Networking

Applications. At the end of the day, it’s the factory that IT runs on, right? In the past, those factories lived in the same location: your data center! Then along came cloud. Those factories took flight and now exist in every corner of our digital world. Honestly, the power and ease of access to these applications is jaw dropping. Need a word processing application? Download it from the Internet. What if I want to dive deep into the performance data from my last hard bike ride? Easy to do—the data has been uploaded to the Internet and I can parse out my power numbers like a Tour de France rider. Or maybe I am a startup and want to have a world class HR solution. Again, it’s just a click away.

By adopting a security-first, AI-powered network, education institutions can keep the permanent records out of the wrong hands with HPE Aruba Networking Central.  Central is a cloud-based network solution that can allow network administrators to manage any size network from the cloud. In addition to streamlining operations, it can utilize AI-based discovery and profiling of all clients and bring Zero Trust and SASE architecture to the network.

On a recent trip, I had a conversation with a peer.  His wife had purchased him the perfect birthday present—an hour-long flight over one of the largest cities in the United States.  It included a pilot who would do most of the work, but at some point, my friend would get to take the controls.  As he told me the story, I could see the glimmer in his eyes and knew he was hooked.

While he now has his pilot’s license, he shared how becoming a pilot changed how he thinks about implementing new technologies: “You can’t just jump right in, and you need to run your pre-flight checklist.”   When piloting an SASE or SSE project, the same rules apply.  You must follow a pre-flight routine and checklist to ensure a safe and successful journey.  What do you need to do before embarking on your project?  Let’s explore this topic together!

The way in which we work has changed dramatically over the last few years. Our users are more geographically dispersed than ever before with users now connecting from any device, anywhere, to applications based in the cloud, as well as on premises. This dramatic shift in working practices combined with continued migration to cloud environments has left the legacy VPNs we are familiar with struggling to keep up.

The recently concluded 2024 VPN Risk Report, conducted in collaboration with Cybersecurity Insiders, provides a dark portrayal of the current security and networking landscape. Despite the continued dominance of legacy VPNs, it's clear they fall short in many crucial aspects such as security, user experience, and scalability. Let's look at some of the details.

It’s the question keeping network and security leaders up at night: When was the last time you evaluated your firewall security strategy?

That probably wasn’t the question you were expecting—but maybe it should be.

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) from HPE Aruba Networking. It addresses the challenges of our borderless era. It’s like a secure series of bridges connecting our archipelagos of data! Learn how

Remote work is here to stay. According to a recent survey, 94% of organizations are either fully remote or have implemented a hybrid work model. But while remote work offers many benefits, such as flexibility, productivity, and cost savings, it also poses significant challenges for IT security.

Traditional security solutions, such as VPNs, firewalls, and network perimeters, are not designed for the modern, cloud-based, and distributed work environment. They expose the entire network to potential threats, create performance bottlenecks, and require complex and costly maintenance.

That’s why more and more organizations are adopting a new approach to secure remote access: Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA).

ZTNA is a security service that verifies users and grants access to specific applications based on identity and context policies. ZTNA removes implicit trust to restrict network movement and reduce attack surfaces.

ZTNA works by creating a logical boundary around each application, rather than the entire network. Users and devices are authenticated and authorized before they can access any application, regardless of where they are located or what device they are using. ZTNA also hides the applications from public discovery, making them invisible to attackers.

ZTNA offers several advantages over traditional security solutions, such as:

• Enhanced security: ZTNA minimizes the risk of data breaches, malware infections, and lateral movement by limiting access to the least-privileged level and segmenting the network. ZTNA also continuously monitors and verifies user and device behavior and adapts access policies accordingly.
• Improved user experience: ZTNA delivers fast, reliable, and seamless access to cloud and network applications, without compromising security. ZTNA eliminates the need for VPNs, which can be slow, unreliable, and cumbersome to use. ZTNA also supports BYOD and multi-device scenarios, enabling users to work from anywhere, anytime, and on any device.
• Simplified management: ZTNA simplifies the administration and maintenance of remote access by providing a unified and centralized platform. ZTNA reduces the complexity and cost of managing multiple security solutions, such as VPNs, firewalls, and network perimeters. ZTNA also enables IT teams to easily scale up or down the remote workforce, without affecting security or performance.

ZTNA is the future of remote access security. 59% of organizations plans to adopt ZTNA in the next two years as they aim to embrace the benefits of remote work, while protecting their data, applications, and users from cyber threats.

Learn more about ZTNA

If you are interested in learning more about ZTNA and how it can help your organization, check out HPE Aruba Networking SSE which offers an advanced ZTNA solution. HPE Aruba Networking SSE offers a cloud-native, agentless, and Zero Trust platform that delivers secure and simple access to any application, anywhere, and on any device. HPE Aruba Networking SSE also integrates with existing identity providers, security tools, and cloud services, making it easy to deploy and manage.

Learn more about HPE Aruba Networking SSE and ZTNA or take a free 24-hour test drive.

Download the 2024 VPN Risk Report from HPE Aruba Networking.

 

As enterprises and service providers (SPs) increasingly migrate to cloud services and embrace digital transformation for optimization in a geographically distributed environment, SD-WAN will remain a key solution in the networking industry. Lack of a security-first connectivity approach across multiple geographic locations can impact the prospects of enterprises and service providers adversely.

