One solution many companies, both large and small, have turned to is the utilization of virtual private networks (VPNs). They can route remote workers’ traffic through easier-to-monitor pathways, giving businesses greater safety and control over their sensitive data when used in concert with dedicated endpoint management solutions.

However, VPNs come with a few caveats and hitches that make them potentially unideal for large-scale operations. Chief among them is that VPNs were never designed as cybersecurity products. For example, although many providers tout a VPN’s ability to protect users’ traffic while using public WiFi, attack methods like Tunnel Vision can still leave users vulnerable.

Additionally, VPNs face difficulties during set-up and scaling for more than a handful of users and devices. If not configured properly, a business’s network can still be put at risk, and even when configured the right way, you might still encounter congestion and device performance issues, particularly when remote workers use a VPN for heavy-bandwidth activities like Zoom calls or downloading large files.

Cloud-based network security products like NordLayer aim to bridge the gap between VPNs and proper cybersecurity solutions, giving businesses an added layer of security alongside the strict, controlled access required to implement a zero-trust security framework.

What You Need to Know About NordLayer 

	NordLayer is a business VPN and network access tool that will appeal to businesses looking for a solution with an easy-to-use interface that can help them implement a zero-trust framework for access control.
Overall Rating: 2.5/5 • Core Features: 4/5 • Usability: 3.5/5 • Customer Support: 3/5 • Trustworthiness: 2/5 • Pricing: 2/5	Pros	Cons
	Easy to use Large number of features Options for both small businesses and enterprises	Pricing might be a bit steep for smaller teams or if you want more features Fairly limited number of server locations Company’s servers have been breached in the past 14-day money-back guarantee is pretty small

Who Should Use NordLayer?

NordLayer is a feature-rich, business-focused VPN and network access solution from the company behind two of the most popular VPNs in the consumer VPN market, NordVPN and Surfshark. 

Consider NordLayer if your business meets one or more of the following criteria:

• Enterprises seeking to adopt a zero trust framework: Nord claims NordLayer is built with a zero trust strategy in mind, making it a good choice if you’re trying to implement zero trust in your own company.
• Teams looking for an easy-to-use business VPN: Whatever else you can say about it, NordLayer offers, on the user side at least, an intuitive UI setup. However, I wasn’t able to test the back-end features meant to be used by an IT security manager.
• Businesses that want many features on one platform: From its business VPN to access management to a firewall, NordLayer comes packed to the gills with enticing features. Getting all these features in one place for your business can make your IT manager’s life much easier.

Who Shouldn’t Use NordLayer?

NordLayer looks great on paper, but no product is flawless. Its steep prices and data breach history could make it a less-than-appealing option, depending on your company’s needs.

I wouldn’t recommend NordLayer if:

• You’re a small business on a strict budget: A business VPN can feel like something your small business needs to protect sensitive company data. However, business VPNs do not come cheap, and NordLayer is no exception, especially if you want more features than what the lowest tier offers.
• You care about how a company responds to data breaches: In 2018, NordLayer’s consumer-grade cousin NordVPN, along with TorGuard VPN and Viking VPN, was hacked by an 8chan user. The user did not come away with any sensitive information, and the breach only affected Nord’s single server. However, the company did not inform users of the breach until six months after they initially learned of it.
• You’re looking for a service with a generous free trial period: Business VPNs can be expensive and difficult to fit into your company’s pre-existing IT infrastructure. As such, you might prefer a service with a free trial or a generous money-back guarantee period. NordLayer’s 14-day money-back guarantee probably won’t give you the time you need to know if the product is right for your business or not, unfortunately.

NordLayer Pricing

NordLayer has three subscription tiers, with a fourth tier for enterprises that lets you choose which features you want a la carte. The three main tiers each have a 5-user minimum, while the Enterprise Offer requires you to have at least 50 users. The lowest-tiered plan, Lite, starts at $8 per user per month, while the Enterprise Offer starts at $7 per user per month. All subscriptions come backed by a 14-day money-back guarantee.

These prices are fairly standard for business VPNs, meaning it can get pricey for smaller businesses. The money-back guarantee does not give customers enough time to determine if the product fits their business. I’d prefer if NordLayer took a page out of its cousin NordVPN’s playbook and adopted a 30-day money-back guarantee to give companies more time to test the service before committing.

3 Key Features of NordLayer

Business VPN

NordLayer is, first and foremost, a VPN. While I couldn’t dig into the administrative side of the app, the user side of NordLayer is very similar to its sister product, NordVPN. As a VPN, Nord is fine. It’s easy enough to install and use, though its zero-trust framework gives users a couple of hurdles to jump over before finally connecting. The administrator has to confirm your final connection. I’d recommend sticking to the NordLynx protocol when using the service, as it easily outpaces the other supported VPN protocols within NordLayer for device performance.

Fixed IP on Dedicated Servers

While I personally wouldn’t recommend using fixed IPs with a VPN in most cases, some companies have found it useful to restrict user access to sensitive information to specific IP addresses in lieu of or in addition to traditional login credentials. As part of its Core, Premium, and Custom plans, NordLayer offers fixed IP on dedicated servers in the following locations, according to their webpage on the subject:

• Australia (Sydney)
• Austria (Vienna)
• Belgium (Brussels)
• Brazil (São Paulo)
• Canada (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto)
• Colombia (Bogota)
• Cyprus
• Czech Republic (Prague)
• Denmark (Copenhagen)
• Estonia (Tallinn)
• Finland (Helsinki)
• France (Paris)
• Germany (Frankfurt)
• Greece (Athens)
• Hungary (Budapest)
• Ireland (Dublin)
• Italy (Milan)
• Japan (Tokyo)
• Latvia (Riga)
• Lithuania (Vilnius)
• Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur)
• Netherlands (Amsterdam)
• Norway (Oslo)
• Poland (Warsaw)
• Portugal (Lisbon)
• Romania (Bucharest)
• RSA (Johannesburg)
• Singapore (Singapore)
• South Korea (Seoul)
• Spain (Madrid)
• Sweden (Stockholm)
• Switzerland (Zurich)
• UK (London, Manchester)
• US (Boston, Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston)

Built With Zero Trust in Mind

Zero trust network access (ZTNA) is a strategy that protects networks from threats. It emphasizes continuous verification of all users when accessing company resources, lowering the risk of harm a malicious actor can cause by granting all users only the bare minimum permissions needed to do their jobs. It also involves collecting evidence such as logs or behavioral data to track and monitor access to any sensitive resources.

This approach, while effective, can sometimes be difficult to manage, as it can require getting multiple different network security solutions with very different design philosophies to work together as a cohesive unit.

NordLayer’s wide range of access control and monitoring features make it a decent option for companies looking to implement or streamline their zero-trust strategy.

Should You Trust NordLayer?

Whether you’re an enterprise with 2,000 employees or a self-employed freelancer, trust should be a key decision factor when discussing any company you’re considering buying from. This is especially true for companies that sell cybersecurity products, as you often trust them with your data and digital safety.

In the case of a VPN provider like Nord, you’re trusting them with your Internet traffic and the access tunnels to your business’s sensitive data and resources instead of trusting your internet service provider.

In terms of trustworthiness, Nord scores low for me. The 2018 data breach, while seemingly minor in terms of impact on users, casts a shadow on the company for me. Waiting six months to inform users of the breach, and only after it was talked about on Twitter, is simply unacceptable from any company claiming to be good stewards of their users’ data.

