Thanksgiving is almost upon us. It’s time to stop and smell the pumpkin spice, take a moment to step back and give thanks to the bounty of Black Friday, and enjoy connecting with our family and friends.
Being in the business of connections through our converged network security solution, we decided to take a minute to highlight and give thanks to advanced network security technologies. These unsung heroes help hard working IT and security teams ensure every connection is continuously verified and safe – without slowing down traffic.
Keeping today’s organizational network secure is no small feat.
The hybrid work model prevalent in most companies means that their workforce is often comprised of employees and contractors spread across the globe, connecting from a variety of locations, devices, and wifi connections.
In addition, adoption of cloud technologies and services continues to grow, along with reliance on cloud-based third-party SaaS (Software as a Service) applications. The result is a rapidly evolving tech stack that extends far beyond a physical location – and demands a new set of network security strategies and tools.
These dramatic changes in the corporate environment present quite a challenge to IT and security professionals when it comes to securing network connections, and the organization’s data and resources.
The good news is that today’s innovative technologies enable teams to address network security challenges, and provide them with the tools they need to protect users, network, and organizational resources. As we head into the Thanksgiving long weekend, it’s the perfect time to share our rundown of three advanced network security technologies we’re thankful for.
The concept of Zero Trust has been around for years, but the recent rise in malware attacks against organizations has put the Zero Trust model back in the spotlight. Recent increases in regulatory requirements to implement Zero Trust practices also put this issue high on the priority list for IT and security teams.
ZTNA technologies provide IT and security managers network security capabilities based on Zero Trust principles of “never trust, always verify.” This provides them with full visibility and control over who accesses the network at all times – whether it’s remote workers, or third party contractors.
As organizations increasingly rely on cloud environments and cloud-based services, their attack surface grows. Advanced ZTNA solutions help teams minimize the risk, prevent malicious players from achieving lateral movement, and protect sensitive data and assets by segmenting the network.
ZTNA enables administrators to manage user access to corporate resources. It continuously verifies that the connection is secure by implementing access policies and rules based on factors like operating system and version, use of anti-virus, disk encryption, device location, and more.
Securing the hybrid workforce’s internet access is another critical mission for IT and security teams. Web-based threats like malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks continue to rise, and this is where SWG comes in.
Advanced SWG technologies protect an organization’s data and users, and ensure web security by providing malware protection and web filtering.
Malware detection capabilities are critical for blocking threats at the gate, since an attack on a single user’s device can spread like a wildfire through the corporate network, threatening the entire organization.
SWG allows IT and security managers to create user-centric policies and rules that allow, alert, or block access to web categories or URLs. They can then monitor data coming in and out of the network to prevent intrusions, and block threats to the network. Administrators can easily block suspicious websites, in addition to applications that might slow down productivity, or violate company policies.
Firewalls are certainly not new to the network security game. However, as networks expand across the cloud and SaaS applications, legacy firewalls that only protect an organization’s on-premises resources are no longer enough.
Happily, the new and improved generation of firewalls has also made the shift to the cloud, with FWaaS – a cloud-hosted firewall technology that enables IT managers to easily enforce granular network traffic control across all users and resources in the organization. Controls can be based on user groups, addresses, devices, servers, network addresses, ports, and geolocation.
Advanced FWaaS technologies provide teams with easy, centralized visibility and control over the data stored across their multi- or hybrid-cloud network.
Each of the network security technologies that we’ve celebrated in this Thanksgiving post can take companies a long way in their Zero Trust journey. Perimeter 81’s robust cloud-based solution can take them even further, by providing all three technologies – ZTNA, SWG, and FWaaS. Perimeter 81 is designed for maximum ease-of use with a single pane of glass console that helps teams achieve network security as effortlessly as possible. Book a demo today to see how Perimeter 81 can help you achieve better network security that serves users and protects resources.
