Network Security for Small Business
The best Network Security for Small Business is one that provides top notch protection, less complicated to deploy and is not too expensive. Most small businesses may not have the big budgets that large enterprises have, so the best cyber security for small business must be also affordable.
Network Security for Small Business can be provided in many ways. What solution you end up choosing must be cost effective, easy to manage and can easily be scaled should you need to.
Continue reading to find out why choosing Software-Defined Perimeter and Cloud VPN Technology is essential for your business. It could be what your business needs.
Network Security for Small Business – Introduction
The definition of today’s corporate network perimeter is undergoing a dynamic change driven by:
- Public and private clouds,
- Legacy on-premises networks,
- Mobile devices and
- the Internet of Things (IOT).
This dynamic shift of network perimeter affects all business sizes:
- Small Business
- Medium Business
- Large enterprises.
The changing landscape of business networks means that the network is no longer confined to the Office but rather much more distributed and it requires to still be protected from hackers, viruses and malware.
Network Perimeters are actually fluid. Remote and mobile workers are using their own devices that can’t be monitored or logged, to request access to corporate IT resources and applications.
Global IT infrastructures continue to move to private hosted data centers or multi-vendor general public cloud configurations. This obviously expands the network perimeter compared to what it was previously when all the business network infrastructure was on premises.
The trend of “Bring Your Own Device” or BYOD, which can range from mobile phones to tablets and laptop notebook computers, further expands the network perimeter and exposes businesses to malware and hackers if an employee’s device does not comply with corporate BYOD security policies.
Today’s modern workforce also consists of not just full-time employees, but also business partners, consultants, customers and suppliers needing access to business applications and IT resources that reside in global private data centers and public clouds.
This fluid network perimeter needs to meet the requirements of the IT-enabled workforce as well as the requirements of IT managers, Legal and Compliance departments.
Company workers require reliable and secure remote global connectivity while IT Managers want a protected business network that provides simplified administration while at the same time meeting the needs of legal and compliance departments.
Conventional VPNs and the Necessity for Software-Defined Perimeters (SDPs)
Virtual private networks, also referred to as VPNs, provide secure and private connectivity for employees needing remote access or site-to-site access to applications on internal corporate networks.
For instance, VPNs let employees access their company’s intranet from home or while travelling for business, whereas site-to-site VPNs enable employees in various office locations to use one seamless virtual network for application or data sharing.
Established as virtual point-to-point connections, VPNs could be created via dedicated connections, virtual tunnelling protocols or through network traffic encryption.
While conventional VPNs provide secure remote access, they do have drawbacks including limited client support for BYOD situations, cloud services or bandwidth restrictions and global server support from VPN providers or corporate IT resources.
Additionally, some VPNs usually do not employ role-based access controls, user access logs or analytics capabilities. Because of the costs of external hardware, maintaining a VPN can be a challenge for IT departments with limited staff and budgets.
In contrast, the Software-Defined Perimeter design addresses standard VPN limitations while providing a flexible cloud-based platform, device and application configurability in addition to accessibility, increased security, privacy and user-access control granularity and analytics.
According to the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), Software-Defined Perimeters provide the ability to deploy perimeters that retain the traditional model’s value of invisibility and inaccessibility to “outsiders”.
SDPs can be deployed anywhere – on the internet, in the cloud, at a hosting center, on the private corporate network, or across some or all of these locations.
The SDP includes standard security tools including PKI, TLS, IPsec, SAML, and standards, in addition to concepts such as for example, federation, device attestation, and geo-location make it possible for connectivity from any device to any infrastructure.
Gartner forecasted that by the end of 2017 at least 10 % of enterprise businesses would set up Software-Defined Perimeter technology.
In 2018, Gartner recommended that Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) focus on Software-Defined Perimeters as a Top 10 project that would reduce risk and make a large impact on their businesses through attack surface area reduction and IT resource limitations to only named sets of external partners, remote workers and contractors.
