain complete knowledge of their environments and take full control of their network so that they?re able to take quick appropriate action when an issue arises.
Typically, only the IP address is indicated when a security incident occurs, according to Oh. ?They don?t know whether the IP address is a camera, a voice over IP, printer, laptop, desktop, virtual machine. We don?t have contextual information,? he said, emphasizing that this is why it takes days to remediate a security issue.
?With the click of a button, we will discover all of those that are vulnerable, we immediately quarantine all of those, and we remediate automatically for you,? Oh explained, referring to the company?s industry-leading platform. ?Plus we identify the location of those devices.?
Aside from device visibility, Forescout also ensures compliance, asset management, and network access control that provides continuous monitoring beyond authentication and authorization.
Exclusive Networks country manager for the Philippines Renato Garcia said the government sector is one vertical markets where they are eager to bring about Forescout?s entry.
Globally, devices and platforms are diversifying while IoT adoption, as well as the convergence of operational technology environments with information technology departments, continue to increase.
In fact, research and advisory firm Gartner forecasts that there will be 30 billion IP-based devices by 2020, compared to about 15 billion in 2017.
?As the number of devices balloons up, your ability to actually see it drops down. People spend a lot of money on the most advanced security tools in order to actually reduce the attack surface. But because of the pressure of digitization, they are now increasingly using IoT devices to help the business,? said Oh. ?But by ?doing that, the attack surface is actually increasing.?
