Enhancing hybrid IT security

Pulse Secure has introduced cloud and virtual appliances to protect access and support applications in hybrid IT environments.

 

Enterprises are quickly moving to deploy hybrid IT, leveraging the cloud to introduce new user services and gain disaster recovery resiliency, as well as continuing to use the data center when they must have total control of the application. The latest cloud-based Pulse Secure Appliance (PSA) allows enterprises to adapt access security frameworks to address changing application environments that blend data center, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.

 

Frost & Sullivan notes that, “With enterprises moving away from data center build-outs and building their infrastructure needs on public cloud, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) becomes the strongest and fastest growing segment. It will soon surpass SaaS to become the second largest segment in the cloud industry.”[i]

 

Pulse Secure helps enterprises accelerate this transformation. By using an adaptable access security framework, enterprises can confidently move applications to the cloud and leverage IaaS and SaaS to reduce operational costs and expedite new end-user services. In times of crisis or disaster, enterprises have a simpler and faster way to normalize user productivity without changing user behavior.

 

“Thousands of customers depend on Pulse Secure products to secure and enable easy access to their data center. They love the reliability of the platform and depend on its robust security to connect users to the information and applications they need to drive business,” said Prakash Mana, vice president of product management at Pulse Secure. “Increasingly, business-critical applications are moving to the cloud and our customers worry over security. Ideally, they would like to extend their existing security policies into a single security standard that uniformly protects both the data center and cloud. Our cloud-based PSA helps them do exactly that. Now they can simply use their trusted Pulse Secure solution to protect enterprise information no matter where it is stored or how it is accessed.”

 

The addition of virtual and cloud-based appliances gives customers greater operational freedom, peace of mind and agility. Customers have greater deployment choices for their hybrid IT environments with the price and performance parity of the expanded PSA family. Consistent security is ensured for their hybrid IT deployments by extending their proven data center security policies to applications hosted by Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. Enterprises can use Pulse One centralized management for total operational control and visibility of access to their hybrid IT environment.

The PSA family is designed to flexibly meet the access challenges of any enterprise with appliances that scale from 200 to 25,000 concurrent sessions and form factors that accommodate data center, office and cloud environments.

 

Pulse Secure customers can easily transform their Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution into a Secure Access solution, connecting mobile workers to company resources in the data center and cloud and delivering an optimum user experience.

 

Other advantages of Pulse Secure appliances include:

·         Leverages existing security policies, as well as the same user client and administrator’s know-how and experience with Pulse Secure solutions

·         Supports mobile and remote access to the data center and cloud, boosting performance and adding new capabilities within hybrid IT environments

·         Implements uniform and granular security policies that control access to cloud and data center applications based on devices, locations, resources, user groups and endpoint profiling

·         Delivers seamless, secure and reliable user access to all company resources, in the cloud or data center, via a single client or mobile application – which dramatically simplifies the user experience and increases user productivity and enables the use of two-factor authentication and other advanced security capabilities

·         Streamlines network planning, application rollout and disaster recovery contingencies by seamlessly and reliably connecting workers to company resources and protecting company devices, regardless of location

 

With the latest Pulse Secure appliances, channel partners can now offer a more robust solution to customers, tailoring access to the unique hybrid IT deployment needs of each customer, securing the latest applications and user devices, and providing easy-to-implement disaster recovery methods. With a large number of Pulse Secure customers still using now discontinued first and second-generation appliances, channel partners have an opportunity to show customers how to easily upgrade and enhance their capabilities.