I don’t think it’s unfair if you look at the situation and say, “Well, that was 6 years ago. They’ve had time to fix that issue, improve their security infrastructure, and take steps to improve how they communicate with users.”

However, I don’t believe companies, especially cybersecurity companies, deserve second chances when making mistakes like how Nord Security handled its data breach. Why should we potentially put our data at risk by giving a company a second chance when there are plenty of providers out there who haven’t been breached or who responded to their own breaches better than Nord did?

NordLayer Alternatives

NordLayer is just one of many VPN solutions out there for businesses to choose from. Here are  a few more providers worth taking a look at.

ProtonVPN

I would probably recommend ProtonVPN’s business-focused options over NordLayer’s. On top of being cheaper, Proton, while not the most trustworthy VPN provider on the market, is more trustworthy than Nord while packing most of the same features. Outside of Proton’s custom-priced Enterprise subscription, NordLayer does have more dedicated server locations.

Mullvad VPN

While not the best choice for enterprise-level clients, small businesses and self-employed freelancers might find Mullvad an affordable and easy-to-use VPN. It’s one of the most trusted VPNs on the market as well, thanks in part to its unique account system, which means the company never has to store sensitive information like an email address or phone number. In terms of features, NordLayer has Mullvad beat, but if you just need a VPN to function like a VPN, I would go with Mullvad every time.

Perimeter 81

Perimeter 81 is more of a SASE solution than a business VPN, but its VPN component is solid. Its number of countries with server locations is lower than NordLayer’s, but I think the actual security features on display are more impressive, like the threat emulation add-on. The sheer quantity of add-ons Perimeter 81 has means it’ll probably be more expensive than NordLayer, however.

How I Evaluated NordLayer

Ultimately, VPNs as a product are about trust, which is why I assigned the highest weight to the Trustworthiness score instead of Core Features. You don’t need too many bells and whistles to make a viable VPN, and many VPNs share a lot of the same features. This homogenization of the market means it often matters more what a company does with your data or how it’s responded to past data breaches than what shiny features it has out of the box.

Evaluation Criteria

• Core Features (20%): Here, I search for the basic features every VPN needs to be a VPN. This includes split-tunneling, multi-factor authentication, and mobile app support.
  • Score: 4/5
• Usability (15%): This section looks at how easy a product is to use and how accessible its technical documentation is, as well as how easy it is to report bugs and the like.
  • Score: 3.5/5
• Customer Support (10%): For customer support, I highlight the various customer support options available to users, particularly the presence of real human customer support agents in lieu of chatbots.
  • Score: 3/5
• Trustworthiness (40%): When you use a VPN, you effectively trust that provider with your Internet traffic in lieu of trusting your internet service provider. So, I always try to look for how a company has treated its user data in the past. This can include data breach history or if the company has been caught selling user data in the past, among other transgressions.
  • Score: 2/5
• Pricing (15%): Finally, I look at a VPN’s various pricing plans and compare these plans to competitors. I also consider the availability of a free trial or a generous money-back guarantee policy.
  • Score: 2/5

Bottom Line: NordLayer Is an Easy-to-Use Business VPN With Some Nice Security Features

While I have concerns with how Nord Security has handled past breaches and how they’ve informed users, I understand that many potential customers will be more forgiving of something that happened six years ago. Ignoring the 2018 breach, NordLayer is a fine choice for a business VPN. While expensive, the sheer number of features and easy-to-use interface make it a solid enough choice for businesses looking to enhance their cybersecurity strategy.

The post NordLayer Review: Pricing, Features & Specs appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

In this article, we’ll explain how a VPN works, explore its encryption mechanisms, review common VPN protocols, and discuss its various business applications.

How a VPN Works

A VPN works by creating a secure, encrypted connection between your device and the internet. This process involves multiple steps and technologies working together to ensure your data remains private and secure. Here are the steps of VPN functionality: 

Step 1: Device Connection to a VPN Server

When you activate a VPN on your device, it first connects to a VPN server. This server is usually located in a different geographical location, which could be chosen by you or automatically by the VPN service.

Step 2: Data Encryption

Before your data leaves your device, the VPN client software encrypts it using advanced encryption protocols. This encrypted data is nearly impossible to intercept and read without the appropriate decryption key.

Step 3: Data Transmission to the VPN Server

The encrypted data is then transmitted to the VPN server. This server acts as an intermediary between your device and the wider internet.

Step 4: IP Address Masking

The VPN server replaces your original IP address with its own. This means that when your data reaches the destination server (like a website), it appears as if the request is coming from the VPN server’s location rather than your actual location.

Step 5: Data Decryption

When the VPN server receives data from the internet (such as a webpage you requested), it encrypts the data before sending it back to your device.

Step 6: Final Decryption

Your VPN client decrypts the data received from the VPN server, allowing you to access the content as if you were directly connected to the internet.

This process ensures that your internet service provider (ISP), the websites you visit, and any potential eavesdroppers cannot see your real IP address, the websites you access, or the data you send and receive. Instead, they only see the VPN server’s IP address and encrypted traffic.

Check out the figure below for a simpler image of how a VPN works:

For more information on how to get a VPN, check out this guide.

VPN Encryption Explained

VPN encryption involves converting your data into an unreadable format for anyone who might intercept it. This process ensures that even if someone manages to capture your data, they won’t understand it without the proper decryption key. Here’s a closer look at what VPN encryption entails:

Data Encryption Process

• Encryption algorithm: VPN encryption uses algorithms to transform readable data into an encrypted format. These algorithms are mathematical formulas that scramble the data in a way that can only be reversed by someone with the correct decryption key.
• Encryption key: The encryption key is a string of data used by the algorithm to encrypt and decrypt your data. For example, if a message is encrypted with a key, only someone with that key can decrypt and read the message.

Types of Encryption

Understanding the types of encryption helps you choose the right encryption approach for your data protection strategy. Here’s a closer look at symmetric and asymmetric encryption and their respective roles in securing information.

Encryption Protocols

• AES (Advanced Encryption Standard): AES is a symmetric encryption algorithm used widely in VPNs. It is known for its strength and efficiency, with AES-256 providing the highest level of security.
• RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman): RSA is often used to encrypt data exchanges rather than the data itself. It secures the transmission of encryption keys between parties.
• SHA (Secure Hash Algorithm): While not an encryption method, SHA creates a unique hash of data, which helps verify its integrity and ensures that it has not been altered.

Encryption in Action

• When you connect to a VPN: As soon as you establish a connection to a VPN server, your device encrypts your data before sending it over the internet. This encrypted data is transmitted to the VPN server, where it remains secure.
• From the VPN server: The VPN server decrypts the incoming data from the internet, then re-encrypts it before sending it back to your device. Your device decrypts this data, allowing you to view the content as intended.

Key Components of a VPN Protocol

A VPN protocol ensures secure and efficient data transmission. Its key components, including encryption, authentication, tunneling, and data integrity, all work together to protect your online activity. Here’s a brief overview of how these elements contribute to a secure VPN connection.

• Encryption: The protocol determines the type of encryption used to secure data. Stronger encryption ensures better security but may impact connection speed. Common encryption methods include AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman).
• Authentication: VPN protocols also manage how your device authenticates its identity to the VPN server. Authentication ensures that data is sent to and received from the correct source.
• Tunneling: VPN protocols establish a secure “tunnel” through which your data travels. This tunnel is an encrypted pathway between your device and the VPN server, protecting your data from interception.
• Data Integrity: Protocols include methods to verify that the transmitted data has not been tampered with during transit. This ensures the integrity and authenticity of the data received.

