Dark Reading Radio: Firewall Smackdown

In today’s  BYOD world there is probably no question that sparks greater controversy than what to do about the increasingly obscure network  perimeter -- and what that means for the ubiquitous firewall. Some experts argue that the perimeter is dead, and along with it, the stalwart firewall. Others contend that the firewall will continue to play a role in the command center of enterprise defense for a long time to come.

In the next episode of Dark Reading radio on Wednesday, July 15 at 1:00 PM New York/10:00 AM San Francisco, we’ve invited two security industry entrepreneurs with strongly held views to debate key issues: Asaf Cidon, CEO of cloud encryption security provider Sookasa, and Jody Brazil, CEO of enterprise security and firewall management firm FireMon.

With more than two decades of deep domain expertise in network security behind him, Brazil defends the firewall, making the case that organizations that can’t maintain rigid firewall enforcement are more likely to be compromised (see Firewalls Sustain Foundation of Sound Security).  Prior to founding FireMon in 2004, he served as the chief technology officer at FishNet Security for six years.

Taking the opposing view is Cidon, who argues that organizations that rely on firewalls to protect sensitive data fail to adequately protect information where it actually resides – in the cloud or on user devices (see Why the Firewall is Increasingly Irrelevant).  His company, Sookasa, founded in 2012, provides encryption for popular cloud services like Dropbox. Prior to that, Cidon worked on the web search engineering team at Google and led a team in an elite unit in the Israeli intelligence. 

Among the issues we’ll be discussing:

I hope you'll join our show and bring your insights and opinions to the conversation. You can post your comments and questions below or take them with you to the Dark Reading radio studio on Wednesday, where you can participate directly through online chat. Please note, you’ll need to register for the broadcast to participate. I look forward to seeing you there.