What puts networks in greater jeopardy: the user or the device? While many factors play a role—from how IoT devices are onboarded, to what applications are routed where the intent of the user drives how devices and applications behave from the access to the WAN. Security has to be level-set from the beginning of every action, which leads us back to the user. Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, relies on contextual awareness and assigns roles to users based on their duties, the phones, laptops and IoT devices they use, the applications they access, and where they happen to be when they log in to the corporate network. Aruba networks use this context to automatically apply security policies and quarantine actions should any user behavior abruptly change over time.
Let's pause for a moment and think about how security has evolved. Traditionally, security seems like a juxtaposition to simplicity, and the IT trend towards this "ease of use" at large, distributed environments has not surprisingly led to many networks to fall victim to lapses in their IoT security. Take a read through a Gartner interview here for more on that.The issue of WAN in security is gaining mindshare, as different third-party SD-WAN solutions are coming to market to deliver a bundled feature-set critical to branch services. However, the security question for WAN falls short for many pure-play and traditional WAN vendors when extending security from the access layer. Thinking about wireless and wired access at a branch, the network in the campus core, and most importantly the users and devices that first gain access to the network, the intelligence and insights Aruba gathers from the edge takes these variables into account to protect the entire branch from threats, regardless of what network vendors are deployed in the network. This multivendor flexibility in delivering policy enforcement is just one component of a greater platform focused on mobility.
The Aruba platform bundles access, WAN, and security together with simplicity through zero-touch provisioning, and network-wide scale. IT customers can expand their services on the platform with RESTful APIs and customizable third-party integrations with a host of best-of-breed vendors like Palo Alto Networks WildFire in the firewall, device management, and countless other technology areas.In two weeks, Aruba will be in NYC for WAN Summit, a conference for IT buyers, integrators, and providers of next-gen Wide Area Network technologies. We'll be speaking to customers on the different ways IT can address the growth in access, security, and application concerns with IoT and third party technologies. I encourage you to take a keen look at these discussions, and attend if you can! To learn more, and register, please check the event out here!
Dave Chen is a product marketing manager for WLAN and SD-WAN solutions at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.
