FEATURE: SECURING MULTI-CLOUD
networking and storage infrastructure
on behalf of user workloads. This
lets the organisation deploy cloudnative
applications anywhere and
control them with confidence. Any
advanced load balancing technology
that supports containers not only has
to be able to automatically scale to
accommodate changes in application
traffic, but also must automatically
update itself when changes are made
to the infrastructure. Operations teams
will not have to configure policies or
otherwise actively manage the load
after the advanced load balancing
solution is configured. This allows
operations teams to function more
efficiently and organisations will get
more value from them.
How is A10 helping
customers to overcome
these kinds of challenges?
With the rise in globally dispersed enterprises
and new work-from-home requirements
that are increasing traffic, application service
infrastructures are no longer residing in data
centres alone. Modern apps are increasingly
housed in public, private and hybrid clouds,
forcing application delivery controllers to evolve
to provide better user experience, application
availability and security. This is where A10
Networks’ application delivery solution is
helping customers ensure their business
applications are secure, consistent and highly
available in any multi-cloud environment.
How crucial is application
visibility for enabling a
secure infrastructure?
Application visibility is vital to infrastructure,
particularly in multi-cloud environments, to
ensure that organisations can gain valuable
insights into application performance, health
and security. These insights allow enterprises
to continuously optimise app performance
and balance traffic across the network. This
enables businesses to ensure high availability
and the best user experience.
What benefits will be
realised by organisations that
implement an application
delivery strategy for multicloud
experience?
Multi-cloud application deployments are
playing a foundational role in everything
from internal business needs to Digital
Transformation initiatives – but it is also
essential for IT operators to ensure effective
visibility, governance, security and control
across both public clouds and private clouds.
The three key benefits that an application
delivery strategy will need to provide include
the following:
• Enhanced Application Availability:
Ensure efficient and reliable application
delivery across multiple data centres and
clouds, minimising latency and downtime
and enhancing end-user experience.
• Comprehensive Application Security:
Increase application security with
advanced SSL/TLS offload, single signon
(SSO), DDoS protection and web
application firewall (WAF) capabilities.
• Complete Application Visibility:
Integrate a centralised management
and analytics solution to gain deep perapplication
visibility and comprehensive
controls for secure application delivery
across on-premises data centres, public,
private and hybrid clouds.
How can CIOs/CISOs best
transition to this approach?
The three key best practice approaches for
implementing multi-cloud involve internal
application discovery, performing security
assessments and compliance planning.
Internal application discovery: The
challenges with hybrid and multi-cloud
networks include issues such as latency
as well as the volume of data transmitted
through the network. This can have a
harmful effect on the infrastructure if you
do not have a thorough understanding of
the mapping and data volume between
application dependencies. This is where
organisations need to perform internal
audits on the types of applications and
their requirements.
Performing security and governance
gap assessment is vital to looking at the
organisation’s security and regulatory
objectives. Documenting the gaps in the
business’ controls against accepted best
practices enables organisations to identify
issues for ongoing maintenance and tweaks.
With legacy change controls proving
to be slow and inadequate, continuous
compliance means constantly looking
at the environment and controlling the
consumption and usage of cloud services.
With the right software controls, businesses
can form consistent and repeatable
outcomes with fewer errors. •
Chris Martin, Channel Leader for EMEA &
SAARC, A10 Networks
www.intelligentcio.com
INTELLIGENTCIO
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