Juniper Networks' Konstantas Talks Network Security Issues, Concerns

At the recent Interop (News - Alert) Vegas 2011 show, Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMC, sat down to interview Juniper Networks’s (News - Alert) Johnnie Konstantas, director of Product Marketing.

Tehrani raised the issue of cloud security. Due to recent acquisitions, Konstantas said, Juniper has available a product called VGW, which essentially protects virtual machines and virtualized workloads.  

In terms of the threats today, of course, the popular perception is that they’re growing exponentially – recently we’ve seen companies getting broken into, massive amounts of credit card information, names, addresses and other headline-grabbing hacks. What, as Tehrani asked, is different about cloud security from the good old-fashioned kind?

Konstantas offered a lot to think about when it comes to cloud security. When moving to cloud security, she said, companies are justifiably concerned about the underlying platform they’ll be using for the cloud computing, whether it will offer more areas for attack. “That’s a good concern,” she said, “because it does.”

Virtual machines and the traffic between this isn’t visible, so sometimes traditional methods of security don’t work, a new one is needed. To meet this need Juniper has built software specifically for securing virtualization, for what is essentially the underlying platform for cloud computing.

Another issue is simply malware in the virtualized environment, where the malware takes over the virtualized machine. As Konstantas said, the ideal for cloud computing is enough isolation where they’re compartmented off, or in a public cloud, where Customer A’s virtual machines are isolated from Customer B’s.

She had a lot more to say about what companies looking to switch to cloud computing should look for in security, and offered her ideas on how it can be improved.

Check out the complete video below.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.