Network Security for Small Business – User-Centric Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP) Security Model
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) describes a Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP) in terms of a network security design that dynamically creates one-to-one network connections between the user and only the resources they access.
The SDP components include verifying the identity of the user, their devices, and role before granting access to network resources.
This network security model based on authentication and authorization prior to network access has been in use by the United States Department of Defense and Intelligence Communities for some time and is known as “need to know” access.
The SDP security model calls for every server to be hidden behind a remote access gateway that users must authenticate into first and gain access before any authorized service is made available.
The innovation behind Software-Defined Perimeters is the integration of device authentication, identity-based access and dynamically provisioned connectivity.
According to Gartner, the advantage of the SDP model is that standard attacks that depend on the default-trust flaws built into traditional TCP IP will be thwarted when using SDP because any non-SDP trusted traffic is discarded before stack processing
SDPs tackle some of the most typical network-based attacks such as server scanning, denial of service, SQL injection, OS and application weaknesses exploits, password cracking, man-in-the-middle, cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks.
Many Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) today have workers based in various global offices that depend on cloud-based productivity applications such as for example Office 365, AWS or Salesforce CRM accessed via corporate or employee-owned Windows, iOS, Mac OS, and Android devices.
Remote connectivity has also become critical as employees work from home or travel for business, being able to access corporate networks through unprotected Wi-Fi hotspots or public networks gated by geo-restrictions and Internet use censorship.
The challenge for IT managers would be to provide secure and reliable employee access without draining IT resources and budgets.
Traditional VPNs could be complicated to set up and sustain, both from a hardware and software viewpoint. This consists of the integration of physical servers and site-specific applications, cloud-based infrastructure and applications and identity access and administration.
Therefore, IT Administrators must look beyond conventional VPNs to cloud-based VPNs which can be quickly deployed and configured in a Software-Defined Perimeter configuration.
Network Security for Small Business – the Perimeter 81 Solution
Perimeter 811 offers Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) a cloud-based innovative VPN solution that quickly and easily secures access to on-premises and cloud assets combined with lightweight cross-platform client support for employee access, all controlled by way of a single management console.
Making use of a Software-Defined Perimeter security design, Perimeter 81’s cloud VPN gets rid of expensive hardware using its cloud-based infrastructure.
Perimeter 81’s cloud-based infrastructure enables smooth deployment of VPN endpoints and brings together device authentication, identity dependent access and dynamically provisioned connectivity for each and every user.
Mobile workers are protected with Perimeter 81’s Single Sign-On native client applications which you can use on any Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android device.
Perimeter 81’s revolutionary Automatic Wi-Fi Security also shields all data by automatically activating VPN protection when employees connect to unknown or untrusted networks.
Along with centralized control and identity management built-in into the Perimeter 81 portal, employees and groups can very easily be added to corporate network resources and cloud environments with secure policy-based resource access.
Comprehensive activity reports offer insight into resource and bandwidth utilization while active connection and session information could be monitored.
Finally, all company data passing over any network is secured with 256-bit bank-level encryption and routed through a dedicated private server concealing an organization’s actual IP address with an IP mask.
Perimeter 81’s global network of over 700 high-speed public servers in a lot more than 34 locations provides fast and simple deployment of private VPN servers and dedicated IP addresses.
Network Security for Small Business – Compare Legacy Approach with SDP Approach
Legacy Approach | SDP Approach |
---|---|
Hardware | Software |
Complex | Simple |
Expensive | Affordable |
Distributed management | Unified management |
Highly technical | User-friendly |
Manual | Automatic |
- Perimeter 81 is a software-based Network as a Service (NaaS) security provider, driven by the mission to transform secure network access for the modern and distributed workforce. Built from scratch based on input from security leaders needing a change from legacy VPN technology, Perimeter 81’s user-friendly interface, unified management and seamless integration with major cloud services, allows employees to securely access on-premise and remote resources, and provides companies of all industries and sizes the power to be fully mobile and confidently cloud-based.