6 Common Types of VPN Protocols

VPN protocols dictate how your data is transmitted over the VPN connection. Different protocols offer varying levels of security, speed, and compatibility. Here are some of the most common ones and what they bring to the table:

1. OpenVPN

OpenVPN is one of the most popular and widely used VPN protocols, known for its balance of speed, security, and reliability. It’s an open-source protocol, which means it is constantly being reviewed and updated by the global security community.

Strengths:

• Security: OpenVPN uses strong encryption standards, including AES-256, and supports a variety of cryptographic algorithms. It also offers robust authentication options and is highly configurable.
• Flexibility: It works across multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, making it highly versatile.
• Performance: While OpenVPN is secure, it may require more processing power, potentially slowing down connections on less powerful devices.

Use Cases:

OpenVPN is ideal for users prioritizing security and privacy, such as those accessing sensitive information or bypassing strict censorship.

2. L2TP/IPsec (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol)

L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol) is often paired with IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) to provide encryption and secure data transmission. This combination is a common VPN protocol that balances security and performance well.

Strengths:

• Security: L2TP itself does not provide encryption, but when combined with IPsec, it offers robust security with double data encapsulation.
• Compatibility: It is built into most modern operating systems, making it easy to set up without needing additional software.
• Stability: L2TP/IPsec offers stable connections, making it reliable for most internet activities.

Use Cases:

This protocol is suitable for those who need a balance between security and ease of use, such as general internet browsing or accessing work networks remotely.

3. IKEv2/IPsec (Internet Key Exchange Version 2)

IKEv2 is a VPN protocol developed by Microsoft and Cisco, often paired with IPsec for encryption. It’s known for its speed and ability to quickly re-establish connections, making it a preferred choice for mobile users.

Strengths:

• Security: IKEv2/IPsec provides strong encryption and supports many cryptographic algorithms, making it secure against most security threats.
• Speed: It’s highly efficient, offering fast connection speeds with low latency, even over mobile networks.
• Stability: IKEv2 is excellent at maintaining a stable connection, especially when switching between networks, such as from Wi-Fi to mobile data.

Use Cases:

Ideal for mobile users who need a fast, secure, and reliable VPN connection, particularly when on the move.

4. PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol)

PPTP is one of the oldest VPN protocols, developed by Microsoft in the 1990s. While it is known for its fast speeds, its security is considered weak by modern standards.

Strengths:

• Speed: PPTP is less resource-intensive, offering fast connection speeds making it suitable for activities like streaming.
• Compatibility: It’s supported on most devices and operating systems, making it easy to set up.

Weaknesses:

• Security: PPTP uses outdated encryption standards, making it vulnerable to modern hacking techniques.
• Reliability: It’s more prone to being blocked by firewalls than other protocols.

Use Cases:

Best for users who prioritize speed over security, such as streaming content in regions with less stringent privacy requirements.

5. WireGuard

WireGuard is a newer VPN protocol that is gaining popularity for its simplicity, speed, and strong security features. It’s designed to be more efficient and easier to implement than older protocols.

Strengths:

• Security: WireGuard uses state-of-the-art cryptography, providing a very high level of security with fewer vulnerabilities.
• Performance: It’s extremely fast, with a lean codebase for quick connections and low latency.
• Simplicity: WireGuard is easier to configure and deploy, making it more user-friendly than some older protocols.

Use Cases: 

Ideal for users who want a modern, fast, and secure VPN experience, particularly in scenarios where performance is critical.

6. SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol)

SSTP was developed by Microsoft and is integrated into the Windows operating system. It’s known for bypassing firewalls, as it uses the HTTPS port 443, which is rarely blocked.

Strengths:

• Security: SSTP offers robust security, with support for SSL/TLS encryption, making intercepting difficult.
• Firewall bypassing: Its use of the HTTPS port makes it excellent at getting through firewalls that block other protocols.
• Integration: SSTP is deeply integrated into Windows, making it easy to set up and use on Microsoft platforms.

Use Cases:

Best for Windows users who need a reliable, secure VPN that can bypass restrictive firewalls, especially in corporate or public environments.

Each VPN protocol offers distinct advantages and disadvantages, making them suitable for different use cases. Whether you prioritize speed, security, or compatibility, understanding these six common VPN protocols can help you choose the right one for your needs. Whether streaming content, accessing sensitive information, or maintaining a secure connection, selecting the appropriate VPN protocol is key to optimizing your online experience.

How Businesses Leverage VPNs for Enhanced Security

Businesses utilize VPNs for various purposes beyond individual privacy. Here are some common use cases:

Secure Remote Access

VPNs allow employees to securely connect to the company’s internal network remotely. This is crucial for protecting sensitive company data, especially when employees are working from home or traveling.

Bypassing Geo-Restrictions

For businesses with operations in multiple countries, VPNs can be used to bypass geo-restrictions on websites or services, ensuring that employees have access to the necessary resources regardless of location.

Enhanced Security for Remote Work

In today’s work-from-anywhere environment, VPNs provide additional security for remote workers, safeguarding sensitive communications and reducing the risk of data breaches.

Cost-Effective Network Security

For small and medium-sized enterprises, deploying a VPN can be a cost-effective alternative to expensive types of network security solutions. It enables secure communication without the need for dedicated hardware.

Anonymous Market Research

Businesses often use VPNs to conduct market research anonymously. They can gather competitor information without revealing their identity or location by masking their IP addresses.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does a VPN Hide Your Location?

Yes, a VPN masks your real IP address with the IP address of the VPN server you’re connected to. This hides your location from websites, services, and potentially malicious actors.

Can Someone Find Out That You’re Using a VPN?

While your activities are hidden, someone (e.g., your ISP or network administrator) can detect you using a VPN. VPN traffic has distinct characteristics, such as encrypted data and connections to known VPN servers.

Is Using a VPN Legal?

Yes, using a VPN is legal in most countries. However, some countries with strict internet regulations may restrict or outright ban VPN usage. Always check local laws before using a VPN.

Bottom Line: Secure Your Business with VPNs

A VPN is a powerful tool that secures your internet connection by encrypting your data and masking your IP address. It is essential for IT professionals to understand how it works, as it helps select the right VPN solutions for business needs and personal use.

You can check out our guide on enterprise VPN solutions for more information. If you want to learn more about VPN security, visit our detailed overview. Stay informed on the latest network security threats and best practices with our comprehensive network security threats guide.

The post How Does a VPN Work? A Comprehensive Beginner’s Overview appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

Determining the VPN You Need

Whether it’s for protecting corporate spreadsheets, bypassing geographic blocks, or anonymizing your use of online services, choosing and installing the right VPN to provide robust network security to your application and device is your first step. Some things to consider:

Application

Business users might prioritize premium security features, like 256-bit keys for their Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) protection, kill switches to protect devices in case of a VPN failure, or multi-hop networks. Road warriors will value the number and location of VPN servers,  as will surfers trying to access geo-blocked content. Gamers and streamers will put a premium on speed. Weigh the importance of features by how you’ll use the connected devices.

Use

Like most software, VPN clients are system-specific — Apple versus Windows, iOS versus Android. But under the hood, they also support different protocols for different types of devices.

