By Matt McKinley, US Director of Product Management, Stonesoft
The MSPAlliance welcomes a guest post from Stonesoft, Inc. (www.stonesoft.com), a global provider of network security solutions to MSSPs, enterprises and government organizations.
Are your customers asking about IPv6? I’m going to assume many of them are – or, at the very least, they will be soon. IPv4 addresses have officially run out and IPv6 traffic is on the rise. However, despite more than three years of discussion and hype, many networks still aren’t ready to secure IPv6-laden networks.
This is contrary to a majority of vendors’ claims. A typical discussion with your vendor on this topic may go like this:
MSSP: “How adept is your firewall at inspecting IPv6 traffic?”
Vendor: “We do it. We’re fully capable of inspecting IPv6 traffic. Don’t worry about it.”
MSSP: “Great – just wanted to check.”
Notice how that conversation is void of detail. Not exactly a confidence builder, right?
That’s because most of today’s vendors only offer “checkbox” IPv6 inspection. While they are capable of inspecting IPv6 traffic, they’re incapable of inspection of realistic traffic volumes at the same performance levels you’re used to seeing with IPv4 traffic. Only a handful of network devices out there today can provide the same inspection, logging and correlation capabilities for IPv6 as they do for IPv4. This has given rise to many IPv6 certification programs through independent testing groups like ICSA Labs and others.
Here are a few questions you should ask your network security vendors to determine if they’re helping you – and your clients – achieve IPv6-readiness:
- Are you able to inspect high levels of IPv6 traffic – similar to IPv4 levels?
- Are your event correlation and logging capabilities as strong for IPv6 as they are for IPv4?
- Have you had your solution(s) independently tested for IPv6-readiness? If not, why? How are you validating the strength of your IPv6 capabilities?