Securing the network is one of the largest concerns for the enterprise today. With a host of malware crawling undetected through networks and highly publicized attacks, security is now a topic of conversation in the C-Suite, as well as the boardroom.

Denise Shiffman, senior vice president of product management at Juniper Networks Inc., is in the trenches helping customers stop attacks in their networks with simplicity and automation.

Shiffman appeared on theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, with co-hosts John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), at Juniper NXTWORK being held this week in Santa Clara, CA. She spoke about the work Juniper is doing with customers and partners to prevent attacks at the switch port using software-defined secure networks.

This week, theCUBE spotlights Denise Shiffman in our Women in Tech feature.

Securing the entire network

Furrier opened the interview talking about Juniper’s announcements about new products to secure the network. Shiffman discussed the landscape of threats and network security.

“People think, ‘Is the attack in my network?’ Well yes, it is in your network. There is so much going on, the volume of attacks and the variability of attacks, and I think the message to customers and what they are feeling is the security has to change,” Shiffman said. “It has to evolve. It has to become pervasive. It can’t just be about the firewall. It’s about the firewall and so much more.”

Shiffman continued: “One of the big things we announced today is really about extending security from the firewall into the network infrastructure, into the switching infrastructure and stopping threats at the switch port, because we know that threats are in the network and you’ve got to stop them from laterally moving through the network before they [hackers] find what they are looking for and actual tread in.”

Undetected guests

When Furrier asked Shiffman if customers should assume they are in the network, her answer was yes. She also outlined the Software-Defined Network Systems approach to security.

“Yeah, you have to assume with the number of endpoints and the number of devices that we all carry around today, with all the different OSs [operating systems] and patch level of OSS [operational support system], and all the different types of malware that is out there, and how much it can change and morph very quickly, it’s very hard to stop attacks from getting in the network,” Shiffman said. “And what most of our customers are trying to do is [take] pieces of security and putting it all around the network to try and solve the problem. They are spending more money, but they are not feeling more secure.”

Shiffman continued: “So we introduced earlier this year the software-defined secure network’s approach to solving this problem. And it’s a very big problem, and that covers everything from global policy orchestration to open threat intelligence to actually automating and adapting enforcement across the firewalls and the infrastructure.”

Customer demand: Simplicity and automation

Furrier followed up by inquiring if the software-defined security network is an umbrella solution or a series of products. He also wanted to know if the advantages of SDSN is speed or efficiency. Shiffman said that it is both and went on to describe another huge advantage.

“It has to start with policy and orchestrating policy. The thing about policy is that it can get, over time, very complicated. You are adding many, many firewall rules. It can become quite manual with some of our competitors. We automate this, but we make it very easy for a customer to set the policy at a business level, at the intent they have to deploy on the network. Then our security director Policy Enforcer, which is a policy engine that translates for the customer that policy into rules … the things that have to happen on the network and that level of simplicity and automation is required,” she explained.

“Well, it’s an accuracy advantage. You take the human error out; you take the human lag time out. They get what they want done on the network without having to use a lot of people, a lot of technical detail to make it happen. … Simplicity and automation is going to be really important going forward. That’s the policy side of it,” she said.

The partner side

Shiffman went on to explain how partners factor into Juniper Networks’ security initiatives.

“And then there is open threat intelligence and open threat detection, and we offer the Sky Advanced Threat Prevention cloud service for advanced anti-malware. And we combine that with third parties,” Shiffman stated. “Any open system that wants to work in our threat intelligence network … because you don’t want to make a judgement about the best way to find a threat, you want to take it all in and unify that process, simplify it for the customer, once again, show them what their threat intake in the network is, what the threat level in the network and make decisions about what risk level they want to manage to.”

Human behavior and security

Miniman talked about the retraining a workforce as one of the biggest challenges for many companies. He wanted to know how customers retrain the workforce and how Juniper Networks is involved. Shiffman said that a primary reason it automated much of the system is to get our of needing to retrain.

“One of the things we’ve seen and [happened in] the most famous attacks in the last year is that the threats were in the network for several weeks before they got identified and several weeks more before they were blocked,” she stated. “And that’s actually human behavior. It’s just the time it takes to identify it, write the rule, take an action, deploy. You don’t want humans in the middle of that. Our systems are smart enough to make that happen on their own. SDSN is about where security is going in the future. What customers are going to need to solve this problem in a unified and simple way.”

What is Shiffman’s advice to customers about security?

“I like to say it’s a zero trust model. Start at zero and figure out who you need to transact with. You determine one at a time what threat level can [be handled] in my business,” she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Juniper NXTWORK 2016 event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE