In this article, Vince Hwang, senior director of dynamic cloud security at Fortinet, discusses how securing all cloud use cases across cloud networks, applications, and platforms are the security architecture of the future that many organizations need right now. Networking and security solutions need to converge to form a native, unified front of protection across all endpoints.
In this unprecedented period of change and digital innovation, many organizations have reevaluated their existing infrastructures, particularly their on-premises network environments. Having fewer people in the office requires building or expanding off-prem networks to extend workflows to remote home offices and secure access to the resources and data workers need to get their jobs done.Â
Virtualized networks provide much more flexibility and freedom than traditional ones, enabling them to adapt and scale to the fast-changing needs of this newly hyper connected workforce. But not every application or resource can move to the cloud. And as a result, modern enterprise networks are diverse, often comprising multiple environments, each with unprecedented standards and conditions.Â
Also read: Maximizing Cloud Security With a Shared Responsibility Model
Unified Protection: From the Application to the Network to the Platform
IT teams are tasked with securing multiple network edges, often in hybrid, multi-cloud environments. Securing each network ecosystem independently makes providing consistent policy enforcement, visibility and unified orchestration and response difficult. Maintaining consistent, connected, and unified security operations using traditional security solutions can make this task impossible.Â
An adaptive cloud security solution is designed to span complex, multi-cloud environments to protect data, devices, applications and platforms wherever they reside. Since cloud environments are highly dynamic by design, the protection of applications needs to be fluid.Â
An adaptive cloud security strategy should secure applications and related transactions on whichever cloud or clouds they may be deployed on, even when they scale or are relocated. It should also provide IT teams with the flexibility to adapt their cloud-enabled digital innovation strategy as needed without sacrificing security or operational efficiency or taking on undue complexity.Â
However, even an adaptive cloud security strategy should not exist in isolation. Instead, any cloud security strategy must also be deployed as part of a broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity platform designed to span the entire network, edge-to-edge.Â
Keeping All Connections Secure
Attempting to secure each edge while also keeping a consistent, unified security policy in place can be challenging. Actions and transactions can span many applications and workflows and even move between cloud and traditional network environments. This requires consistent security applied at every touchpoint across the platform—on the LAN, WAN and all cloud edges, both public and private. And all connections need to be secure and reliable, from remote workers to the branch office to the data center to the cloud. With multi-layer application security natively built in, adaptive cloud security can deliver consistent policies across the distributed network, combined with centralized management and visibility—including security automation across hybrid clouds—without sacrificing performance.
Secure SD-WAN for Performance
Companies are now increasingly replacing traditional network configurations (that re-route traffic back through the data center) with application-aware secure SD-WAN solutions to optimize network performance.Â
Secure SD-WAN solutions are designed to automatically select the optimal WAN access methodology, combined with broad network visibility and application awareness, enabling switching from MPLS to a more affordable public internet connection.Â
Secure SD-WAN also weaves security and network function into a unified solution, making it a critical addition to any adaptive cloud security strategy.Â
Also read: Cloud Security: 4 Predictions on What Lies Ahead for Organizations in 2021
Focus on IntegrationÂ
Traditionally, security followed the computing process, centered initially on mainframes and then moved to servers in enterprise data centers. Today, because computer services are highly distributed across traditional networks, private and shared infrastructures in homes and branch offices, and service provider clouds, cloud security solutions need to be integrated, providing flexible solutions and consumption models.Â
In such a broad, complex environment, protection is not just about the cloud—it needs to be end-to-end, following applications, workflows, transactions and data wherever they go, whether on or off the enterprise network. An adaptive cloud security solution is designed to deliver the broad, integrated and automated capabilities required for such hybrid networks, providing the flexibility to consume and deploy cloud security anywhere applications live and using any consumption model (such as Bring Your Own License and Pay-as-You-Go).
Also read: Is Confidential Computing the New Gold Standard for Cloud Security?
Adaptive Cloud Security For Any Environment
Securing all cloud use cases across cloud networks, applications, and platforms is the security architecture of the future that many organizations need right now. Networking and security solutions need to converge to form a native, unified front of protection across all endpoints.Â
Adaptive cloud security solutions make this possible now, protecting workloads and business applications in on-premises data centers and any cloud environment—with built-in multi-layer security for cloud-based applications.
This gives businesses a consolidated picture of their security posture via a single interface for policy administration and event monitoring, regardless of whether their infrastructure is physical, virtual, cloud-based, and even across private, public, and hybrid cloud environments.
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