Cloud Computing – MEC Networks Corporation

Implementing zero trust: Time to think beyond identity

MEC Networks Corporation — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 02:49:26 +0000

Infrastructure-centric security deployed today divides the enterprise users into two domains, trusted users on the inside and untrusted individuals on the outside. Security leaders are focused on deploying controls to keep the untrusted individuals out. However, digital transformation and multi-cloud adoption by enterprises are forcing organizations to re-think the traditional network perimeter. As users, partners, and customers access the organization’s data from anywhere in the world, the artificial wall that protects the data is no longer enough, and inherent trust can’t be part of the security stack going forward.

Zero trust and multi-factor authentication

The paradigm shift in trust has led to the ‘Zero Trust’ security framework, first developed by Forrester Research analyst Jon Kindervag in 2009. The initial framework treated all the network traffic as untrusted and recommended that organizations inspect all the traffic and divide the network into small segments. Since 2009, the framework has evolved into advocating the need for protecting the organization’s data and evaluating access to the data throughout the user and device interaction. In simple words, the core principle of Zero Trust is to “never trust, always verify.”

In the Zero Trust framework, users and their identities play a pivotal role, and organizations must ensure that only authenticated and authorized users and devices can access applications and data. The easiest way to validate the identity of a user is through multi-factor authentication.

A case for thinking beyond identity

Multi-factor authentication strengthens access security by requiring two or more factors to establish the identity. These factors can include something you know – like a username and password, something you have – like a smartphone app to approve authentication requests or something you are – like a fingerprint.

The multi-factor authentication solutions have evolved to include the user and device context. Contextual information like the user’s device, the network used for access, or the geographic location can be used to force users to provide additional factors to re-verify their identity.

However, just using the contextual background is still not enough! We have come across incident after incident where insiders with the right access have walked away with sensitive data. A Tesla engineer uploaded auto-pilot source code which cost over $100M and took over five years to develop direct to his iCloud, to aid a rival company. Members of McAfee’s sales team downloaded sales and business strategy data before joining a rival firm.

Understanding the context can help, but it is critical to understand the intent.

Forcepoint’s approach to understanding human behavior

Forcepoint’s behavioral intelligence not only looks at IT environmental data such as logs, events, HR databases, or physical access control systems, but also uses the understanding of human behavior including intent, predisposition, and stressors and the device context to identify risky users. With privacy in mind, the user data is anonymized, and the identities that deviate from normal behavioral patterns result in elevated risk.

Forcepoint Technology Alliance ecosystem

Forcepoint user protection solutions can both directly ingest relevant context from identity and access management (IAM) solutions and (optionally) enrich them with risk user information to dynamically enforce policies.

The first two IAM/IDaas ecosystem partners to integrate with Forcepoint’s Behavioral Analytics are Okta and Ping. These integrations are now available for use. The combined solution delivers enriched visibility into user activities, enhances risk scoring, and enables a risk adaptive authentication policy for joint customers. In the longer term, we’ll also enable customers to drive risk-adaptive authorization to key enterprise resources such as critical data. Stay tuned for exciting developments in this area.

Forcepoint plans to continue to add technology alliance partners to its ecosystem. Learn more about Forcepoint behavioral intelligence, user protection, and data protection solutions by scheduling a demo.

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5 Top Tips to Remote Working

MEC Networks Corporation — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 04:47:37 +0000

Work smart, wherever you are.

Remote working isn’t a new concept and businesses are slowly adapting and realizing that employees should have the flexibility to work from wherever they need to. It’s a positive move, for the business and your employees alike, so that it can always be business as usual — regardless of where everyone is located!

1.) Make sure the right tools are in place.

Combining a cloud-based solution, the right meeting tool, and an all-in-one workspace to enable team collaboration is key. Mitel has the perfect solutions to help you achieve this!

2.) Encourage and embrace a remote working culture.

One thing underpins all the tech, that’s the mindset and the behavior of you and your employees. It’s vital to encourage a flexible working culture to maintain productivity and enjoyment, from anywhere.

3.) Ensure your employees have everything they need to be able to work from home.

A successful remote working setup should emulate the normal office environment as much as possible, delivering the right mix of tools, solutions and processes with unfettered access, and a good connection to the team, customers and suppliers.

