Sourcefire: Cisco loads Sourcefire ammunition to release FirePower in security push

Cisco has ramped up its push into security with release of a threat focused next generation firewall using Sourcefire code.The launch of Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services, comes almost a year after it's $US2.7 billion acquisition of security vendor Sourcefire.What's the difference between an Intel Core i3, i5, and i7?According to a company statement, it provides full contextual awareness and dynamic controls needed to automatically assess threats, correlate intelligence, and optimise defences to protect all networks."By integrating the proven Cisco ASA 5500 Series firewall with application control, and the industry-leading Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems (NGIPS) and Advanced Malware Protection [AMP] from Sourcefire, Cisco is providing integrated threat defence across the entire attack continuum -- before, during and after an attack," according to a company statement. It is a threat-focused NGFW that delivers multi-layered protection.Until now, NGFWs have focused on policy and application control and have been unable to address advanced and zero-day attacks.Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services changes this, taking a visibility-driven, threat-focused and platform-based approach, according to a company statement.Cisco senior vice-president, security business group, Christopher Young, said, in today's climate of industrialised hacking and sophisticated cybercrime, legacy NGFW solutions were not enough to thwart attackers."Now more than ever, organisations need to be able to implement dynamic controls to manage the pace of change of their environments and address security incidents," he said."Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services is a major step forward for the NGFW market, empowering customers to deepen their protection from the data centre, through the network, to the endpoint with the agility to identify, understand, and stop advanced threats in real-time and retrospectively."Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CISO, Kevin Kerr, said the sad reality was that every organisation is a target. "We cannot afford another surprise malware attack to disrupt our operations, which is why we are looking at the next generation of protective tools," he said."Cisco ASA with FirePOWER Services is among some of the tools we are considering to help us defend the Lab."According to a company statement, FirePOWER provides visibility and continuous analysis to detect advanced, multi-vector threats and streamlines and automates response for both known and unknown malware."It also offers holistic, actionable IoCs that speed threat investigation and retrospective remediation, along with integrated incident response scoping and automated detection policy updates. The innovations are supported by an enterprise-class stateful firewall, VPN, advanced clustering and granular application-layer and risk-based controls that evoke tailored NGIPS threat detection policies to optimise security effectiveness.Open source security integration with Snort, OpenAppID and ClamAV further allows customers to easily customise security to address new or specific threats and applications as quickly as possible.