Juniper launches J-Protect initiative

Rahul Neel Mani / New Delhi

Juniper recently announced its J-Protect initiative, a comprehensive network security solution. This initiative will support all its platforms in E, M and T series routers. It is among the first integrated solutions targeting service providers—enabling them to protect users, networks and investments in security. "With this initiative, Juniper is expanding its security offerings to include a wide range of traditional and existing capabilities as well as some new ones. This initiative falls under the ‘Juniper Your Net’ umbrella," said Java Girdhar, the country manager for Juniper Networks in India.

Juniper said that all its customers—public or private network operators—can benefit from the integration and scale of J-Protect. The company claims that it is the only market-ready integrated solution that allows network service providers to do more for enterprises, SMEs and consumers by securing their networks. The service provider can now offer complete end-to-end outsourcing of security offerings to an enterprise customer. "It will enable service providers to offer managed network security services to MPLS VPN and non-VPN enterprise customers," said Girdhar. With this offering, service providers will be able to shift intelligence from the enterprise network to the edge of their own networks, allowing the enterprise complete freedom to concentrate on core competencies. Thus, enterprise customers can look forward to greater productivity, an enriched user experience, protection of access bandwidth, and offloading of IT cost/complexity without bothering about network security issues.

"MINT (model for network integrated transformation) is our framework for helping our customers transform their business of networking. This model is built on a customer-driven networking model for increasing profitability of existing networking services and delivering a wide array of new services. It also provides the framework for key initiatives such as J-Protect. Using J-Protect, service providers can offer additional security services to their end customers. The integration and scalability of J-Protect will enable service providers to maintain their operational costs while offering enhanced security services at the same time," said Girdhar.

The J-Protect toolkit will carry a wide range of hardware and software capabilities across the product portfolio, as well as professional services. It embodies all traditional security capabilities, which enable service providers to protect their devices and implement network control. Additionally, it supports the following security
initiatives:

• High-performance network address translation (NAT) and stateful firewalling.
• MPLS VPN-based per VRF (virtual routing and forwarding table) NAT and stateful firewall.
• High-performance flow monitoring.
• Filtering and rate limiting.
• Security services across IPSec and IPSec/MPLS VPN.
• Port mirroring.
• New J-Protect professional services which facilitate and enhance security best practices.

Fundamental toolkit components such as filtering and rate limiting will be available for free on every interface across the portfolio. Specialised toolkit features such as NAT and stateful firewall will be available on platforms based on application requirements. It will benefit service providers across categories, be it mobile, cable, Internet or fixed line operators.

"Since J-Protect is a solution integrated with our existing infrastructure portfolio, the solution will be marketed along with our existing products. Worldwide, we follow a ‘direct touch model’ of marketing, whereby we directly interface with our customers while the fulfillment is done together with our eco-system partners," said Girdhar.