Thanks to Covid-19, work is no longer a place. The seismic shifts to the global economy–and the workforce–have made work decentralized, cloud-based, and edge-less. Companies are no longer defined by their fancy offices or their headquarters but by their people. And they work wherever, whenever, and however, they please.
Just over six months ago, some of the leading Silicon Valley companies started planning their return to work, but employees would have none of it. So they rebelled, and their companies listened. The bottom line is that hybrid and remote work are here to stay, not just in Silicon Valley, but also at Ford and Ernst & Young. In fact, the vast majority of companies are adopting some sort of hybrid workstyle.
Perimeter 81’s survey of more than 500 IT professionals shows that 86% of responding companies will have “hybrid” workers even after Covid—and more than half of them will work remotely 3-4 days a week. We like to call these hybrid workers “nomads with a purpose.” They work from home, in the office, or anywhere in between. Because of the convenience, quality of life has improved, and they’re more productive and happier.
But they’re not connecting to the hardware VPNs of yesteryear. Those end-of-life devices are much too slow. And they’re not good for more than 80% of companies that have resources on the cloud. It simply doesn’t make sense to connect to your company HQ and then back out to the cloud.
So today, we have millions of workers, all connected to one big network—the Internet—fluidly shifting between private and public resources, on-prem and in-the-cloud, all at once.
What could possibly go wrong?
Actually, pretty much everything could go wrong—and it’s no surprise. Each year there are hundreds of new apps and devices to secure. You’ve got data, voice, video across countless on-prem and cloud networks and platforms, from the trusted and familiar to new and unknown. Then multiply that by more people and more devices.
With this enormous growth of the “corporate network,” how can we expect CISOs to give employees the freedom they want without becoming tomorrow’s ransomware or data breach headline? How can they build secure networks without placing expensive hardware in empty corporate offices?
Well, unfortunately, they can’t. In 2021, there have been tens of thousands of network breaches by cybercriminals, and many more have been targeted. We’ve read about many of the high-profile breaches, including the Colonial Pipeline, Volkswagen, Kaseya, T-Mobile, LinkedIn, and more. In addition, our own market research shows that a remarkable 65% of companies experienced a serious cybersecurity incident in 2020-21, including 33% from ransomware.
Many vendors out there are trying to solve this ever-shifting problem with more solutions, more layers, more fences, more firewalls, and more brokers. SASE offers great promise, but no one yet provides a complete SASE solution, and it takes months, at minimum, to select, purchase and deploy it.
So the painful reality is that the average CISO is forced to manage dozens of cybersecurity solutions, each with its own quirks, usability, and upkeep issues. Today’s average enterprise has dozens of cybersecurity tools, making it difficult to detect active attacks or defend against data breaches.
We call this problem the “Cyber Complexity Trap.”
The problem of cyber complexity didn’t just start today. Both Amit and I saw it in our first IT jobs after finishing our degrees at Tel Aviv University. We saw that the complexity of VPNs and other cyber solutions hindered productivity and made them less effective in providing essential cybersecurity.
Sure, change is inevitable, but complexity is a choice. We knew that cybersecurity needed to be radically simplified. And, we’ve spent years developing and perfecting the idea—and the solution. First at SaferVPN and now at Perimeter 81. And we’re finally ready to announce it.
Today, we are introducing Perimeter 81 as the world’s first Cybersecurity Experience (CSX) Platform.
Our Cybersecurity Experience Platform is a holistic, cloud-based solution that allows the enterprise to ditch legacy hardware and fully embrace the agility of the modern era. Whether you need secure networking for five users or 50,000, we’ve designed the CSX platform to be simple, instant, and powerful.
From the online purchasing process to fast network provisioning, Perimeter 81 supports the immediate desires of the nomads with a purpose—while still granting IT teams the robust tools they need to manage it all safely. Tools like Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), and many more.
All it takes is a single click, and employees across your business can securely access only the resources you want them to, whether they’re on-prem, in the cloud, or anywhere in between. And if you have any questions along the way, our hands-on, 24/7 support team is always available to guide you.
Using the SASE framework as a guide, our global team at Perimeter 81 continues to add new features and functionality every day. Whether they are home-grown or from industry-leading technology partners, they will all be radically simple. For example, in the coming months, we’re going to release a Secure Web Gateway (SWG) that will prevent company employees from accessing malicious applications and websites. And soon after, we’ll release a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) that will secure and protect your company’s SaaS resources.
In a world where accelerating complexity is the single greatest threat to effective cybersecurity, we’re on a mission to radically simplify the cybersecurity user experience—for everyone who uses a network or manages one. We want to give both IT professionals and employees the freedom to fully embrace the agility of the modern era without sacrificing network safety during periods of rapid change and uncertainty.