4.) Provide the right training so employees feel comfortable working outside of ‘the office’.

Unless employees are used to remote working it can be a bit daunting at first. Given the right advice, training, and support, there’ll be no stopping them!

5.) Stay in touch – communicate regularly with everyone.

Communication should be no different whether employees are based at the office or at home. Mitel’s MiTeam Meetings can ensure faultless transitions between voice, video and chat functionality so everyone can still feel part of the team.

No matter where your employees are, or what devices they’re using, it’s crucial to keep everybody connected and productive.

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Cato Networks: The 4 Key Considerations for Extending Your Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to Home and Remote Workers

Ron Esmeralda — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 03:40:13 +0000

It’s a challenge not to consider a spreading health crisis when you’re crushed into a crowded train or bus, clutching a germ-infested pole and dodging a nearby cough. Because the current crisis develops, enterprise business continuity planning and risk management will result in many enterprise users working full time from home. Already we’ve seen the amount of active remote or mobile users of the Cato Cloud rise 75 percent since early January, growing from about 10,000 users to 17,500 users.

In fact, as this Bloomberg article highlights, we’re probably about to start the biggest global work-at-home experiment in history. What does that mean for your business continuity planning and remote work strategy? Consider four categories: connectivity, performance, security, and management. Here’s a summary of each.

Connectivity and Architecture

IT has been supporting remote and mobile users for years, but a sudden spike in staff working from home full time could be a whole new ballgame. Most won’t be connecting occasionally to check email or do some quick catchup at the airport, between meetings, or after hours at the hotel. They’ll be on the network every workday for hours accessing enterprise applications, files, and data. Your current remote access infrastructure was likely never sized to deal with such a large, constant load, which implies you’ll probably need to add or upgrade remote concentrators. In the best of times, this will take days or weeks, but hundreds or thousands of companies will need similar upgrades.

Aside from the company data center, most enterprise users are accessing infrastructure and applications in cloud data centers, which adds connectivity complexity, as we discuss in this eBook, Mobile Access Optimization and Security for the Cloud Era, and below. For security reasons, most organizations prefer to route cloud traffic through datacenter security infrastructure first, then out to cloud datacenters many miles away, which adds latency to the home user’s cloud user experience.

Datacenter network congestion is also a problem, one that Adroll, a company offering a marketing platform for personalized advertising campaigns, had to grapple with. Not only did backhauling remote user cloud traffic add latency to Adroll’s cloud user experience, but it also saturated the San Francisco Internet connection and created availability problems, because the San Francisco firewall had no geo-redundancy. “It puts plenty of stuff in one basket,” says Adroll’s Global Director of IT, Adrian Dunne. “Once the VPN on our primary firewall rebooted. Suddenly 100 engineers couldn’t work anymore.”

Performance and User Experience

Mobile and home VPN users often complain about remote access performance even when infrastructure is sized appropriately, because of the unpredictability, latency and packet loss inherent within the public Internet core. When accessing the cloud, the mobile experience can get so sluggish that users often abandon the company backhauling solution to access the cloud directly, opening significant security gaps. Many newer users also find themselves struggling with unfamiliar VPN client software, passwords, and connections to multiple cloud services.

To make working at home successful, it will need to find ways to simplify and speed up the user experience so it’s more like working at the office. this could mean considering alternatives to backhauling and running traditional VPNs, which we discuss below.

Security

As more and more users work from home, security risks are guaranteed to increase. More remote users mean more opportunities for threat actors to penetrate security defenses. Unfortunately, traditional VPNs authenticate remote users to the whole enterprise network, allowing them to PING or “see” all network resources. Hackers are known to take advantage of this chance, as they did with the infamous Home Depot and Target breaches of a couple of years ago, which took advantage of stolen VPN credentials. Once inside the network, a hacker is simply one administrator password away from access to sensitive applications and data. That’s a big reason why IT security has been moving away from network-centric security towards software-defined Zero Trust Network Access, which grants users access only to what they need when they need it.

Enforcing security policies for many more remote users also can add latency and cut down performance. The choice is to let mobile users connect directly to the cloud and deploy new cloud-based security solutions, like secure Web gateways or secure access security brokers (CASB), that intercept connections before they reach the cloud. Users will still be contending with public Internet performance, however.