• Open VPN: An open-source security protocol that is widely considered the industry standard for VPNs.
• Internet Key Exchange (IKE): It is the protocol for Internet Protocol Security (IPSec). It has native support for Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), which allows more seamless handoffs between mobile networks.
• WireGuard: Valued for its speed, it uses User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to tunnel over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). This avoids issues that can occur when stacking TCP connections.
• Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS): Used in products from Cisco Systems Inc., it also works around the TCP-over-TCP issues sometimes experienced with Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocols like Open VPN.
• Open SSH (Secure Shell): Provides a limited number of secure channels in a client-server architecture. It is integrated into Windows, Mac, and most Linux operating systems.

There are several other protocols. Some are obsolete or feature too many vulnerabilities to be widely used.

Ease of Installation

If you don’t have your own IT department, this becomes particularly important. The quality of the VPN provider’s support is also a consideration if you’re operating on your own. (It might also be tempting to opt for a free VPN service if you’re in this position. We’ll discuss why you shouldn’t in our FAQ.) Though details may vary from provider to provider, installation processes are, for the most part, similar.

How to Get a VPN on PCs

Create a VPN Profile

For an account connected to your business, it’s best to let IT staff set up your VPN profile. If you’re doing it yourself, visit the Microsoft Store to download the app for the VPN service you’ve chosen to use. The VPN provider’s website will provide the connection settings.

Go to the Windows Start Menu

Select Settings>Network and Internet>VPN>Add a VPN Connection.

1. For the VPN provider, select Windows (built-in).
2. Enter an easy-to-remember Connection Name.
3. Enter the address of the VPN server under Server Name or Address.
4. From the drop-down menu, select your VPN Type (you’ll have to know what protocol your service is using).
5. Select your Type of Sign-in Info from the drop-down menu. Unless you have a smart card or certificate from work, choose User Name and Password.
6. Enter your username and password.
7. Select Save.

Connect to VPN

Click on the Network icon in the taskbar. A connect button should display; click on it. Alternatively, you can connect through the settings menu (Settings>Network and Internet>VPN). A pop-up box will request your sign-in information. While you’re online, you can check to see if the VPN is active by clicking the Network icon in the taskbar.

How to Get a VPN on Macs

Create your VPN Settings

For connections to your company VPN, contact your network administrator. If you’re setting up yourself, contact your service provider. In either case, you want the settings to be used. If you’re lucky, they will come in a click-to-open VPN Settings file. If not, you’ll have to enter settings manually.

Select the Apple Menu

1. Select System Settings. Click Network in the sidebar.
2. In the Action pop-up menu, select Add VPN Configuration and select the type of connection from the drop-down menu.
3. Enter an easy-to-remember name in the Display Name field.
4. Click the Configuration menu. Choose the type of configuration you want. If you don’t need multiple configurations on your computer, select Default.
5. Enter the required settings. Depending on the service provider, this will include server address, account name and password, verification settings, etc.
6. Select Create.

Connect to the VPN

Click the VPN Status icon in the menu bar. If no icon appears:

1. Go to System Settings>Control Center in the Apple menu.
2. Go to the Menu Bar Only pop-up menu and click on VPN.
3. Select Show or Hide.

The VPN Status icon also offers options to show or hide connection status and connection time, and can switch between VPNs if you have multiple configurations.

How to Get a VPN on iPhones or iPads

Choose an App

Begin by choosing the iPhone-compatible VPN app that best suits your purposes. The app (or provider website) should allow you to create an account, log in, choose your server, and connect simply. If you must configure your iPhone VPN manually:

Go to Settings

1. On your iPhone, click Settings>General>VPN.
2. Click on Type and select your desired protocol. Since you’re using a mobile device, you’ll want to choose IKEv2, which makes network hops seamless.
3. Enter your server name or address, account name and password, and remote ID provided by your VPN host. (If you have chosen a protocol option other than IKEv2, you will receive a pre-shared key.)

Connect to the VPN

Click Done to connect.

How to Get a VPN on Android

Good news for owners of Google’s Pixel 7 or later phones: these phones have built-in access to free Google VPN service wherever it’s available. For phones running Android 9.0 or later:

Download & Install the Required App

This could come from the Google Play store, or be a custom app developed in-house and distributed by your administrator.

1. Go to the Settings app. Select Network & Internet>VPN.
2. Tap Add. Enter the information and settings provided by your administrator or provider.
3. Tap Save.

Connect to the VPN

Go to Settings>Network & Internet>VPN. Tap the saved VPN you want, enter your credentials, tap connect, and the associated app will open.

FAQs

How Much Does a VPN Cost?

Anywhere from a little to a lot. The price for a VPN subscription varies from provider to provider and reflects the feature set, speed, and geographic distribution of the network, among other things. The biggest factor in the price of a VPN is the length of the contract. A 24-month contract can cost you less than half per month than a monthly contract.

For a business, there’s the option of building and operating your own VPN server. There are obvious advantages to having control over features and accessibility. If you’re already operating in a cloud-based environment, hardware cost is minimal.

Can I Get a Free VPN?

There are many free VPN services on the market, and they should be approached and evaluated with caution. Speed, reliability, and availability are issues. And the provider has to pay for infrastructure somehow. Likely, that’s either by selling your information to third parties or serving ads. Neither is a good option.

Are Internet Speeds Slower on a VPN?

The short answer? Yes. Two factors primarily impede your speed. First, your traffic is going through at least one intermediary server, possibly several. Second, your traffic is encrypted and decrypted between points. The number of “hops” depends on the geography of the network and your location. (Multihop networks are designed to pass traffic through several servers for security purposes, as each pass offers further encryption of data.)

The slightly longer answer is: In a well-designed network, the slow-down will be negligible, in the low hundreds of milliseconds — not a serious problem unless you’re a gamer.

Can Anyone Access My VPN?

VPNs can be hacked. Hackers are forever looking for vulnerabilities in protocols, network management and configuration, encryption, etc. Even some of the biggest names in the VPN business have suffered breaches. On the user end, the usual precautions involving physical access, password security, and guarding against phishing and downloaded exploits apply.

Can I Be Tracked If I Use a VPN?

Data in transit is safe due to encryption, and your actual IP address can’t be read — the DNS server’s IP address appears instead. But in most jurisdictions, law enforcement can get court orders to have your provider turn over log files that can expose your traffic. And if you’re on a company VPN, of course administrators have access to your traffic.

When Shouldn’t I Use a VPN?

In some countries, it’s illegal to use a VPN, or there are complex laws regarding their use. Banks often forbid VPN use to prevent traffic from other countries. Some organizations, like schools and businesses, might deny connections from commercial VPNs, and some streaming services prevent VPN use to enforce geographic content blocks. 

Bottom Line: A VPN is Part of a Layered Security Solution

VPNs provide a layer of security and anonymity that can be important to protecting your traffic and data, especially in a corporate setting. Any remote traffic to a business network should be cloaked in VPN security, either commercial or custom-built. Ensure that your devices are properly configured for VPN access to minimize hassle and disruption.

However, a VPN is only one component of a layered security solution. Your security suite, both as a user and as a corporate network, needs several other elements, like firewalls, intrusion detection, antivirus protection, and more to complete the picture. And, of course, a policy of user best practices is key.

Begin your security journey by investigating some of the available enterprise VPN solutions.

The post How to Get a VPN on Any Device (+ Installation Tips) appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

This has made businesses more responsive, more agile—and more vulnerable. According to available data, more than 4,600 common IT vulnerabilities were discovered in 2010. In 2023, that number reached more than 29,000. You can only secure the traffic that goes on within your walls. Enter the Virtual Private Network (VPN): Non-physical walls to insulate that traffic.

Here are some tips for both users and network administrators to secure your network with a VPN.

