Palo Alto Networks™, the network security company, today announced it has released new functionality that enables enterprises to control several popular Hyves capabilities, empowering users to continue to embrace Hyves while mitigating any security concerns. Hyves users in enterprises are susceptible to bringing vulnerabilities into the organization and leaking confidential data to third parties because of the nature of Hyves-based applications, which like many other social networking-based applications have been heavily targeted by hackers and cybercriminals.
Hyves has enjoyed rapid growth and has become the dominant social media platform in the Netherlands and Belgium with more than 10 million members. These members continue to use Hyves at work, which causes its applications such as chat, mail, games, and music to become the target of attacks as cybercriminals use it as one of their vectors of choice to penetrate the enterprise perimeter.
Palo Alto Networks' new App-ID™ allows IT security teams to centrally protect their Hyves users against the undesired security issues while transparently preserving Hyves functionality.
"This is another example of the safe enablement that customers of Palo Alto Networks can uniquely take advantage of; reaping the benefit of social applications, yet mitigating the risks," said René Bonvanie, vice president of worldwide marketing at Palo Alto Networks. "For example, an organization might want to enable customer service representatives to use Hyves for its Chat function and the Mail function, but disable Hyves Music or Hyves Games to mitigate security and productivity concerns."
The Palo Alto Networks Application and Threat Research Team actively researches applications. Taking input from the market, application developers and customers, the team aggressively maintains App-ID and the more than 1,050 applications it identifies, adding three to five applications weekly. Palo Alto Networks' App-ID technology enables a more sophisticated identification than a simple signature, putting decryption, decoders, heuristic analysis, and a rich signature analysis at the team's disposal. Augmented with detailed information about the application's use, behavior, and risks, customers can make informed policy decisions regarding applications.
Next Generation Firewall: How it Works for Hyves
Palo Alto Networks combines three identification technologies to provide visibility and control over Hyves-related functionality, users and content:
- App-ID identifies exactly which Hyves functionality is running on the network, as well as the associated risks, so administrators can deploy comprehensive application usage control policies for inbound and outbound traffic.
- User-ID integrates with Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP directories to link Hyves use to users and groups – not just IP addresses – for visibility, policy creation, logging and reporting.
- Content-ID combines a real-time threat prevention engine with a comprehensive URL database to detect and block a wide range of threats, limit unauthorized transfer of files and data, enabling customers to scan permitted Hyves traffic for threats and confidential data.
Information on more than 1,050 applications that are identified by Palo Alto Networks can be found in Applipedia, part of the company's Application and Threat Research Center. Visit the online resource to find the latest news, commentary, and discoveries on applications and threats at http://researchcenter.paloaltonetworks.com.
About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks™ is the network security company. Its next-generation firewalls enable unprecedented visibility and granular policy control of applications and content – by user, not just IP address – at up to 10Gbps with no performance degradation. Based on patent-pending App-ID™ technology, Palo Alto Networks firewalls accurately identify and control applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or SSL encryption – and scan content to stop threats and prevent data leakage. Enterprises can for the first time embrace Web 2.0 and maintain complete visibility and control, while significantly reducing total cost of ownership through device consolidation. For more information, please visit http://www.paloaltonetworks.com.
Palo Alto Networks, "The Network Security Company," the Palo Alto Networks Logo, App-ID, and GlobalProtect are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States. All other trademarks, trade names or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.
