Juniper, others make security buyouts

Network hardware companies continue to snap up technology they can use to make security a standard feature in the switches and routers that comprise the basic network plumbing inside businesses.

The trend continued last week as Juniper Networks grabbed security vendor Funk Software for $122 million. Citrix Systems then bought its way into the application firewall market by acquiring start-up Teros, and Force10 Networks acquired stealthy intrusion-prevention, intrusion-detection system (IPS/IDS) vendor MetaNetworks.

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Network hardware companies continue to snap up technology they can use to make security a standard feature in the switches and routers that comprise the basic network plumbing inside businesses.

The trend continued last week as Juniper Networks grabbed security vendor Funk Software for $122 million. Citrix Systems then bought its way into the application firewall market by acquiring start-up Teros, and Force10 Networks acquired stealthy intrusion-prevention, intrusion-detection system (IPS/IDS) vendor MetaNetworks.

Also - Gartner: Buyouts highlight what's hot in net security

"You can't separate security from infrastructure anymore," says Lawrence Orans, principal analyst with Gartner. "When the present batch of network infrastructure gear on the market was on the drawing board, it was before Blaster and Sasser and heavy-duty malware and worm threats. You now need to have infrastructure that can quickly maintain your network through worm storms and other forms of malware attacks."

Last week's security acquisition trifecta follows 12 months of buyouts where Cisco acquired six security vendors, 3Com acquired IDS/IPS stalwart TippingPoint Technologies (read more on 3Com's integration of TippingPoint security products), Juniper bought application security firm Peribit and Citrix bought SSL VPN vendor Net6 .

More evidence of network gear assimilating security features can be found by following the money. Infonetics Research reports that third quarter of 2005 sales of secure routers, which consist of WAN routers with VPN/firewall features, jumped 21% from the previous quarter, while the overall router market grew at just 8% ($859 million for the quarter). Of the $189 million in sales of Layer 4-7 switches last quarter, half came from switches with built-in SSL features .

Switching on security

Juniper's buyout of Funk is in an effort to add switch-port enforcement of policies as an option in Juniper's Unified Access Control (UAC) scheme. UAC verifies that computers meet security policies before they gain network access and that users can reach only those resources for which they have been authorized.

UAC supports policy enforcement using Juniper Layer 3 firewalls placed around the network at strategic points. By using 802.1X authentication supported by Funk products, Juniper will be able to enforce security policies at Layer 2. So if users try to access resources without authorization or if their machine fails a security scan, they can be stopped at the access switch or redirected to isolated virtual LANs.