Management

Deploying client VPN software on thousands of latest home users’ systems can take considerable resources and time that organizations might not have during a crisis.

AdRoll found VPN onboarding of the latest users a very cumbersome process, especially for contractors. “Using Mac’s management software to push out VPN configurations to users was a pain,” says Dunne. Dunne also had to send instructions for configuring the VPN client to every user. Once these users are onboard, IT also needs appropriate tools for managing and monitoring all those remote users, much as it does for its branch offices and other sites. Shifting to cloud-based Web gateways and CASB’s has its own overhead as well.

Cato’s SASE Solution Provides Access Needed for Remote Workers

There is a solution that will solve many of these connectivity, security, performance, and management issues: a cloud-native network like the Cato Cloud. Built on the principles of Gartner’s secure access service edge (SASE), Cato connects mobile and remote workers to the same network, secured by the same security policy set, as those within the office.

Rather than connecting to the company data center, then out to cloud applications, home users connect with their nearby cloud-native network point of presence (PoP). From there they become a part of a virtual enterprise WAN that the data center and branch offices access through their local PoPs as well. Cato locates its PoP infrastructure in a number of the same data centers as major cloud providers, including AWS and Microsoft Azure, allowing fast direct connections to cloud services.

Connectivity isn’t a problem. Cato’s cloud architecture is meant for massive scalability to support any number of latest users regardless of session duration or frequency. They will work at home or within the office all day, every day and the Cato architecture will accommodate the load transparently. “Cato’s mobile VPN is my secret BCP in my back pocket,” says Stuart Gall then the infrastructure architect within the network and systems group at Paysafe. “If my global network goes down, I can be like Batman and whip this thing out.” Performance improves by eliminating backhaul and inspecting traffic within the PoP instead of the datacenter. Home and mobile users bypass the unpredictable Internet middle mile and instead use the Cato backbone with its optimized routing and built-in WAN optimization to dramatically reduce latency and improve data throughput.

The user experience improves in other ways. Users connect to all their applications and resources, whether spread across multiple clouds or within private datacenters, with a single login. Getting users connected is simple. “The cherry on top was Cato’s VPN solution,” says Don Williams, corporate IT director at Innovex Downhole Solutions. It had been the best technology I’ve seen. In less than 10 minutes we were connected through a VPN on the device. Most of the security and network management is handled by the cloud provider, instead of enterprise IT. Cato’s Security as a Service provides a completely managed suite of agile, enterprise-grade network security capabilities, built directly into the Cato Global Private Backbone, including a next-generation firewall/VPN, a Secure Web Gateway, Advanced Threat Prevention, Cloud, and Mobile Access Protection, and Managed Threat Detection and Response (MDR).

Cato simplifies security management in other ways. “With firewall appliances, you install certificates from your firewall, and only then do you realize that when your user goes to a different site, you again need to install another SSL certificate at that appliance,” says the IT manager at a leading EduTech provider, “With Cato, we were ready to install a single certificate globally so we will do SSL decryption and re-encryption.”

Adding new home users to a cloud-native network could be a quick process that doesn’t require expensive, time-consuming appliance upgrades. “With Cato, we just sent a user an invite to install the client,” says Dunne. “It’s pretty much like a consumer application, which makes it easy for users to install.” Adroll’s San Francisco chokepoint was eliminated, and Cato gave Dunne more granular control over permissions for mobile users.

The current crisis will likely require plenty of quick action from IT to urge users to connect and work from home fast and securely. A cloud-native, SASE network can make the work faster and easier while giving all those home-based workers a satisfying user experience.

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Seamlesss And Secure Access For Your Remote Workers

MEC Digital — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 02:38:41 +0000

MiVoice Connect Edge Gateway

With MiVoice Connect, your company owns, maintains, and controls your business communications network. Its modular design distributes system intelligence across your entire network, ensuring superior reliability, ease of management and seamless connectivity —no matter how many locations and remote workers you have across the world.

