Micro-Perimeters to Deliver Where Complex, Dangerously Vulnerable and Slow VPNs Have Failed

The security and protection of personal data has moved to priority number one for organizations around the world, driven in large part by established (i.e., GDPR, California’s Consumer Privacy Act, etc.) and anticipated new regulations, where the legal and financial penalties attached to non-compliance are dire. In addition, personal data has become the lifeblood of most sales and marketing organizations where traditional methodologies and technologies are being augmented with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to enhance strategic planning, enable more agile execution, and drive competitive advantage.

In 2019, virtually every data center regardless of size will be leveraging a hybrid data management strategy. The ubiquitous presence and numerous benefits of virtual IT, or public cloud resources, have made it attainable to almost every sized IT budget. In fact, in many cases, the public cloud makes IT capabilities possible that were previously impossible, to those with the smallest of budgets. However, while the cost of public cloud resources and capabilities may be very attractive, that’s not to say that they don’t come at a price. That price is application performance, as well as data protection and security.ca

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In 2019, IT success — and ultimately business success — will hinge on application speed, data protection and data security. Customers don’t like to wait, and they like it even less when their personal data’s security is compromised. In 2018, organizations invested significantly in hybrid data management strategies to gain a competitive edge. Unfortunately, many learned the hard way that as an access path to the cloud, the performance of the public Internet can be limited by traffic and throughput obstacles, which can impact the effectiveness of workloads right at peak load times. And, when enterprise applications struggle to deal with peak loads, this can result in the business suffering revenue loss, damage to their reputation and failing to meet the objectives of moving to a hybrid cloud strategy.

In 2018, the use of traditional virtual private networks (VPNs) were routinely turned to in order to add secure connectivity and reduce security exposure. Unfortunately, it is now a well-known fact that VPNs usually further exacerbate performance and security issues. They are obsolete for the new IT reality of hybrid and multi-cloud. They just weren’t designed for them. VPNs are complex to configure, not performant, and they give users a “slice of the network,” creating a lateral network attack surface.

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In 2019, a new class of purpose-built security software is emerging and gaining in popularity for its ability to eradicate these issues. This new security software is enabling organizations to deploy lightweight dynamic micro-perimeters to secure their application- and workload-centric connections between on-premises and cloud/hosted environments, with virtually no attack surface and without the performance issues of VPNs.

Due to the ease of use of this advanced breed of security software, organizations will utilize a 1-2-3-100+ deployment strategy. That is, they’ll deploy micro-perimeters for workload #1. Satisfied it meets the performance and security requirements, they’ll deploy micro-perimeters for workload #2, and then deploy for workload #3. At that point, the organization will require micro-perimeters for every application, which could be hundreds of workloads with thousands of users.

This is the point organizations will turn to AI. This is where organizations will leverage their learnings in AI to find products that can automate, manage and simplify Machine Learning for each enterprise application’s unique connectivity network to map out the optimal deployment of micro-perimeters. This deployment methodology will allow organizations to aggressively implement micro-perimeters with the ultimate goal of the AI engine deploying and updating micro-perimeters completely automatically, for unrivaled application performance and data protection and security fortification.

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