How VPN Works

A virtual private network, or VPN, “provides a secure communication mechanism for data and control information between computers or networks.” VPNs encrypt traffic among devices using the Internet Key Exchange (IKE) protocol over a network-layer security service called Internet Protocol Security, or IPSec.

The network layer is a key layer of the Open Systems International (OSI) reference model defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). There are seven layers in the model. The top four levels are host layers—they deal with data in the context of applications and make it available to other applications across the network. 

The network layer is at the top of the media layers. It controls structure, addressing, and routing across disparate network nodes. Beneath the network layer are layers that control data transmission at frame (data link layer–transmitting data among physically connected machines) and bit (physical layer) levels. The network layer is the guardian between data and transport.

A VPN masks traffic and connections. It does not scan for malware. It does not block phishing scams, hacking attempts, viruses, or malware. A VPN can establish a perimeter. Within that perimeter, we can control those threats. But a VPN doesn’t do it alone. It requires software protection and, probably most importantly, user education about best practices.

Kill Phishing

This may be the easiest and hardest user behavior to control. Employees must understand that any email that looks like it’s a scam, is a scam. It’s terrible when users let scam artists get a foothold in their system; if that foothold is in the business, it could kill it. 

While effective filters can minimize the impact on corporate devices and e-mail accounts, the personal devices that have become so prevalent for employees are easy entry points for a phisher—if employees don’t recognize the obvious signs.

Care & Control

There are simply too many personal device apps that are potential vectors for network access and disruption. While the apps on a personal device are a threat, a much bigger threat are conveniences offered by, for example, Google, which offers to “manage” passwords. If someone who is a threat gets hold of an end-user device, access to the network security is a cinch. 

Users must be educated in secure password protocols. Do not store business network credentials on a device you aren’t sure you won’t lose. And since you can’t be sure, you won’t lose one.

On the bright side, biometric security features based on facial or fingerprint recognition have become more commonplace. A user can forget a password, but not a fingerprint. However, the Identity Management Institute notes that biometric systems are vulnerable to false positives and false negatives. And biometric information has to be stored somewhere; a hacker with access to that data has the keys to the castle.

Log Out

A logged-in personal device is an attack vector. Log out and put up with the annoyance of a suitable password. (Note that this post from Boston University suggests using a password manager, which gives anyone who can log in to the phone access to all the connected apps.) While on the topic of personal devices, avoid using one on your business network that has not been cleared and secured by your IT security staff.

Admin Best Practices

If VPNs are a virtual extension of network walls, administrators are charged with defending against network threats from both inside those walls and outside. A well-trained user community would be the best defense—if it weren’t for the fact that they’re human. And remember, a VPN can only protect traffic and connections within the network.

Use Standards-Based Connections

According to the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, standards-based connections are generally safer than custom-coded solutions. IKE/IPSec systems are generally more secure than custom-coded Secure Socket Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) VPNs, which work below the guardian Network Layer.

Use the Best Encryption

VPN traffic is encrypted and decrypted, obscuring both data and source. However, all encryption is not equal, even among the open-source Advanced Encryption Standards (AES) created by NIST in the 1990s. There are 128-bit, 196-bit, and 256-bit versions of AES.

You might guess that 256-bit encryption keys would be the most secure, and you’d be right. AES uses 14 rounds of encryption, each key shifting, transposing, or substituting 256-bit data blocks, making it more or less uncrackable. AES is also symmetrical: the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt the packets, making it faster than asymmetric encryption.

Know Your Enemy

This is a catch-all of best practices that comes back to the unfortunate fact that your users are your biggest vulnerability. Some ways you can mitigate that vulnerability include:

Education

Users who don’t know they’re endangering the corporate network will. Education of the user base has the best security ROI. If users who do know they’re endangering the network continue to do so, that’s another issue. It may have HR or physical security implications. In any event …

Secure Access to the Network

If staff don’t need mobile access to the VPN, don’t allow it. Control network access according to IP address. Vet devices to be used on the network. Push back on devices that can install potentially insecure applications, even if it’s a VP’s laptop. Block unnecessary access to social media applications through the network.

Push Security Features

VPNs secure data and connections, and provide a protected perimeter. For other security threats—those that are wittingly or unwittingly brought within the perimeter—other solutions are necessary. Push them to user devices where possible and update them regularly. Monitor sites that report zero-day exploits.

FAQs

Do VPNs Actually Improve Security?

Strong encryption, which is the heart of the VPN, secures data and identity in transit (and in the case of 256-bit AES, is for all intents and purposes, unexploitable). It doesn’t protect against end-point exploits or lack of user sophistication. Other solutions must be used to complement VPNs to secure the network.

Is There Something More Secure Than a VPN?

Many tout Tor as an alternative to a VPN. It’s an open-source product that obscures user identity by routing traffic through a network of volunteer servers. It’s free but can be slow and unreliable. A software-defined perimeter (SDP) is the manifestation of zero-trust principles in the form of an overlay network that masks system resources. These are particularly useful to protect against denial-of-service and other network-based attacks.

Almost every website now runs Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), which is subject to the limitations of its SSL/TLS encryption. Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) works well for small and scalable operations.

What Security Challenges Do VPNs Solve?

VPNs control access and provide identity management. They can obscure user activity from the Internet at large, offering some protection to password and credential information. With compatible and complementary security management software to protect against intrusion and insulate against exploits, they form the cornerstone of a secure access policy.

Bottom Line

A virtual private network is vital to secure any business network users or customers have access to. Its identity and access management tools complement the insufficiencies in HTTPS. It is a network-layer gateway that insulates applications and data from the underlying transport mechanism.

However, it can’t protect a network against the huge number of application-level exploits without being bolstered by robust anti-malware and anti-intrusion software, as well as a well-educated network workforce.

The post 6 VPN Security Best Practices for Secure Connection appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

How Secure Web Gateways Work

Secure web gateways intercept and filter internet traffic to block harmful websites and prevent malware infiltration to safeguard sensitive data and intellectual property. They monitor URLs, detect malware, and scan for viruses, while also operating as online proxies with advanced features such as AML, sandboxing, and web isolation. SWGs enforce policies based on user roles, locations, and content categories.

SWGs incorporate data loss prevention (DLP) to mitigate data leakage. They contain application controls for web-based programs and work in tandem with endpoint protection, network firewalls, and CASBs to protect against cyber threats such as zero-day vulnerabilities. SWGs provide a variety of deployment options, including cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid solutions, to meet the different demands of organizations.

Here are the eight steps on how secure web gateways work:

1. Traffic interception: Upon deploying SWGs, it’d quickly act as intermediaries between users and the internet. The inline deployment, generic routing encapsulation (GRE), proxy auto-configuration (PAC) files, or client agents transport traffic to SWGs.
2. Initial screening: As traffic flows, SWGs provide the first line of defense by employing uniform resource locator (URL) filtering to identify harmful patterns and block known malicious URLs and reduce zero-day attacks.
3. Content inspection: SWGs end web sessions to inspect content using URL filtering, advanced machine learning (AML), antivirus (AV) scanning, and sandboxing. They’d isolate web dangers by executing malicious code in a virtual environment to avoid harm.
4. Advanced threat protection: SWGs detect and eliminate various threats using antivirus and AML. They’d block targeted attacks in real time by simulating the organization’s environment with sandboxing.
5. Data protection and compliance: SWGs use data loss prevention (DLP) to monitor and prevent unwanted data transfers. They’d decrypt and inspect encrypted traffic to detect hidden dangers while assuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
6. Security policy enforcement: SWGs control access to web-based apps and apply rules based on user roles, locations, and content kinds to ensure data security. It would follow information security rules for secure web resources usage.
7. Integration with other security technologies: SWGs work with endpoint protection tools, network firewalls, cloud access security brokers (CASBs), and other security tools to improve your overall security.
8. Deployment options: SWGs offer different deployment options. Users may choose cloud-based SWGs for flexibility and scalability, on-premises for control, or a combination of the two for optimal results.