Benefits

Consistent user experience for your office-based and remote employees
Removes the complexity of securing remote endpoints, including the elimination of a VPN requirement
Improved voice quality via RAST protocol

Solving Remote Worker Challenges

When it comes to remote employees, security is a top concern. Home or remote working environments can be more of a threat, and therefore, require VPNs, firewalls, and anti-virus programs to protect a company’s sensitive data. With the Edge Gateway, you can eliminate VPNs and third-party programs. It provides seamless and secure connectivity to your remote employees so they can benefit from the same, secure MiVoice Connect experience as your office workers.

Seamless User Experience

The Edge Gateway is fully integrated with endpoints and features of MiVoice Connect. Your remote employees will have full access to all unified communications capabilities – conferencing, collaboration, instant messaging, Outlook integration, call management, and softphone are all available, with the same experience no matter where you’re located.

RAST for Improved Voice Quality

By establishing a RAST tunnel to the Edge Gateway, IP400 series phones can provide the exact same functionality as if they were inside the corporate network. This protocol uses an encrypted tunnel that employs UDP to transport media packets to improve voice quality in less-than-ideal Internet conditions. This protocol falls back to TCP for media transport if UDP fails. TCP is used for signaling traffic.

Secure Endpoints

All traffic to and from the Edge Gateway is encrypted and combined with secure access to MiVoice Connect endpoints to provide you with peace of mind. The MiVoice Connect client links to both the reverse proxy and TURN servers in the Edge Gateway to offer a seamless remote experience. Reverse proxies, the intermediate proxy servers, provide internal server resources to requesting clients outside the corporate network. Outside clients interact with the proxy server as if it were the requested server and thus have no contact with the actual server providing the resources. Plus, none of the Edge Gateway-supported endpoints require the installation of a VPN client to work effectively and securely across your company’s private network.

WebRTC Support

WebRTC supports browser-based apps for media communications and file sharing. The Edge Gateway implements WebRTC, with the MiVoice Connect web collaboration app utilizing WebRTC for real-time communications with a compatible web browser.

Deployment & Licensing

The Edge Gateway is deployed in your DMZ, behind the external firewall and has two interfaces – one internal and one external. The internal one has one IP address whereas the external one has three IP addresses, one for each: RAST, Reverse Proxy, and TURN server. These three addresses must have same network mask and gateway. If you are a MiVoice Connect customer that has already deployed a Mitel Collaboration Service Appliance in your DMZ, you do not need to move the service appliance. Just add an Edge Gateway next to it in parallel. If you are new to MiVoice Connect, the Edge Gateway should go in the DMZ and the service appliance should go behind it in the corporate network.

To manage your Edge Gateway, you can easily do so through the MiVoice Connect Director. For advanced troubleshooting, the Connect Director can pass through to the Edge Gateway admin portal. The Edge Gateway itself is a free add-on to your company’s MiVoice Connect solution. You can run reverse proxies and use Connect apps remotely without purchasing any licenses. Licenses are required when you want to use softphones or desk phones remotely. However, licenses are included with MiVoice Connect Premier and Elite bundles. You can also buy remote media licenses a la carte. These are useful when you want to support guest users of the MiVoice Connect web collaboration app.

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Aruba: Work From Home And Stay Productive

MEC Digital — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 02:05:41 +0000

Staying safe, yet being productive in an uncertain business environment is now the top priority for every company today. More businesses are providing remote access to internal resources for their employees so they can work from anywhere, usually through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection.

Aruba Network solution assures your business of secure, reliable remote accessibility, with a low cost and high-quality user experience.

Corporate Wi-Fi At Home

Aruba Remote Access Points (RAPs) address the problem of remote connectivity for workforces that are mobile, remote and requiring access to internal resources to get work done. IT can now securely extend the corporate enterprise network or internal network connection to any mobile devices, laptops or even in-home networks.

Aruba Low-Cost VPN

Virtual Intranet Access (VIA) is a hybrid IPsec/SSL VPN client that automatically scans and selects the best, secure connection to terminate corporate-bound traffic. Unlike traditional VPNs which require dedicated hardware, Aruba integrates VPN services directly on existing Aruba secure infrastructure to simplify architecture and management.

Learn more about how to keep your workforce productive from wherever they choose to work.

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Where is the Philippine ICT Heading in 2020?

MEC Digital — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 03:22:14 +0000

Where is the Philippine ICT Heading in 2020?

