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Fortinet Debuts Database Vulnerability Assessment Appliance for Data Theft Detection and Prevention
September 2008 by Marc Jacob
Fortinet introduced a family of security appliances dedicated to database vulnerability assessment (VA). The FortiDB-1000B appliance is a mid-enterprise product designed to “harden” databases by detecting weaknesses in passwords, access privileges and configuration settings. As databases are fast becoming the next big target for cybercriminals due to the sensitive and valuable information they hold, there is an increasing need for powerful tools that can detect and guard against data breaches. This is especially critical for vertical industries such as retail, which require compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) to protect customers’ personal and credit card information.
The FortiDB-1000B VA appliance provides an automated, cost-effective and centralized solution for database application security, with evaluation and remediation advice for common compliance requirements built in. By identifying weaknesses in databases that can be open for exploitation, the FortiDB appliance helps to prevent the theft of proprietary and personal data by what might appear to be legitimate users. FortiDB works by identifying the weakness, alerting system administrators of potential threats, and offering remediation advice.
The FortiDB-1000B appliance supports heterogeneous environments including Oracle, DB2, Sybase and SQL Server, with each appliance supporting up to 30 concurrent databases. Fortinet is also planning low- and high-end versions of the FortiDB product line later in 2008 and 2009, which will be able to support database instances of 10 and 60, respectively. For large organizations running thousands of databases across multiple geographies and network topologies, an enterprise software version is available today.
FortiDB appliances provide the same enterprise-class database security with enterprise grade policies and reports used by Global 100 financial institutions and large audit firms. This new VA appliance is an optimized, security-hardened device that easily plugs into the network for simplified installation, deployment and management of the product.
Some of the key competitive differentiators that the FortiDB-1000B offers include the following:
• Automated security assessment, reducing the database administrators (DBA) workload from manually searching for weaknesses and limits exposures when DBAs are on leave or terminate employment;
• High number of database best-practice policies and current policy updates to address the latest database threats and regulatory/industry requirements;
• Scalability to be able to scan large amounts of data and scale reliably up to 30 database instances per appliance;
• “Separation of Duty” implementation for role-based administration (e.g., systems administrators, security administrators, policy manager, etc.), which is a key compliance requirement.