Also, customers are seeing an increased adoption of IoT, 5G, AI/ML, hyperscale computing technologies. In addition, since the pandemic, we have seen an uptick in teleworkers, hybrid working, and tele-medicine requiring enhanced video conferencing and VoIP services. As the networking landscape continues to evolve, organizations will need significant improvements to the existing network infrastructure. We cannot solve newer problems with legacy WAN solutions. We will need to modernize our network infrastructure with better design, intelligence, and security.


Figure 1. The HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect solution accelerates applications and maximizes available bandwidth to achieve high-performance and simplified operations.

Introducing the newest EdgeConnect SD-WAN gateway

The best connectivity starts with the best SD-WAN gateway. Powered by industry-leading HPE Aruba Networking, the new compact and cost-effective form factor EdgeConnect 10106, provides secure SD-WAN capabilities ideally suited for small branch and remote office environments. Managed by EdgeConnect Orchestrator, this platform provides unprecedented visibility into the network, assigns policies based on network intent, and brings in a suite of key features for simplified network operations, better orchestration, agility, end-to-end security, and reduced costs for branch deployments.


Figure 2. HPE Aruba Networking 10106 gateway for small branch and remote office connectivity

The EC-10106 can easily handle up to 1Gbps sustained, bi-directional traffic - 1Gbps upload at the same time as 1Gbps download (2Gbps total throughput) thereby providing flexibility and uninterrupted traffic flow.

Key features:

• PoE: built-in PoE port enables reduced cabling, scalable and manageable power delivery to a broad range of connected devices and ensures interoperability by transporting power & data through a single cable, resulting in reduced OPEX.
• AppExpress: For many enterprises, a handful of high-profile, high-impact applications drive the business. AppExpress allows you to optimize the user experience for high-impact applications. With AppExpress you will be able to monitor the traffic flow for up to 50 applications and leverage synthetic polling and real-time user traffic observations to intelligently steer traffic. AppExpress automatically selects the best path for each of the 50 applications and works for both internal and cloud-based applications.

AppExpress sends synthetic probes across all available paths—local breakout, backhaul, and third-party service tunnels—to applications and determines which path appears to have the best latency and is most robust. AppExpress then places flows for applications on the best paths based on criteria that are set for each application. This further enables intelligently steering traffic to a virtual instance of HPE Aruba Networking EdgeConnect SD‑WAN hosted in IaaS platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud, ensuring efficient data flow.

• Cybersecurity: Enables enterprises and managed services to securely connect users, applications, and data across multiple geographic locations. The integrated enterprise-grade security features such as DDoS will mitigate unpredictable threat attacks (ICMP & SYN floods, IP Spoof). The integrated and rule-based IDS/IPS system constantly monitors the network in real-time to detect and prevent vulnerable and emerging threats such as malicious packets, blocking un-authorized access, etc., resulting in improved security posture and reduced network down time.
• Role-based segmentation: Creates end-to-end zones across the LAN and the WAN, to ensure users and IoT devices reach destinations consistent with their role in the business, enforcing least-privilege access principles. By leveraging the HPE ClearPass integrated with EdgeConnect SD-WAN combined with application intelligence, this architecture enables organizations to implement an enterprise‑wide Zero Trust architecture, even in complex multi‑vendor LAN environments. This is an initiative-taking measure to reduce the risks for enterprises exposed to cyber-attacks in which cybercriminals target their sensitive data.
• Built-in next-gen firewall: Provides advanced security features to monitoring and filtering network traffic, blocking unauthorized access, malware prevention, upholding data privacy and adhering to security compliances. This enables IT administrators to benefit from end-to-end network visibility and identify potential risks quickly.
• Unified SASE: managing siloed networks makes it difficult for network administrators to scale, cope with today’s supply chain risks and address security threats and compliances. HPE’s Unified SASE solution combines the best of networking and security practices to provide access and security for edge-to-cloud, edge-to-edge and beyond. Our industry-leading Secure Service Edge (SSE) integrates with EdgeConnect SD-WAN to help transform secure access, and networking, with a single unified SASE platform—bringing security and networking teams together. This will enable simplified deployments, reduced capex and meet multi-cloud demands at scale.

For a full list of features and capabilities read through our SD-WAN solution data sheet.

As enterprises and service providers embrace the digital transformation journey, choosing the right SD-WAN solution becomes a key strategy for success. HPE Aruba SD-WAN simplifies the design, deployment and management with robust security and highest level of performance while increasing the ROI for our customers.

Please refer to our EdgeConnect 10106 data sheet for more information and also watch the video on AppExpress, to learn how our EdgeConnect SD-WAN optimizes SaaS traffic and dynamically selects the best path based on network conditions across network service providers, SSE PoPs and cloud service providers such as AWS, GCP and Azure.

 

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As we embark on 2024, the digital revolutions within businesses, led by Cloud, XaaS solutions and now AI, are accelerating. Add in a new trend which emerged in 2020, the hybrid workforce, and IT leaders have their hands full. Underpinning much of this change is a foundational technology which was born in the mid-1990s: remote access VPN.