SIGNUP FOR THE Recorded Session of Stonesoft <-> ITIL V3 Alignment
June 23rd, 2009 at 11AM to 12PM EST We are running a FREE Web Seminar with Stonesoft aligning StoneGate's (Unified Threat Management System) Firewall/VPN, IPS, Virtual FW+IPS, and Centralized Management Solution to ITIL V3 Practices. We will be identifying "10 Quick Wins for ITIL V3" when implementing Stonesoft's Solution.
Go to REGISTER to sign up to view the On-Demand recorded session of Stonesoft with OASYS and ITIL V3 "10 Quick Wins" Free Seminar.
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The process of aligning your IT to meet your business
objectives is a daunting, although has become a necessary endeavor. Business
owners want to maximize all the resources and investment in IT to meet the
objective and have visibility into the effectiveness of the investment. ITIL is
a best practices management approach and defines Services, Processes, and Roles
that are organized in a comprehensive framework to enable Continual Service
Improvement.
Security of information and its maintenance is of utmost
concern and affects everyone. Every
Service and Process owner needs to implement and monitor security relative to their roles.
Stonesoft has created a product offering that addresses easing the management of IT security across the physical and virtual planes. Through a unified approach that includes
Firewalls, Intrusion Protection Systems, Link Load Balancing, Server Load
Balancing has been designed as a single Integrated Threat Management system. All this is managed from the StoneGate Management Center satisfying many ITIL practices.
The IT Service Management (ITSM) key task
of fitting security into the management organization is addressed by features of
the unified Stonesoft solution.
Security Requirements are specified in underpinning
contracts, legislation and possible internal or external imposed policies and
the Business Policies. Streamlining and implementing of security policies,
monitoring compliance, managing incidents, and the change management process is
the driving force behind the design. The hardware and software architecture
is targeted at satisfying many of the ITIL principals.
Stonesoft appliances can be clustered into groups of up to
16 units for the purpose of management. These appliances report to and are controlled
from the StoneGate Management Center (SMC). Information is correlated between
all devices to continually confirm policy enforcement. When planning and building your
infrastructure and installing Firewalls, IPS’s, Link and Server Load Balancers
the designers are faced with the task of multiple management systems and
interfacing security for the element at each stage.
With a unified Stonesoft solution planning and implementing
is done in a phased approach. Turnkey Services from Stonesoft allow existing
systems to continue to operate and these systems are monitored by StoneGate Management Center
through a Transition Lifecycle into operation.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) are made
available through an evaluation when the Stonesoft appliances are in “learn
mode”. Once active the KPI’s are continually reported to the SMC. The SLA’s for
Firewall VPN, IPS, Link Load Balancer, Server Load Balancer are all monitored
from a single location and correlated for departmental or enterprise wide
monitoring.
Consider the replacement of older or homegrown Firewalls. Once
Stonesoft Firewalls are in place a phased approach to replacing Server Load
Balancers may be the next improvement since Stonesoft will provide SSL
inspection of encrypted traffic. This
migration can be controlled from the StoneGate Management Center
. The product can purchased to effectively replace any of the five appliances and later upgraded to replace the remaining four.
Reports are generated throughout the processes to confirm
desired outcomes. Logs of all activity, alerts, performance, incidents, and
system health are archived in a consistent manner and are always accessible.
Service Managers and Process Owners have a clear picture of security relative
to their role without the task of manually collecting and correlating multiple
logs and reports from several elements.
Audit reporting,
system upgrades, compliance, incident control, and capacity monitoring is streamlined from several management systems to one StoneGate Management Center. There are less individual SLA’s to manage, less individual appliances, lower the
cost of management, and simplification of several complex operations.
Here’s a quote from Denys Foley at Xerox that summarizes the
advantages of Stonesoft…
Based on Xerox's return-on-investment calculations, the
Stonesoft firewalls paid for themselves in just over a year when used only as
firewalls. But when adding their VPN, content switching and multi-link WAN
load-balancing capabilities -- which were not considered when the gear was
bought -- the devices have generated more savings, according to Denys Foley,
the infrastructure manager for Xerox Global Services in Rochester,
N.Y.
"We spend less time setting up VPNs and their
policies," he says. "I have also taken my content switches out of the
Web farm, and I let the firewalls handle distributing the load among Web
servers. I get rid of licenses and training, and I can manage all [these
functions] from one console."
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