As threats become more complex, the IT security specialist's role becomes equally more difficult to grasp. A broad base of security product suppliers, each contending that its solution is the panacea that the CSO is looking for, doesn't help matters and the job of specifying what's required to mitigate today's complex threats becomes almost intolerable.



I had spoken before to ForeScout Technologies and knew that the company is driving a programme of collaboration with key suppliers to extend the reach of its pervasive network security products to encompass other technologies that could provide a more holistic and integrated approach to threat protection.



This approach to combining the best of what's available to present security specialists with something that's both effective and manageable is exactly what's needed as complexity continues to increase. With two significant plug-fests on the cards for ForeScout, I was eager to speak to them about their plans for the future and agreed to meet with the company's Chief Marketing Officer, Scott Gordon in central London.



Scott was over in Europe for the it-sa event taking place in Nuremberg, a defining event in the network security calendar with ForeScout taking part in a plug-fest whereby interoperability would be demonstrated between the company's ControlFabric platform and no less than five major security suppliers including IBM, Rapid 7, SAP mobile secure and Palo Alto Networks. it-sa will be the first event where the integration with Palo Alto Networks products will be demonstrated.



However, there was one player missing from the it-sa event, one which is to have a profound effect on the way security professionals will manage threat mitigation. At the end of October, ForeScout will be demonstrating its integration with McAfee's e-Policy Orchestrator and the TIE or Threat Intelligence Exchange.



Scott explained that TIE is a cloud-based repository which gathers information from the installed base to identify threats as they emerge. It behaves similarly to a file reputation database which can be interrogated or which can supply information to ForeScout's CounterACT to enable decisions to be made and threats to be mitigated in real time. CounterACT does this through McAfee's Data Exchange Layer (DXL) using hash comparisons to enable the assessment of files.



The importance of such integrations can't be overestimated. The future of successful enterprise threat protection depends on open loops of differing technologies being closed in precise integrations that remove uncertainty and complexity. By combining its technology with McAfee, the open loop between advanced threat detection and network access control has been firmly closed.



Read ForeScout's announcement of its integration with McAfee products

Jonathan Newell is a broadcast and technical journalist specialising in security systems and transport safety. He contributes to a range of titles in the technical press. He shares his time between the UK and Kazakhstan