HrOUG: Cisco Introduces Device That Prevents Credit Card Number Theft

Cisco, the world’s largest manufacturer of networking equipment, on Thursday presented the Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall, a revolutionary device for monitoring network traffic, to participants of the 13th conference of the Croatian Oracle Users Group in Rovinj.

Goran Peteh from the Croatian branch of Cisco presented predictions about security and security issues in the future of the internet during the third day of the HrOUG conference in Rovinj. As the main threat, Peteh pointed to widely available applications that online criminals can use, which can be installed and used even on smartphones, such as &iPhone;

– There is a need for a new generation of devices, devices that are capable of recognizing applications, so there is no need for application certification and no need for penetration testing – stated Peteh while presenting the Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall, a hardware device that monitors and enforces a set of rules applicable to traffic between servers and users. Using these rules, which Cisco already largely supplies with the device, the device can conclude that something is happening that is not normal behavior.

Peteh provided an example where the Web Application Firewall is tasked with recognizing if someone is trying to extract a credit card number from the user’s computer, so instead of sending the credit card number, the device sends only x’s. Earlier in the day, Ken Surplice, HP’s Product Manager for Business Critical Systems (što znači za jako važne računalne sustave), in his presentation noted that there is already a trend of the decline of mid-sized servers as the best-selling large servers, in HP’s case the Integrity series (Itanium), are closely followed by small servers.

Additionally, Surplice announced that HP will stop producing mid-sized servers in a few years, except perhaps for one model. The reason for this stratification is that in recent years, the costs of managing and administering servers have risen the most, making either large servers or small servers, which are centrally managed as one or a small group, profitable. The official part of the conference concludes its work on Friday, and on Saturday participants continue to socialize informally over Istrian wines in the cellars of Momjan. (I. Škevin)