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The last thing an equipment maker needs while testing new product releases, new protocols or performing published vulnerability assessments is an expensive babysitter to observe the testing in case it fails. That defeats the purpose.
So when it came time to enhance the security analysis of its product portfolio, Juniper Networks turned to Mu Dynamics. Juniper already knows security. In fact, it wrote the book on it in a way. Members of the Juniper Networks Security Team, along with experts from EADS Innovation Works and Stanford Law School, wrote “Security Power Tools,” a reference guide that defines multiple network security approaches and explains how to use network security applications, utilities and tools.
But Mu Dynamics knows testing. So Juniper deployed the company’s Mu-4000 Security Analyzer to use in its test automation platform for its J-Security and Security Assurance initiatives. And now it has extended that use to its Ethernet Products Group and its Integrated Products group which includes its gear for deep packet inspection.
Juniper’s goal was to enhance the security analysis lifecycle of its design and development work and improve its effectiveness in proactively identifying and isolating both network-level and application-level attacks and updating its ability to defend against such attacks.
Avishai Avivi, senior director, DPI Technologies at Juniper Networks, said that to ensure a high level of ongoing security with both new products and updates to existing platforms, Juniper has added the Mu-4000 Security Analyzer to its pre-release testing efforts. It is using the analyzer as an automated regression test bed for products across various groups within the company, including the Service Layer Technologies Group that handles firewalls, intrusion detection, WAN accelerators and more; the Integrated Products Group that supports the routers; and the Ethernet Products Group.
“Using the Mu box, we can run millions of tests and run them quickly, accurately and repeatedly,” Avivi said. “Tests have to be repeatable and there’s nothing that can run a test like a machine. A machine doesn’t get tired or care that it is 2 a.m. and your test just crashed. It just restarts the test automatically. There is some real cost savings there.”
Part of that cost savings comes with a reduction in labor. “It used to be you had to have someone constantly monitoring the test in case it failed. And then you didn’t know exactly where and had to analyze it and manually restart the test,” Avivi said. “But Mu knows where the test failed and can restart the test. It’s like having a quality assurance person working 24 by 7.”
The bigger part of the cost savings is harder to measure, but even more important. It comes from the proactive identification of potential vulnerabilities and eliminating them prior to rolling out a new release.
