A blog fight! A blog
fight!
No surprise Alan Shimel’s involved, and this time he’s taken
on Dominic Wilde at Nevis. It started with
Dominic’s post
responding to Mike Fratto’s blog
on the limits of NAC. I took issue with some of Mike’s blog too and left a
comment.
Then Alan took Dominic to task,
Dominic responded
, Alan replied,
Dominic replied,
and Alan replied again, promising it’s his last post on the topic.
So what’s to gain from jumping into the fray, with emotions
running so high and allegations flying back and forth? I think both guys have
gotten a bit lost in the weeds, whining at each other about various details,
but the overall nature of the debate sits close to my heart. At the highest
level, Dom is arguing that pre-connect or pre-admission checks are insufficient
and Alan’s arguing, well, a bunch of stuff but essentially he gets mad whenever
anyone says pre-admission isn’t enough.
So let me start by saying pre-admission, of whatever
quality, isn’t enough – for a lot of customers. If it were all anybody wanted, we
wouldn’t have well over 100 customers. (Now I have to tease my friends at Nevis and say “come on – not a SINGLE customer announcement
all year? What’s up with that?”) Of course, pre-admission is enough for some,
or Still Secure wouldn’t have any customers. (And actually, Alan, I couldn’t
find any customer announcements for this year on the Still Secure site either.)
Clearly I agree with Dom’s overall premise that for many
enterprises, pre-admission checks aren’t enough – they need post-admission
control. And by post-admission, I don’t mean just running pre-admission checks
over and over again, as a lot of people want to define it. I mean something
very different – truly controlling what users can do after they’re admitted onto
the LAN. This level of access control involves understanding who the user is
and limiting the applications and resources that user can access based on role,
location, time of day, and other aspects of who the user is.
This debate between Alan and Dom went down a few other paths
I’d like to touch on as well.
Dominic – next time you steal my line, at least give me
my props! Probably all nine people reading this blog fight were at the New
York event and heard me draw the analogy between doing vs. teaching to talk
about being inline.
Both of you – you talk about architecture, debating inline
vs. out of band, as if the customers are thinking that way from the start. They're not, and they shouldn't be. They're thinking about what business problems they’re trying to solve. When they lay out their requirements, and match it up against product features, only then will architecture trends start to emerge. It so happens that if they need to actually control
what people can do on the LAN, they need an inline device. The customers who
need identity-based control get it – they understand that to do that, the
device actually has to first see and then be intelligent about doing enforcement on all the traffic going
through it. But the discussion doesn’t start with architecture
religion – it starts with the enterprise’s needs.
Alan – your questions on the quality of the switch miss the
point. Switching’s commoditized, for one, and second, anyone looking at a
secure switch cares first and foremost about the security capabilities. Cisco,
for all its switch dominance, can’t hold a candle to us on security features in
its switches. Certainly we have the enterprise-class features needed to sell or we wouldn't be successfully selling it,
but a purchase driven by security does change the decision focus.
For the last two quarters in a row, we’ve sold more switches
than appliances, and the way this quarter’s shaping up, it looks like that'll happen again. It’s never about rip and replace – we offer both
appliances and switches so enterprises can choose the platform that suits them
best. But let me tell you, it’s really nice when an enterprise can take
advantage of an existing, and substantial, budget item already earmarked for a switch
upgrade and use that money to also get security and identity-based control
built right in. It's that kind of pragmatism that shows me this stuff ends up in the infrastructure.
Both of you – way overblown on the IPS thing. Maybe Nevis uses Snort, maybe not – but regardless, it’s not
the point. Enterprises will still use separate IDS/IPS devices – no one should
act like even best of NAC devices will change that. But I heartily believe that
if you’re sitting inline anyway, seeing all the traffic coming from the user
edge of the network, and you can build in some smarts to do anomaly detection and
help pinpoint network problems, you’re providing good value. And keep in mind anomalies
take a lot of forms. For one of our customers, the ConSentry algorithms tripped
alerts on an application built in-house. It certainly wasn’t malware, but it
showed them where a piece of the code was written badly and was sending people
off to the Internet for data they had in house. Not IPS, clearly, but still
useful.
Alan – your rant on ASICs seems off too. Of course we at Nevis and ConSentry would be proud of our custom silicon
– it’s the secret sauce for doing what we do. Even if merchant silicon is
improving, we’re still way ahead of what you can buy, and owning those goods is
incredibly valuable. Line rate, 10 Gbps packet inspection, including full L7 so
I can show you the filename a user just accessed over Windows or the URL they
just clicked on – that’s truly where we get the customer “a-ha!” moments. And
you just can’t get there with off-the-shelf silicon. Secret sauce is always
worth crooning about, especially when it's actually why you win.
You’re right Alan – your blog is your domain, and you
are master of that domain. But I have to admit – I’m pining a bit for the old
days when you blogged on stuff beyond picking on your competitors and trumpeting
about Still Secure products. And riding your coattails? Come on - he's engaging in a debate that you started.
And just for the record, I’m siding with Dom here, but I can assure you I’m
not playing the Olivia Newton-John role. I'm afraid neither my figure nor my voice would
cut it.
Michelle McLean
mmclean-at-ConSentry-dot-com