Philippines is becoming one of the emerging tech regions in Asia as strong public investments are expected to support the country’s economic growth. More than ever, the Philippine Government recognizes the need for strengthening efforts to widen the reach of ICT in the Philippines. In line with this, P5.2 billion is allocated for the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) for 2020 to support its efforts in rolling out interconnectivity and data security programs.

Of the overall budget, P1.1 billion will be used to install free WiFi in public places. Some P280 million will be used to fund free Wi-Fi facilities in state universities and colleges while P196 million will be for the National Broadband Plan.

Furthermore, it is also envisioned that around P295 million is needed on creating the National Government Data Center (NGDC) which will serve as the physical infrastructure that will interconnect government agencies through centralized data centers, servers, and storage facilities.

The Market Potential of ICT in the Philippines

According to the 2015 Frost & Sullivan report, there is going to be a shift in total spending in the ASEAN IOT Market. Singapore, the undisputed leader with 44.25% of total IoT spending, will drop by close to the 50%

Singapore 2015

44.25%

Singapore 2020

50%

while the Philippines share will increase by 12%. This only means one thing, the Philippine IoT spending is forecasted to grow from US $55.1M in 2014 to a staggering US $766.8M in 2020. We are about to see the emergence of Philippine’s ICT Market.

Philippines 2015

12.56%

Philippines 2020

24.65%

Considering that the Philippines is a country with a young population that is in the process of building its ICT market, it is poised at creating a government, as well as companies, that are actively looking for partners in the ICT space.

Key Areas in ICT Development:

Back in 2014, Manufacturing and Logistics has the biggest share of spending in ICT. However, the sectors of banking, healthcare and smart city hold a lot of promise for future investments of ICT.

Banking

In a study done by the World Bank, it is said that 69% of Filipinos did not have bank accounts in 2014. This factor, combined with the rise of online shopping, presents a gigantic opportunity for e-wallet operators in the ICT space, as they could easily claim roughly two-thirds of the Philippine population as potential customers.

Healthcare

Meanwhile, in the latest Philippine Statistics Authority report, health-related expenditures pose an 8.3% increase in total spending in 2018 compared to the previous year contributing 4.6% to the country’s GDP. In effect, the Philippine government has been also actively looking at ICT services for healthcare solutions in an effort to provide a sufficient level of health care, especially to rural areas and spread-out island communities.

Smart Cities and Infrastructure

Smart Cities are an important component in growing digital economies, as it incorporates sustainable growth and deep technological integration into the country as well as giving substantial economic boost. The Philippines have planned for multiple smart city projects that will be launched over the next decade such as the New Manila Bay City of Pearl and New Clark City being the core developments. The New Clark City alone is predicted to contribute an additional USD$31 billion to the country’s GDP.

Factors Driving ICT Spending Increases in 2020

Upgrading Infrastructure

We are all aware that the world of technology is fuelled by continuous advancements. Upgrading ICT infrastructures, which remains to be the main driver of ICT spending increase, is an imperative for businesses because keeping legacy ICT infrastructures can expose your business to risks like system downtimes, decreased productivity, security issues, and increased cost.

Growing Security Concerns

The threat of cyberattacks remains as one of the biggest challenges that the Philippines is facing nowadays. The growing number of aggressive and malicious hackers targeting businesses is not to be shrugged off. A study by Frost & Sullivan states that a large-sized organization in the Philippines can possibly incur an economic loss of $7.5 million, more than 200 times higher than the average economic loss for a midsized organization ($35,000). Organizations should invest in a robust unified threat management system that protects their most valuable assets, data and information.

Employee Growth

The abundance of human and talent resources in the Philippines presents an under-tapped national asset that is ripe for mobilization. Building a thriving ICT ecosystem requires a mechanism to complement this opportunity with a conducive policy and business environment that can optimize productivity and increase competitiveness. For instance, ICT innovations, such as higher broadband speeds first introduced through the BPO sector’s rigorous global requirements, are slowly becoming mainstream requirement in other industries like banking, education, the government, and even at home.

Ready to Get Started?

Ready to
Get Started?

