Intelligent CIO North America Issue 24 | Page 35

EDITOR ’ S QUESTION

In a recent article from Gartner , it stated : ‘ Hybrid work and digital business processes in the cloud have introduced new risks . At the same time , sophisticated ransomware , attacks on the digital supply chain and deeply embedded vulnerabilities have exposed technology gaps and skills shortages . . .’

SDP is not only the most secure solution , it also enables higher performance and cost avoidance .
Gartner went on to state that of its Seven Top Trends in Cybersecurity in 2022 attack surface expansion was number one .
I was not surprised to read this finding , as it echoes what we are hearing from our channel partners and end-customers . The traditional network perimeter is a thing of the past . Employees are no longer housed behind four walls . Today , employees and strategic partners require remote access from globally distributed external locations .
And , your apps and data now run anywhere from a central office location , across multi-sites and multiclouds , all the way out to the Edge .
Unfortunately , traditional approaches such as VPNs have proven themselves unreliable for this new reality . All one needs to do is Google ‘ VPN data breach ’ to see this statement validated in the latest headlines .
VPNs are complicated to set-up and manage and need expensive dedicated appliance / routers . Maintaining ACLs and firewall rules have proven near impossible . And VPNs can introduce performance issues .
However , when it comes to data protection and security , VPNs inherently create larger lateral attack surfaces , exponentially increasing data breach vulnerability . defined perimeter ( SDP ) solution which permits users to access only authorized apps , not a slice of the network , thereby eliminating the possibility of any lateral movement .
SDP can enable data to flow directly between users , sites and clouds using application level DTLS encrypted ZTNA tunnels and Public Key Authentication . And SDP can utilize randomly generated non-standard UDP ports to make the tunnels and servers untrackable and invisible to port scanners and other hacking tools .
SDP is not only the most secure solution , it also enables higher performance and cost avoidance . With no intermediate brokers , tunnels are direct which means superior performance .
And , whereas traditional networking tools for multi-site connectivity are typically complex and expensive to maintain – especially for clouds – since SDP is an unVPN solution , it doesn ’ t require dedicated VPN appliances .
And , for cloud connectivity , users do not have to pay cloud vendors an hourly VPN fee to allow users to connect . And then , costly direct links and VPNs can be phased out for even more savings . p
What is required instead is an unVPN security solution . In other words , a security solution that can ensure Zero Trust Network Access ( ZTNA ). This can be accomplished today through the use of a software
DON BOXLEY , CEO AND CO-FOUNDER , DH2I
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