SWGs are implemented as software on existing servers (physical, virtual, or containerized) or as appliances (virtual or hardware) for security-focused companies, with cloud-based solutions becoming more prevalent. A proper implementation should maximize the benefits of SWGs’ security features and reduce the challenges brought by its complex integration with other tools.

Top Features SWGs Offer

Secure web gateways serve as essential components of cybersecurity infrastructure, particularly for companies that focus on data security and regulatory compliance. SWGs improve network security through key features, including URL filtering, malware protection, DLP, app control, SSL/TLS inspection, and bandwidth management. They also enhance user and admin experience through behavioral analytics and cloud app visibility and control features.

URL Filtering

SWGs use URL filtering to prevent access to dangerous or inappropriate websites using predetermined lists. This function enforces internet usage regulations, protecting users from hazardous online content. As a result, it lowers the chance of malware infections and provides a secure surfing environment.

Malware Protection

SWGs employ strong antivirus and anti-malware tools to detect and eliminate dangerous software. SWGs use signature-based and behavioral analysis techniques to proactively identify and neutralize known and developing threats, offering real-time protection against viruses, trojans, adware, and other types of malware.

Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

The data loss prevention functionalities in SWGs track online traffic to prevent illegal data transfers. SWGs ensure compliance with data protection rules by screening outgoing traffic for sensitive or secret information. It prevents data leaks, protects organizational assets, and ensures data integrity.

Application Control

SWGs are responsible for managing access to web-based applications in accordance with your business policy. The application control feature enables firms to control which applications their employees can use, assuring productivity and security. SWGs can prevent unapproved or non-business-related applications, reducing the risks associated with untested software.

SSL/TLS Inspection

SWGs apply secure sockets layer (SSL) and transport layer security (TLS) inspection to detect hidden risks in encrypted online traffic. By decrypting and examining HTTPS traffic, SWGs can detect and block dangerous content that might be hidden within encrypted conversations. Because attackers can also use encryption to hide malware and other dangerous activity, the SSL/TLS inspection feature addresses this issue for comprehensive security.

Bandwidth Management

SWGs allocate network bandwidth by prioritizing crucial business processes over less important ones. They dynamically allocate resources, providing enough bandwidth for mission-critical applications while reducing non-essential traffic like streaming video, resulting in improved network performance and user experience.

Behavioral Analytics

SWGs leverage powerful behavioral analytics to monitor and evaluate user activity trends in real time. SWGs can detect anomalies and suspicious activity that indicate security threats or policy violations using AI and machine learning algorithms. Its preventive strategy enables you to quickly identify and manage the risks caused by insider threats or external attacks that target user behavior.

Cloud Application Visibility & Control

SWGs enable visibility and control over cloud-based applications that users access. They discover and categorize cloud applications utilized throughout the network, allowing administrators to apply policies based on application categories or specific applications. SWGs guarantee that enterprises maintain security and compliance standards, while also allowing employees to use cloud services safely and productively.

5 Benefits of Secure Web Gateways

Organizations acquire advantages of using SWGs in terms of managing their overall cybersecurity. Benefits include powerful threat protection by blocking dangerous websites and apps, limiting sensitive data leaks, and simple integration into SASE architectures. These also provide adaptable security solutions for a variety of industries and business types, as well as secure remote work environments with enforced security standards.

Enhance Threat Protection

SWGs effectively prevent access to harmful websites and applications, reduce malware infections, and enforce compliance requirements. The complete defense SWGs offer protects users, data, and the organization against a variety of cyber threats to ensure a stronger network security posture.

Prevent Data Loss

By monitoring and restricting the transmission of critical information, SWGs prevent the harmful impact of data leaks. They protect consumer data, credit card numbers, personally identifiable information (PII), and intellectual property from unintentional or intentional disclosure while ensuring data confidentiality and integrity.

Support SASE Architecture

SWGs work well with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) structures. SWGs, like cloud access security brokers (CASB), zero trust network access (ZTNA), and software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solutions, help create a unified and comprehensive approach to network security and connectivity. Using SASE improves operational efficiency and reduces the need for complex tool integrations.

Offer Adaptability Across Industries

With its flexible nature, SWGs cater to different types of businesses, including those with distributed workforces, regulated industries, cloud service users, SMEs, high-risk sectors, and e-commerce corporations. They offer consistent and scalable security measures across several locations and user types, delivering tailored protection that meets unique company demands and regulatory standards.

Enable Secure Remote Work

SWGs seamlessly apply security standards across remote work environments. This capability enables secure web access for remote employees, allowing them to authenticate and utilize the internet safely from any place while maintaining company security.

5 Challenges of SWGs

Despite their security benefits, deploying SWGs sometimes presents challenges in combining security and operational flexibility. Integrating SWGs with other tools can be complicated, resulting in file access delays and needing large maintenance efforts. SWGs may also impose file size and type restrictions, resulting in additional operational constraints.

Complex Integration

Integrating SWGs into existing security infrastructure, particularly in a SASE framework, complicates network administration. For a seamless operation and effective policy enforcement across varied settings and security components, make sure to conduct a comprehensive planning and coordination within your security team and vendor solutions.

Delayed File Access

During peak traffic periods, SWGs can encounter queuing and rate limiting, which can cause file access delays. The delay occurs as files are scanned and approved, reducing overall workforce productivity by slowing crucial procedures that rely on rapid access to data.

Large Resources Needed for Maintenance

SWGs’ efficacy is dependent on keeping up with the newest security updates and threat intelligence. However, the continual effort and resources required for frequent changes, such as cost, specialized skills, and time, can put an added strain on IT departments. This challenge may result in delayed upgrades or gaps in security coverage that exposes networks to new vulnerabilities.

Limited File Size

SWGs impose size constraints on files that can be processed, which typically range between 15 MB and 400 MB. Exceeding these restrictions may result in restricted file transfers or files that bypass scanning completely. The restriction is intended to reduce the danger of malware disguised in huge files, but it can also interrupt workflows when genuine files exceed the specified limits.

Restricted File Types

To improve security, SWGs restrict the file types that can be transferred. While this technique tries to limit the risk of malware and data breaches linked with specific file types, it may impede productivity when users must work with unsupported formats or face restrictions on vital file types required for business operations.

How SWGs Protect In-Office & Remote Employees

The increasing use of cloud infrastructure and apps has surpassed traditional on-premises data center security mechanisms and network equipment. As employees progressively adopt cloud-based technologies from various locations and devices, the problem of ensuring strong security across dispersed networks becomes apparent. The shift to modern secure web gateways provides a solution through the following:

• Consistent security rules: Using SWGs enforces uniform security policies in both in-office and remote locations. It ensures that all employees meet the same cyber threat prevention criteria and protocols.
• Remote access security: Implementing SWGs ensures that distant personnel have secure access to business resources by using strong authentication and encryption technologies to protect data transmission over public networks.
• Real-time threat prevention: Constantly monitoring and filtering internet traffic through SWGs can identify and block malware, phishing attempts, and other harmful activities that could compromise both in-office and remote devices.
• Data protection: Utilizing SWGs’ advanced features, such as data loss prevention, prevent illegal data transfers and leaks, whether employees access sensitive information on the office premises or remotely.
• Comprehensive reporting: Employing SWGs offer features that produce detailed data on web usage and security incidents across all endpoints. It allows IT departments to maintain visibility and respond quickly to any threats regardless of the location.

