Brocade and McAfee have entered into a strategic partnership to deliver a set of interoperable network security offerings to address the network security needs of enterprise customers.
Under the partnership, both companies will work to integrate security capabilities into the Brocade family of networking products, which enables customers to deploy secure network environments that are protected against various security threats, including malicious activities, data breaches, network intrusions and policy violations.
According to Brocade, the combined network security offerings will include McAfee firewall enterprise and intrusion prevention technologies operating with the Brocade NetIron MLX series of routers; and firewall scalability with Brocade ServerIron application delivery controllers.
In addition, the combined offering will provide controlling and monitoring access to the network with McAfee network access control (NAC) interoperating with Brocade FastIron CX and FastIron WS compact edge switches; and enables the network infrastructure to take automated actions in response to security events generated from McAfee NAC, intrusion prevention and firewall with Brocade IronView network manager through open-standard network management protocols.
The offerings are delivered under a new agreement that enables the first phase of a multi-year relationship between the two companies. The next stage will involve extending the network management integration to further utilise metrics and security intelligence information.
The integration of Brocade’s IP networking products with McAfee products spanning the entire security spectrum from firewall to intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS) to network access control (NAC), customers will be able to deploy and maintain security offerings throughout their entire network, the companies claim.
Dan Ryan, executive vice president and general manager of the network security business unit at McAfee, said: “Working with Brocade to bring a comprehensive set of network security solutions to market makes perfect sense – the coupling of the strengths of both companies is expected to deliver a set of solutions that customers can depend on to protect their most valuable data assets.”
