Regional companies are not securing their networks from internal attacks, leaving themselves open to major security breaches, security vendor Fortinet has warned, writes Eliot Beer.
Raphael Lignier, wireless business manager at the firm, cited the 2012 security breach at Saudi Aramco, when an attack delivered by a malware-laden USB stick which a possibly-malicious employee plugged into an Aramco laptop, destroyed around 85% of the oil giant’s computing resources.
“There are definitely a lot of external attacks – but you also have internal attacks. That’s why the secure access architecture is key – we do secure external attacks, but also internal. That’s why the segmentation firewall is very important – the weakest point in the network is not a machine, but a human, most of the time clicking a link in an email, which links to malware,” said Lignier.
“Most of the time networks are very protected from the outside world – but inside, networks are often not protected at all,” he added.
Fortinet has included tools to beef up internal network security in its new Secure Access Architecture offering, which it is launching this week at Gitex.
“We can provide an end-to-end security, accessing the network via wired or wireless, fully-secure. It’s not just authentication when you connect to the network, but also we are looking at segmenting the network, creating what we call segmentation firewalls, to make sure every piece of your network is secure,” said Lignier, who also claimed Fortinet is the only vendor to offer access, security and management systems in one package.
According to IDC figures released this summer, Fortinet holds the number one spot in the Middle East network security market, with a 19.5% market share.