Through SWGs, organizations can improve overall security, lower operational costs, and streamline administration operations by combining or removing old web proxy appliances. The shift to SWGs not only strengthens defenses against different cyber threats, but it also provides a better user experience by assuring seamless and safe access to important apps and data regardless of where employees are or what devices they use.

Comparing SWGs with Other Technologies

Other technologies work alongside SWGs to improve security. These include firewalls, CASB, SASE, endpoint protection technologies, and IAM solutions. Each has distinct capabilities, such as network filtering, cloud application control, and endpoint security. When combined with SWGs, they enable multilayer security against advanced persistent threats, ensuring complete protection for your business assets.

This table compares the key functions, security controls, integrations, and deployment choices for SWGs and other security tools:

Firewalls

SWGs and firewalls play distinct functions in network security. Firewalls scan packets at the network’s perimeter and use predetermined rules to allow or prohibit traffic based on known threat signatures. SWGs work at the application level. They inspect web traffic in greater detail to impose policies based on user behavior, content, and application protocols. The integration of SWGs and firewalls emphasizes their complementary function in overall network defense.

Initially, SWGs concentrated on online traffic filtering, whereas firewalls handled all network traffic, including web data. Both technologies evolved over time, with providers incorporating additional features that blurred the distinctions. Modern firewalls have improved app-level security, but they may still rely on stream-based AV screening, which could overlook sophisticated web-based threats.

Explore our guide to learn about the common types of firewalls, including their pros, cons, capabilities, and more.

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASBs)

SWGs and CASBs both aim to protect data and regulate access, but they differ in scope and usefulness. SWGs primarily safeguard online traffic by filtering and analyzing application-level content and imposing web-usage-based regulations. In contrast, CASBs provide broader visibility and control over cloud apps, including SaaS platforms, as well as granular access controls and data security features via native API connections.

SWGs give critical traffic and log information to CASBs, for thorough monitoring and control over app usage and data transfers. CASBs improve SWG deployments by extending protection to cloud apps beyond regular web traffic, ensuring uniform security policies across all digital interactions. The combination of these functions works within a SASE framework to improve online traffic and cloud application security.

Check out our review of the leading CASB solutions, covering their key features, pricing information, advantages, and more.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

SWGs and SASE both focus on protecting internet traffic, but with distinct goals and integration methodologies. SWG has traditionally filtered and enforced online traffic restrictions independently. In contrast, SASE combines SWG with ZTNA, CASB, and other network security services to create a unified cloud-delivered solution.

SWGs within SASE provide full protection by intercepting and analyzing user traffic while employing numerous security engines, including IP and domain reputation-based threat protection, anti-malware, and data loss prevention. This integration improves security posture, visibility, and provides consistent policy enforcement across all traffic types in a distributed and cloud-based environment.

Discover the top SASE solutions and learn more about their capabilities, limitations, cost, and best use cases.

Endpoint Protection Tools

Endpoint protection solutions and SWGs have the same purpose of defending enterprises from cyber attacks, but they function at distinct locations in the security architecture. SWG filters and secures internet traffic at the gateway level. It intercepts and inspects traffic to prevent malicious material and enforce policies. Endpoint protection tools, such as antivirus software, are installed directly on devices to protect against local threats and ensure device security.

The integration of SWG with endpoint protection improves overall security by extending threat prevention capabilities from the network gateway to individual endpoints. It provides a comprehensive protection against malware and other cyber threats throughout the enterprise.

Identity & Access Management (IAM)

IAM is a framework that ensures that the right individuals have access to the correct resources at the right time. It administers user identities, authentication, and authorization processes throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure. The distinction between SWG and IAM is in their focus: IAM controls user identities and access privileges, whereas SWG secures web traffic and enforces content filtering policies.

Both technologies play a role in increasing security by enforcing policies and permissions based on user identity. It reduces the risks associated with illegal access and data breaches. Integration of IAM and SWG entails using IAM systems to enforce access controls and permissions at the user level within the SWG. This guarantees that users that access web resources via SWG are authenticated and authorized appropriately.

Read our comprehensive guide of the top IAM tools, highlighting their features, benefits, and more.

Bottom Line: Deploy Secure Web Gateways for Enhanced Protection

Organizations that use secure web gateways reduce the risks of unauthorized access, data breaches, and malware infections. Utilizing SWGs not only protects sensitive data, but also ensures regulatory compliance and operational continuity. Combining SWGs with complementary security solutions creates a layered defense strategy that improves protection across networks, endpoints, and cloud environments.

SWGs, along with other security tools, are integral components of modern network security. Read our detailed guide to better understand how each component plays its part in the overall network security architecture.

Drew Robb contributed to this article.

The post What Is a Secure Web Gateway? Features, Benefits & Challenges appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

Why Do You Need Network Firewalls?

Network firewalls provide security not only by monitoring and filtering internet traffic, but also by incorporating advanced features such as automation, integrations, and sandboxing. Modern firewalls can be placed in virtual settings to protect cloud data and remote branches while also incorporating threat information to guard against sophisticated cyber assaults.

By using network firewalls, you can:

• Secure branch offices: Provide critical security for small and home offices to ensure reliable internet connectivity and safeguarding sensitive data.
• Protect low-risk environments: Offer a cheap method of preventing illegal access and mitigating common hazards for businesses using minimal technology.
• Add a layer of defense: Increase the overall security of servers, endpoints, and network segments by adding another layer of protection.
• Control internal network segmentation: Isolate distinct network segments to allow you to regulate access, bandwidth, and prevent malware proliferation.
• Perform early high-throughput filtering: Reduce the load on more advanced security solutions like next-generation firewalls (NGFW) and web application firewalls (WAF).

How Network Firewalls Work

Successful network firewall operation relies on the exact configuration by the IT team, administrators, and endpoint users. The key tasks involve selecting a customized firewall solution. Following the firewall setup, IT teams and admins configure firewall rules and policies. Then, users will initiate steps to protect devices, establish firewall zones, implement access controls, conduct evaluations and tests, and upgrade device settings.

Here’s how you can ensure that your network firewall works effectively:

1. Choose a firewall solution: Select the optimal firewall type by considering the client’s needs and previous security difficulties or threats encountered. Choose VPN-capable firewalls for remote access security.
2. Secure the device: Assign unique administrator credentials and change simple network management protocol (SNMP) settings to improve your firewall security and overall network efficiency.
3. Create firewall zones: Divide the network into zones with specific access rules to establish network security borders. Place your highly confidential data in internal zones to add an extra layer of security against unauthorized access.
4. Develop and implement a firewall policy: Configure access control lists (ACLs) with specific parameters for each zone. Document policies so that clients and administrators can easily reference them.
5. Test the firewall: Scan for vulnerabilities and perform penetration testing by simulating hacking efforts to confirm that your security measures and your firewall effectively prevent unauthorized access.
6. Update the device: Regularly examine firewall logs and update software components to keep cybersecurity defenses up to date. Every six months, reevaluate the ACLs to verify they’re still effective and relevant.

Network firewalls have two categories: hardware and software firewalls. Hardware firewalls are physical components attached to network hardware, such as modems, that protect big networks from severe hacking efforts. Software firewalls are installed directly on computers to protect against low-level attacks by monitoring and filtering application-level traffic, with a focus on illegal login attempts.

