Weekly CloudNews: Juniper, Firewall Woes and Cloud Security

Welcome to this week’s edition of CloudBolt’s Weekly CloudNews!

Earlier this week on our blog, we looked at six top benefits of moving to a cloud automation system, and how it can impact enterprise IT in the areas of digital innovation.

In addition, we were proud to announce recently that CloudBolt was named to the 2019 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™! Learn more here.

With that, onto this week’s news:

Juniper aims to ease wired, wireless, multicloud management

Michael Cooney, Network World, Nov. 12, 2019

“Juniper has enhanced its network and hybrid cloud management software by integrating further the AI technology it recently acquired from Mist and adding new features to its Contrail Enterprise Multicloud software.

“The company recently closed the agreement to buy wireless-gear-maker Mist for $405 million and promised to meld the Mist technology with Juniper’s. Mist is known for its cloud-managed artificial-intelligence-based wireless service called WiFi Assurance that measures performance and service-level metrics to make wireless networks more predictable and reliable, the company said.”

Reluctance to automate leads to problems for enterprise network firewalls

Ian Barker, Beta News, Nov. 12, 2019

“Enterprises are slow to abandon manual processes, despite being short of staff, and a lack of automation, increasing network complexity and limited visibility are contributing to costly misconfigurations and increased risk.

This is among the findings of the 2019 State of the Firewall Report released today by security automation specialist FireMon, the report is based on responses from almost 600 people. The report reveals that cloud adoption is up significantly — 72 percent of respondents are managing some form of hybrid cloud environment today, compared to the 53 percent in the 2018 report.

However, processes to manage these networks are not keeping pace, 65 percent of respondents are still not using any form of automation to manage their security policies. 38 percent of C-level respondents say that change management processes are ad hoc, such as using email to send requests to firewall admins and spreadsheets to track network changes. Only 23 percent have real-time visibility into network security risks and compliance, and 35 percent of respondents only found out about a misconfigured firewall causing issues through urgent phone calls, emails and texts.”

As cloud security improves, a weak link emerges: people

Paul Gillin, SiliconANGLE, Nov. 10 2019

‘“A huge misconception is that the infrastructure-as-a-service model extends security to the customer’s systems when the providers are only securing the systems they are hosting,’ said Jesse Emerson, vice president of Americas managed security services at managed security services firm Trustwave Holdings Inc.

‘Simply put, when you use cloud services, the providers are responsible for securing the underlying infrastructure – customers are responsible for securing their data and applications,’ said Robert Sadowski, trust and security marketing lead for Google LLC’s Cloud Platform.”