In the end, we at MEC look forward to how the private and government sectors will strengthen the partnership and move past industry boundaries to build on the momentum of digital growth that will promote balanced regulation, empowered innovative endeavors, and boosted competitiveness for inclusive growth of all Filipinos.

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Mitel: Questions To Ask Your Vendor About Secured Communications

MEC Digital — Wed, 30 Oct 2019 06:54:44 +0000

5 Questions Ask To Your Vendor About Secure Communications

Are your communications secure?

Secure communications can defend your business from the harm and destruction of a data breach. And it’s not only for healthcare providers – even daily workplace emails and phone calls can contain information that matters to your customers.

A business that fails to secure its communications is in peril of losing client confidence, that means customers, and future customers, won’t be likely to trust that business.

To ensure secure communications, search for a communications system that can defend the data shared inside your business and beyond. Here are a couple of questions you can raise your vendor to make sure you’re getting the most effective security:

1. What Infrastructure Is Your System Hosted On?

A strong cloud communications provider will be leveraging a best-in-class infrastructure to make sure the very best level of security. This saves you time and resources that can be focused on performance and innovation instead of management and maintenance. Search for a secure communications software system, such as MiCloud Connect, built on Google Cloud, to integrate with the programs you already use.

2. Can Your Communications Software Handle Mobile Securely?

Working on the go is a growing norm, which means mobility is even more vital for a communications system. However, a mobile system doesn’t always mean it’s secure. Make sure you can take your system on the go to keep working while away from the workplace, without sacrificing your in-office functionality and security.

3. Is Your Communications Software Certified HIPAA-Compliant?

Certified HIPAA and SOC 2 compliant software guarantees that your data is encrypted in transit and at rest, with anti-virus protection and security protocols that adhere to the most rigorous data compliance standards. In creating MiCloud Connect, we worked with third-party auditors to meet restrictive compliance needs and passed strict safeguards and confidentiality tests to make sure the privacy and safety of your data.

4. How Do You Monitor Your System?

Your cloud communications provider ought to have a Network Operations Center, a location that regularly monitors a telecommunications network, all day, every day. Do they support it in-house or out-source? What tools and analytics are they leveraging to stay ahead? Top providers are predictive and proactive, not reactive.

5. How Do I get Informed Of Any Issues?

No system is perfect, problems will appear, but if they do occur with your communications system, you need to know about it quickly. Transparency is everything. Is your provider proactive in their communications? how do they alert you once issues arise? Is there a public site where you can stay up to date regarding any problems and their solutions?

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A Peek Inside Aruba’s Smart Digital Workplace Ecosystem

MEC Digital — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 06:38:26 +0000

The Workplace of the Future is Here Today

Aruba is collectively tackling the distinctive intersection of physical design and workplace technology to continually evolve our ‘future of work’ vision.

The latest santa clara headquarters design combines Aruba’s networking and location technologies to deal with key use cases. This provides advantages for workers and facilities groups. The workplace includes partner innovations like connected furniture, wireless charging, phone pods, and soundscaping.

Watch this new 4-minute video of their headquarters tour:

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Forcepoint Recognized As A Visionary For 3rd Year In A Row, In The Gartner 2019 Magic Quadrant For Network Firewalls

MEC Digital — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 06:21:46 +0000

For the 3rd year in a row, Forcepoint is once again recognized as a Visionary in the Gartner 2019 Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls

Third time’s a charm, the old saying goes. And, for the third year in a row, Gartner has named Forcepoint a Visionary in their 2019 Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls for the ability to execute and its completeness of vision. With Forcepoint NGFW, we particularly want to assist distributed organizations to better connect and defend their remote offices, stores and branches so that they can take advantage of the cloud to drive bigger productivity and lower costs.

To set the stage for its analysis this year, Gartner begins its report* by highlighting a key industry trend: “With firewall providers embedding multiple security features in firewalls and enabling integration and automation capabilities with other security products, firewalls are evolving into network security platforms.”

We strongly agree. And while each vendor talks about having a platform, we see 3 components as being of crucial importance:

1.) Enterprise connectivity – Digital transformation is driving distributed organizations to make additional use of cloud apps and direct web connections for sites and users. as one of the primary vendors to assemble Multi-Link VPN, Secure SD-WAN capabilities, and advanced clustering in our network firewalls, we see ensuring that users and information may be connected and guarded robustly as two sides of a similar coin.

