Redlands, California—Esri and RedSeal Networks are joining forces to create a geospatial framework for cybersecurity. The goal is to fully integrate existing cybersecurity and information technology (IT) data with other organizational functions. This allows defense, the intelligence community, and federal civilian customers to improve IT’s contribution to mission assurance and to enable rapid enterprise-wide response to cyber threats.
RedSeal software creates a logical network topology directly from routing device configuration files. These are typically manually generated, making them labor-intensive, error prone, and difficult to keep updated. By automatically generating IT topologies in real time, accuracy and effectiveness are improved. Organizations can be proactive in defending their networks. The software can also model the logical relationship between access to vulnerable devices and the paths to and from critical IT infrastructure, applications, and data in order to prioritize remediation.
Esri is geoenabling RedSeal’s network schema by mapping the physical devices and modeling the physical data flows that implement the logical relationship. Since geography is a unifying framework, the ability to align data flow with specific organizational activities clarifies the impact of physical and cyber events on mission-essential operations.
"Federal customers have requested a COP [common operational picture] for years, but until now, it has been unclear exactly how to integrate cyber security," said Kimberly Baker, RedSeal’s vice president for the public sector. "Esri’s cyber supply line concept, combined with its state-of-the-art geospatial information platform, offers a way for the COP to be more than a collection of disparate data."
"RedSeal is the perfect teammate for this project," said Jeff Peters, Esri’s director of federal programs. "Not only does the company provide a network and security solution that improves the accuracy and timeliness of constructing network topologies, but it also provides deep technical expertise in all aspects of IT network modeling and defense."
Please visit Esri (booth #553) at the AFCEA International Cyber Symposium, June 24–25, 2014, in Baltimore, Maryland, for a demonstration of version 1.0 of this cybersecurity solution.