While enterprise IT solutions have always been complex, they were at least easier to define in the past. Before we looked up to the virtual clouds, we could look directly at our on-prem infrastructure. IT teams would design and implement private IT architecture housed within company facilities. Building out the required network and connecting different offices and locations to a central hub.
Security was implemented using a straightforward “castle-and-moat” model. With data locked behind a perimeter firewall, users on the inside could have access to whatever they want.
Although on-prem infrastructure has some benefits, most businesses now utilize the cloud. To compete in the modern business world, companies want to become more distributed, agile, and innovative, launching new services with fast and easy access to data and applications. Research from last year shows 89% of organizations have a multi-cloud strategy, and 80% utilize a hybrid cloud deployment combining both private and public clouds.
Hybrid and multi-cloud networks
Multi-cloud networks incorporate more than one cloud of the same type. Organizations can split functionality across multiple clouds, incorporating connectivity from different vendors. Perhaps choosing one service for their data store, another for their user authentication, and so on.
Hybrid cloud deployments offer the benefits of the cloud without having to rip and replace the entire infrastructure. Many organizations choose to maintain some of their on-premises infrastructure. This could be to avoid additional risk, keeping the most sensitive processes in-house, or because migrating the entire network to the cloud is too resource-intensive or costly.
Both hybrid and multi-cloud networks offer organizations greater flexibility than only using a single vendor. Businesses can pick and choose between different service providers finding the best price and performance for each function.
However, this flexibility comes at a cost. Managing a single-cloud network is simple and easy. Businesses orchestrate data and workloads via a single vendor’s ecosystem, whether that be Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, or another provider.
In contrast, hybrid and multi-cloud deployments have to combine multiple platforms into a single network. Finding ways to integrate each vendor’s tools, systems, and policies, to build a coherent and manageable solution.
Beyond that, cloud security is typically the remit of the vendor. Each service provider offers specific tools to help businesses protect their networks. However, when combining multiple clouds, IT teams have to ensure they maintain a single, consistent cybersecurity strategy.
So how should you combine multiple services and manage these new, much more complicated networks? The answer is Network-as-a-Service (NaaS).
InsidePacket – Network-as-a-Service
Insidepacket’s NaaS global solution allows businesses to easily manage, secure, and observe their network from a single platform regardless of its configuration. Combining the simplicity of a single cloud network with the flexibility of hybrid or multi-cloud architecture. You can scale your network, change cloud providers, and move workloads to or from the cloud without having to buy a single piece of hardware.
Migration and Manageability
On day one, the whole process is fully automated:
- Connect to public cloud providers
- Install cloud gateways
- Build IPSec tunnels
- Discover VPCs, VNETs, and CIDR networks
- Configure the BGP routing process
- Install proper security policies
- Add your regional exit points to the internet and SaaS services
You can get your network up and running in just a few minutes. All you have to do is select the appropriate locations and follow the platform’s guidelines. See it in action for yourself on our website.
From day two, InsidePacket provides a comprehensive toolset to manage your entire network from a single platform. This includes:
- Visualizing all your traffic across environments and networks, overlayed with application-level information, in order to identify any anomaly, misconfiguration, or security threat, giving you the ability to respond quickly and accurately
- Unified views and terminology, boosting collaboration between networking and security teams.
- Anomaly detection with actionable insights that minimize alert fatigue and dramatically reduce the Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) following any malfunction or incident.
Our NaaS solution simplifies automation and optimizes routing while offering you a consistent and straightforward way to manage your network. Plus, combining all this functionality removes the need for third-party vendors and the extra cost that comes with them. InsidePacket delivers stand-alone network-as-a-service with no hidden costs.
Security
Clouds inherently broaden your network, introducing new security risks. If you want the benefits of distributed, accessible data, you can no longer rely on a simple castle-and-model to keep your network safe. Enterprises with hybrid and multi-cloud networks must consider:
- Cybersecurity protocols that are consistent across the different cloud vendors in use.
- The upgrade cycles of each cloud service provider and the potential for new security gaps.
- The pace of app development exceeding the implementation of effective security policies.
- Access credentials for employees to work across multiple clouds while keeping the bad guys out and maintaining consistent privilege policies for different users.
While insidepacket offers seamless third-party security integration to your current on-prem firewall, SD-WAN, and more, We provide inline security measures, including firewalls, DDoS protection, and network segmentation, so you can enjoy the benefits of the cloud while keeping your data safe and secure. All this is native to the NaaS solution removing the need for new 3rd-party vendors and the additional costs that come with them.
Maintaining effective access controls within complicated hybrid and multi-cloud environments is particularly challenging. Through segmentation, you can divide your network into smaller sub-networks to define identity-based protections without implementing architectural changes to the network. This means only authorized users get access, and you can choose who gets access to which parts of the network. For example, creating network segments for different departments (e.g., sales, marketing, etc.).
Another problem for security is maintaining network and application visibility across multiple clouds.
Network and Application Observability
Visibility and control are essential for enterprise IT teams. But with multi and hybrid cloud environments, users would have to log into each cloud provider only to gain limited visibility into part of their network.
InsidePacket’s solution covers end-to-end traffic from a single platform, delivering the visibility and control you need across the network and application layers. This includes:
- An overview of server traffic (locations, source connections/segments/IPs, destination IPs, port services, protocols, and more)
- Visualizing server traffic to spot trends with regard to data flow and locations
- Detailed and timestamped network records
- A breakdown of your applications
- Cyber threat analysis and the identification of any suspicious behavior.
- With complete network and application observability, enterprises can quickly remedy any potential cyber threats and proactively spot any network issues.
Easy and secure cloud networking with InsidePacket
Get in touch today and try our 30-day trial. See how we can get your new network up and running in minutes, not weeks.