Juniper Networks, Inc. and Symantec Corp. have entered into a broad strategic partnership focused on delivering integrated security solutions to enterprise customers.

The agreement includes:

• a commitment to develop Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions and Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS)
  
• dedicated plans to co-operatively build standards-based, integrated access control and endpoint compliance solutions
  
• collaboration between Juniper's J-Security Team and Symantec's Global Intelligence Network to deliver security and threat research and
  
• participation in cooperative sales and marketing efforts.

Juniper and Symantec will dedicate engineering resources to enhance Juniper's Unified Threat Management (UTM) and Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) products. Juniper's Integrated Security Platforms will include Symantec's security content, including its anti-spam, IDP/IPS signatures, and vulnerability information and research in the near term. Longer term, the companies will collaborate on the inclusion of antivirus and threat protection.

The companies also plan to co-operatively enhance and integrate their existing endpoint compliance and access control solutions by collaborating to build network enforcement and endpoint compliance solutions. The solutions will leverage each company's core competencies in endpoint and network security, and will be marketed and sold by both companies.

As part of this effort, both partners will continue to work together to support the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) open standard, a set of non-proprietary network access control specifications that enables the application and enforcement of security requirements for endpoints connecting to a network.

[This is a highly significant development in the infosec market. According to Infonetics Research, Inc.'s recent report titled, "Network Security Appliances and Software Quarterly Worldwide Market Share and Forecasts for 2Q06", Juniper is the global high-end firewall and SSL VPN market leader and no. 2 by revenue in the network security market. According to Gartner Dataquest (September 2006) Symantec is the security software market leader with a revenue for almost USD2.4 billion.

Togethert the two companies are thus well positioned to gain further market share in a steadily increasing infosec market. The market is currently driven mainly by regulatory requirements in the high end, the direction of development determined by the increasing understanding and implementation of risk management based enterprise architectures such as SABSA, Zachmann and IAF. As these methods moves from highly skilled individual implementations to more standardised techniques vendors are able to build more knowledge into products, hence making implementation of these advanced methods more affordable and less dependent on scarce highly skilled resources. This trend is also manifest in Cisco's Self-Defending Network vision and in the newest thoughts from Enterasys.

Risk-based management methods will gradually penetrate downwards in the market over the next several years and the companies who have the power to manifest these architectures in concrete systems will be the market winners.

This is the light in which this new partnership of giants should be seen. --Ed].

Related links: (Open in a new window.)
www.juniper.net
www.symantec.com
www.heise-security.co.uk/news/78152

View printable version (opens in new window)
Back