The Lippis Report

October 14th, 2003

Insight number 1: Network Security Can Save Your Corporation Money. Network security is generally viewed as inflationary and in many cases it is just that. But taking control of internal users can result in extraordinary financial gains. CompUSA´s Ken Monroe, Director of IT Communications and Support Services, and Pat Hykkonen, Director of Network Security, both made this point dramatically at the Oct 16th Integrated Networks Security webinar, www.en2004.com. In essence Ken and Pat worked with Blue Coat Systems, www.bluecoat.com to audit and understand traffic flows and security problems on the CompUSA network. What they found was that employees were downloading music, videos, etc. via Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications such as Kazaa, which was consuming some 30% of their $5M/year wide area bandwidth in addition to clogging computer storage and spewing viruses and worms into the corporate network, not to mention wasting productivity. By installing Blue Coat System´s ProxySG secure proxy appliance which controls user communications over the Web they were able to stop P2P traffic and project a savings of some $20M a year with a $120K annual spend. If we take this analysis and add the following polling information from the webinar we find that chief network architects and planners are starting to focus on internal security where they can not only close their largest vulnerabilities but provide hard economic savings as well.”
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October 2nd, 2003

It is well-known that over 70% of network security incidents are initiated, both maliciously and unknowingly, by parties within the confines of the enterprise network, be they employees, contractors, or unauthorized intruders. A new breed of secure proxy appliances, such as the Blue Coat Systems ProxySG (www.bluecoat.com), has hit the market with the goal of supplementing perimeter security while maintaining internal security and productivity by controlling employees’ use of the Internet. As Blue Coat’s VP of Marketing, Steve Mullaney, states: “We want to keep the bad guys good and the good guys honest.”
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