Tool tackles insider threats

Oakley Networks is adding a network-based behavioral analysis tool to the company’s product portfolio. The tool is designed to give information technology managers a better view of threats coming from inside the organization.

The CoreView appliance, which the company will release this week, provides security managers with a view of information crossing their networks and displays security events in a wide range of reports. CoreView focuses on insider threats such as information exposure, data leakage and improper business practices.

The appliance captures packet-level activity for analysis and incident reconstruction and forensics, said Tom Bennett, Oakley’s vice president of marketing.

If security administrators use CoreView along with SureView, Oakley’s host-based behavioral analysis software, they will have a complete view of network and desktop activity, Bennett said. They will have such visibility across all communications channels, including encrypted traffic, company officials said.

Most organizations don’t have complete visibility into their employees’ computer behavior, Bennett said. But when combined, the company’s products let administrators integrate a single threatening incident or trend at the desktop level into a policy that can be enforced at the access point or between departments and networks, whichever is necessary.

The products incorporate Oakley’s SurePlay technology, which operates like a digital video recorder by allowing security operators to record and replay incidents. CoreView reconstructs corporate e-mail, Web mail and instant messages, including attachments. An investigator can replay and see an employee’s keystrokes when he or she typed an e-mail message and attached a document, Bennett said.

The ability to replay whole sequences and put the employee’s behavior in context sets Oakley’s products apart from other tools in the Web filtering marketplace, said Chris Christiansen, vice president of security products and services at IDC. Such products typically monitor and log events and, in some cases, block suspicious activity, he said.

Oakley’s products give more detailed information, showing a user’s intent so IT managers can distinguish between harmless and damaging events, he added.

More importantly, Oakley’s approach brings Web filtering into the arena of threat management, which focuses on thwarting malicious code and attacks.

“Web filtering is not just about employee monitoring and loss of bandwidth,” Christiansen said. “Web filtering is now part of threat management.”