Keeping your enterprise secure as you move to the cloud
Ron Budden
Product Manager SD WAN/SASE
For most organizations around the world, some level of cloud computing is inevitable. A recent PwC survey found that 78% of business leaders have implemented cloud applications at some level in every function of their organizations. However, as businesses migrate more and more of their operations and data to the cloud, ensuring a secure network becomes more challenging and more important.
Enterprise technology leaders need to find a way to leverage the cloud’s flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency, without jeopardizing their network’s security. Understanding what the challenges are when it comes to cloud and network security is key, as is identifying which connectivity solutions would secure your people, locations, data and applications.
Why is a secure network important when you use cloud applications?
Every organization needs to consider their security protocol and strategy when transforming their business with cloud applications. This is because complex cloud environments create a lack of visibility and control making it harder to monitor and address potential threats.
This complicated landscape can leave you vulnerable in the following areas:
- Data protection: As you move your data from on-premise to the cloud, you need to protect your data in transit and at rest. Cloud apps have become instrumental to keeping employees easily connected, fostering business collaborations, and conveniently sharing data. The data in the cloud is harder to track and protect, more vulnerable to theft, and prone to both intentional and unintentional exposure.
- Regulatory compliance: Related to the above, many industries need to meet specific regulations around protecting customer data on a local and regional basis. Some industries, like financial services, certain industries are highly regulated with the need to provide audit trails.
- Business continuity: Security measures ensure that data remains available and accessible, preventing any downtime. You need to find a solution that’s resilient and flexible, protecting you against the latest security attack.
- Trust and reputation: Organizations are facing new and unexpected data protection challenges as their sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information (PII) and intellectual property (IP), is moving outside of the traditional corporate premises, and is more exposed in the cloud and across the mobile workforce to newer threat vectors.
Business continuity shouldn’t be understated here. Business never sleeps anymore, so your global business needs to be protected from security breaches at all times, in all locations, across your entire perimeter. Not an easy ask.
How can you secure your network in the cloud computing era?
Network security in the cloud computing era involves finding a way to protect a highly distributed environment. To mitigate this issue, enterprise technology leaders need to implement cloud security practices, maintain vigilant oversight, and combine them with a robust connectivity strategy built with the right solutions. That means a secure cloud environment, a secure network, and ultimately a secure enterprise.
The best way to do this is to start with a Zero Trust Network Access approach.
This is a framework that assumes that threats can exist both inside and outside of the network. It enforces strict identity verification and continuously validates the trustworthiness of devices, users, and applications attempting to access resources both in the cloud and without.
With that approach as your foundation, you can build in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) features that will secure the wider access points across your network and cloud applications.
How do SASE solutions contribute to a secure network and cloud?
SASE is a cloud-based solution that converges network security services with WAN capabilities to support the dynamic, secure access needs of modern enterprises.
It has the following security features:
- Data loss prevention: Protects sensitive information by monitoring and controlling data transfers to prevent unauthorized access and leaks.
- Secure Web Gateway (SWG): Blocks malicious web traffic and enforces company policies to secure internet access for users.
- Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): Acts as a gatekeeper, providing visibility and control over data and threats across cloud services.
- Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS): Delivers firewall protection via the cloud, offering scalable and centralized security management for cloud environments.
- Unified policy management: Instead of having point-based solutions, you can have it all in one place from monitoring solutions, like expereoOne.
SASE ensures that security policies are uniformly applied, regardless of where users or applications are located, providing a seamless and secure user experience.
The importance of expertise when designing a SASE architecture
A good place to start with your SASE implementation is to deploy Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) first. SD-WAN secures your data at the edge as it moves between different locations and cloud services.
Secondly, consider talking to experts about how to adopt SD-WAN in a way that limits any disruption to your organization. Using an external partner like an Managed Service Provider (MSP) can help you overcome the following implementation challenges:
Access to security and network skills
SD-WAN adoption can be complex, and human error can slip in when navigating the complicated process of ensuring all cloud applications are properly integrated with your streamlined network. A lack of expertise in the current talent market makes this even more challenging.
If you access SD-WAN or SASE solutions through a Managed Service Provider, like Expereo, you gain access to the on-demand skills you need to ensure a smooth integration and ongoing management and monitoring.
You need the right blend of networking and security skills to create a tailored approach that suits your organization. With the foundation of your security protocol established with SASE, Expereo can help you design a security posture that’s right for you and is responsive to the latest security threats.
H3: A lack of visibility and control
Expereo’s intelligent visibility solution, expereoOne, means you get real-time data and insights about the performance of your network and your SD-WAN and SASE solutions down to site level, ensuring you have full visibility and control over your network security.
Ready to pair your cloud migration with a secure network strategy?
SD-WAN and SASE are pivotal in designing a secure network that meets the demands of a world growing more and more reliant on the cloud.
By partnering with Expereo, you can navigate the complexities of network security with confidence, leveraging the right technologies and approaches to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Get in touch today to discuss your cloud plans.