Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a webinar on Juniper’s Mykonos product. This was my first exposure to anything related to Mykonos. At first glance it would be easy to mistakenly classify Mykonos as a Web Application Firewall (WAF) but it is not exactly a WAF.
The acquisition of the Mykonos Software by Juniper was announced in February of this year. In reading the announcement Mykonos software was comprised of 14 employees with offices in San Francisco, New York City, and Rochester, New York.
The primary definition of Mykonos is “Web Intrusion Deception System”. It does the same things as a WAF does, but adds enhancements to those functions AND it introduces deception techniques.
The idea behind the deception approach is not only to protect the web application but also impact the economics behind the attacker. As it was discussed in the webinar, there are economics behind cracking into computer systems and believe it or not, there is an investment cost associated with conducting this activity. The return on investment is the black market value for successful exploits.
Given the deception factor that Mykonos brings to the security tool bag, it raises the question, is a good offense a good defense? I think so in my view. It’s another layered security method.
Gartner is sited as the source for, “70% of threats are at the Web application layer.” While I have not directly read anything from Gartner on the matter they are citied as the source here.
Mykonos highlights the following features,
- Meets PCI Compliance 6.6
- Detection Technology is code-level tar traps and signatures
- Tracking Technique is client-level (not solely IP based)
- Deceptive Responses
Mykonos claims no false positives, which should be an eyebrow raiser. By default I’m sure this claim will stir conversation.
The jump page for Juniper’s Mykonos is here,
http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/security/software/
After you land there and click on the link “Mykonos” you will be taken to here,
http://www.mykonossoftware.com/