2.) Extensible Security – As organizations disrupt the way they connect their remote sites and users, old ways of securing those connections should change. Customers are progressively telling us they’re searching for tight integration among their network (NGFW), web (SWG), and cloud app (CASB) security systems—no matter where their users are operating.

3.) Management at Scale – Some of the less-frequently mentioned areas of excellent security platforms can be summarized by the quantity of effort it takes to urge sites and users connected and protected. Through experience managing thousands of websites from a single pane of glass, we’ve found that capabilities like zero-touch provisioning and interactive analysis for quicker incident response are crucial to efficiency in global as well as local operations.

It’s an honor to be referred to as a Visionary. We created Forcepoint to bring a brand new approach to the cybersecurity industry—to help customers to break free from the endless cycle of throwing billions of dollars at threat once threat without very feeling any safer. but even more necessary than vision is the ability to turn good concepts into effective solutions. That’s why our human-centric approach to security and our new cloud-based platform is designed specifically to enable enterprises and government agencies to better understand user behavior and intent so they can more efficiently and securely bring people and information along.

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Aruba Named As the Sole Leader in the Forrester New Wave

MEC Digital — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 05:44:51 +0000

“Aruba Leads the Pack” is how Forrester puts it in their recent report, The Forrester New Wave: Wireless Solutions, Q3 2019 – The Eight Solutions That Matter Most and How They Stack Up. The objective of the report is to assist infrastructure and operations professionals to choose the proper partner for their requirements for both Wi-Fi and the burgeoning need to connect a large range of IoT devices and protocols as a part of their digital transformation.

Aruba is the only vendor within the “Leaders” class, delivering, in our opinion, a commanding performance that features a differentiated rating, the highest possible in 6 out of the 10 evaluation criteria provided by Forrester:

Wireless connectivity
Wireless hardware
Spectrum/device visibility
Security
Solution positioning
Road map

Forrester’s view that the new wave of wireless solutions embodies wayfinding, location services, and IoT connectivity aligns closely with the capabilities in Aruba’s wireless portfolio. As Aruba’s CTO, Partha Narasimham says, “the network has become the central nervous system” for IT – enabling services that offer location data and real-time directions, visibility into assets and other people to boost operations and connecting Internet-of-things (IoT) devices to the business to support digital transformation.

Wi-Fi As An IoT Platform is More Than Connectivity

The world of IoT comprises various device types but conjointly a wide variety of protocols. Wi-Fi 6, Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 enable “things” from door locks to electronic shelf labels to insulin monitors to act with the network in order to deliver exceptional user experiences and value to the business.

Traditionally, it’s needed to stand up overlay networks to accommodate these protocols, but now, as highlighted within the Forrester report, wireless connectivity solutions should expand beyond Wi-Fi. For this reason, Aruba has integrated support for IoT protocols in our latest Wi-Fi 6 access points and can be allowing new IoT growth radios to assist existing customers to maximize investment protection – for additional data, look into our IoT session at mobility Field Day 4. But you don’t become the leader of the pack by stopping at easy connectivity. Aruba starts at the start of the IoT value chain to deliver a holistic solution—from setup to application integration to a business result. Beyond the networking infrastructure, the main focus of our IoT solution is to simply enable third-party integrations with our ArubaEdge partners, which include:

Siemens – for converged, plant-wide networks that bridge OT and IT.
EnOcean – for connected lighting, sensors, and different systems
SES-Imagotag – for electronic shelf labels
Solu-M – for electronic shelf labels
Zebra Technologies – for tablets, imagers, scanners, and printers
ZF Openmatics – for industrial-grade asset tracking solutions
And additional partners listed on our IoT ecosystem

The Aruba wireless LAN is front-and-center, providing Dynamic Segmentation to deliver intelligent deep packet review that isolates mission-critical applications, separates them from the remainder of the network and forwards their traffic to the suitable destination. This level of insight is essential to make sure that the network is optimized for the convergence of IoT systems while minimizing the impact on mobile users.

Based on Forrester’s evaluation, Aruba is the best fit for corporations needing advanced wireless services – and this is why we believe they named Aruba as the Leader in this business-critical spectrum.

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