FEATURE: SDN
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Check Point Software Technologies is the largest network cybersecurity vendor globally, providing industry-leading solutions and protecting customers from cyberattacks with an unmatched catch rate of malware and other types of threats.
“ The migration of corporate assets and applications to the cloud has led to fifthgeneration multi-vector cyberattacks threatening all businesses and Check Point provides cloud-delivered security services to prevent these types of attack,” said Jason Min, Head of Business and Corporate Development, Check Point Software Technologies.“ By integrating our cloud security platform with Aruba’ s SD-Branch solution, Check Point is providing businesses with Gen V advanced threat prevention solutions, preventing all types of attacks on the cloud, endpoints, remote offices and mobile devices.”
Speaking of cyberattacks on a network, enterprises and organisations face the global challenge of protecting their networks against cybercrime. Oliver Cantor, Assistant Director of Product Strategy at Verizon, believes that CIOs should be looking towards a software-defined perimeter solution.
The biggest security challenge facing organisations today is stopping the major cyberattacks, DDoS, financial theft, ransomware and connection hijacking, to name just a few, from infiltrating their businesses. Historically, enterprises deployed a traditional‘ physical’ perimeter security solution to protect against external threats to their critical applications. However, advances in digital technology, such as mobile devices and applications, have significantly stretched these traditional boundaries, moving them to breaking point. In order to provide more capacity and flexibility to utilise digital advances, most organisations have now entered into the virtual environment, placing business critical systems in the public cloud for easier access, way beyond their well-defined physical boundaries.
Often businesses are unaware that traditional Internet protocols have inadequate security to protect these virtual environments, as they were not designed to do so. Many have between 20 – 100 individual security solutions in place
COMPANIES NEED TO TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS AND
PROTECT THE ASSETS THEY REGARD AS MOST VALUABLE TO THEIR
BUSINESS SUCCESS. already and the prospect of new security solutions to combat cybercrime is often too overwhelming to even be considered. Organisations are simply burying their heads in the sand until the inevitable cyberattack occurs, but by then it is often too late to protect the most valuable assets in a company.
The answer is to bake security into the network layer in the very beginning to help protect against potential breaches of business-critical data. The latest network evolution of software defined networks( SDN), a move away from legacy multiprotocol label switching( MPLS) networks, has provided the opportunity to ensure that security can do just that. Companies such as Verizon are embedding security into the very foundations of new software defined networks, ensuring that it is never just an‘ add-on’ or overlooked. Put simply, networks and security should work strategically hand in hand.
The ever-changing network perimeter
Now tools like software-defined perimeter( SDP) leverage a‘ non-discoverability’ approach to enable secure access to devices and applications across a public cloud. This means that an organisation, such as a government department, financial institution etc. can automatically hide application resources and devices from would-be attackers. The solution enables them to see the attacks in real time and provides them with the opportunity to secure critical resources and stop the attacks in their tracks.
Whereas a traditional enterprise network creates an internal network separated from the outside world by a fixed perimeter consisting of a series of firewall functions that block external users from coming in, but allow internal users to get out, SDP is a scalable Software-as-a-Service( SaaS) solution, which provides pre-authenticated, context-aware, secure access to enterprise applications within a perimeter that is constantly changing.
In simple language, the network and apps are like an exclusive private club where everyone wants to go. This network perimeter security solution serves as the bouncer, controlling who can get in and what they can do once they’ re inside.
It checks user IDs and devices at the network‘ door’, then‘ escorts’ them inside for another level of approval / verification before they can join the‘ party’ to use apps and resources.
Hackers can’ t attack what they can’ t see
Cybercriminal activity is increasing and instead of making propriety and business critical information visible on the web via IP addresses that can be Googled and then infiltrated, companies need to take matters into their own hands and protect the assets they regard as most valuable to their business success.
In today’ s digital age, they can no longer rely on the security solutions that protected the rigid perimeters of the past.
It’ s time for a change, a rethink of how security safeguards information in the digital world – making it invisible to the prying criminal eye, but accessible to the trusted few who rely on accessing it. SDP is the answer. •
50 INTELLIGENTCIO www. intelligentcio. com