When administrators properly manage traffic and set permissions, network firewalls then analyze traffic at the packet level, inspecting headers to ensure data integrity. This will serve as essential tools for securing businesses and devices against unwanted access and improving network security through strict access controls and configuration management.

What Vulnerabilities Do Network Firewalls Protect Against?

Network firewalls are security defenses against vulnerabilities such as backdoors, denial of service attacks, and email bombs. They also guard against macros, viruses, header manipulation, and zero-day vulnerabilities. Effective network protection requires strong settings as well as proactive security measures. The following are some of the most prevalent vulnerabilities that network firewalls guard against.

• Backdoors: Exploit hidden access points in firewall code to bypass security. Regular verification and change management prevent exploitation.
• Denial of service (DoS): Overwhelms servers with unanswerable requests, causing crashes and service unavailability.
• Email bomb: Floods email systems with messages, incapacitating them from handling legitimate emails.
• Header manipulation: Alters packet headers to deceive firewalls, allowing unauthorized traffic. Mitigate by validating and limiting exposure to HTTP header vulnerabilities.
• Macros: Execute harmful actions with malicious scripts in documents or applications, potentially crashing computers or compromising data.
• Remote logins: Compromise sensitive data. Hackers can access files on your device through unauthorized logins.
• Viruses: Self-replicate and cause extensive damage, from nuisance messages to complete system compromise.
• Zero-day vulnerabilities: Exploit unknown to vendors allows attackers to breach systems before patches are available.

What Are the Different Types of Network Firewalls?

Each type of firewall has distinct features tailored to certain security requirements, ranging from basic network firewalls to extensive application-level protection and advanced threat identification. Choosing the appropriate kind is determined by the network environment’s complexity and specific requirements.

• Traditional firewalls: Focus on header inspections. Include packet filtering, stateful inspection, session filtering, proxy service, and deep packet inspection to guard the endpoints and network segments.
• Unified threat management (UTM): Adds more capabilities than the traditional network firewalls. Offer more advanced scanning of the packet headers and perform basic application layer filtering. 
• Next-generation firewalls (NGFW): Combine standard functionality with deep packet inspection and intrusion prevention, which are critical for advanced threat security in large companies and high-traffic networks.
• Application layer firewalls (WAF): Secure individual programs by filtering traffic at the application layer, which is critical for web applications and enterprises that handle sensitive information.
• Database firewalls: Apply specialized inspection of HTTP/HTTPS to prevent any database threats. Improve the data throughput and reduce the slowdown brought by large data flow or high traffic.
• Cloud-based firewalls: Offer specialized defense against cloud-based threats by mitigating unwanted access to private networks. Provide visibility and control of network and app traffic across the multi cloud environment.
• Container firewalls: Secure networks for container-based applications. Allow users the layer 7 (application) visibility into Kubernetes environments. Can be deployed with DevOps tools and establish a seamless CI/CD pipeline deployment.
• Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS): Provide centralized management of firewalls, delivered through a service subscription. They utilize NGFW capabilities via cloud and deploy agents to endpoint devices.

Firewalls have progressed from the traditional static packet filtering to dynamic packet and application-layer inspection. Now, more modern types of firewalls incorporate unified threat management to improve security against outbound threats such as command and control traffic. However, they can’t address all vulnerabilities, so it’s better to use additional security measures such as SASE, microsegmentation, and more.

Compare the traditional network firewalls with the other common types of firewalls and determine their best applications through our guide.

7 Advantages of Network Firewalls

Aside from their primary function of filtering network traffic, firewalls provide rapid data throughput, cost-effective deployment, and comprehensive protection mechanisms against external attacks and malware. Their capacity to manage network performance and protect cloud storage highlights their importance in modern cybersecurity approaches.

These are the most common network firewall benefits:

• Enhance specialized effectiveness: Improve specialized efficiency by excelling at certain security tasks such as filtering network traffic, enforcing access controls, and identifying malicious activity using established rules and criteria.
• Ensure high speed and data throughput: Process data quickly, reducing the impact of high speed data on network performance and promoting more efficient communication across networks.
• Enable rapid installation and setup: Deploy and configure rapidly, allowing enterprises to implement strong security measures while maintaining business continuity with less inconvenience.
• Protect against external threats: Prevent unwanted access attempts and secure login credentials from being intercepted by malicious actors outside the company, guaranteeing network integrity and privacy.
• Defend against viruses and malware: Serve as a firewall against internet-borne threats by analyzing incoming and outgoing traffic and blocking potentially hazardous content before it enters the network.
• Manage network performance: Monitor and maintain the overall network performance and availability by filtering out unnecessary or dangerous traffic to ensure more effective data processing.
• Secure cloud storage: Stop unauthorized access and safeguard sensitive data stored remotely, hence improving your overall data security and regulatory compliance management procedures.

6 Disadvantages of Network Firewalls

While network firewalls provide significant benefits for network security, they also have drawbacks that businesses must consider. These include limitations in blocking sophisticated attacks to user access restriction. Understanding these drawbacks encourages the use of complementary security solutions that effectively mitigate risks and provide robust protection against newer cyber threats.

• Occasionally fail to block complex assaults: Lack defense against advanced attacks targeting applications or HTML-based threats, leaving it exposed to exploitation.
• Can be misled by manipulated headers: Vulnerable to attacks that manipulate packet headers to evade firewall defenses, potentially allowing unauthorized access.
• Have restricted capacity: Struggle with high traffic volumes, which limits its usefulness in larger or busier networks and impedes smooth operation.
• Require large investment: Cost additional expenses for expert consulting and deployment, making budget allocation difficult.
• Remain vulnerable to malware attacks: Need extra security measures against advanced malware that evades firewall defenses.
• Restrict user access: Limit network access per user, which may slow down processes and lead to exploits that complicate network management.

8 Network Firewall Best Practices

Adopting recommended best practices optimizes firewall performance and overall network security. You can further strengthen your defenses by understanding, implementing, and frequently evaluating these measures. Configuring security settings, employing multiple firewall layers, microsegmentation, following the least privilege principle, monitoring logs, and ensuring reliable backups all give instant protection as well as long-term resilience.

Understand Your Firewall Policies

Start by examining current configurations and mapping network architecture to gain a better understanding of its history and regulations. Analyze the origins of existing regulations, including historical security issues and revisions. Create a comprehensive logging system to frequently analyze and update rules for relevance. Document configurations, network diagrams, and security policies for auditing in order to avoid conflicts and maintain efficiency.

Learn more about creating a firewall policy in our guide, which includes the steps and a downloadable template for your own use.

Configure Security Settings

Set strict rules that allow only pre-approved traffic, which ensures maximum security but may impede workflow. Alternatively, use less specified but rigorous parameters that are aligned with regular actions to balance usability and security. Both techniques seek to protect networks from unwanted access while supporting operational requirements to differing degrees of restriction.

Integrate with Secure Access Server Edge (SASE) Tools

Using SASE, you can combine firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), cloud access security broker (CASB), and zero trust network access (ZTNA). It improves security event context in real time and lowers management overhead by unifying platforms. SASE, which Gartner expects to be extensively adopted in 2024, provides increased visibility and flexibility to maintain strong security regulations as remote work scenarios become more prevalent.

Use Multiple Firewall Layers

Implementing multiple firewall layers boosts your security posture by configuring perimeter, internal, and application-level to address distinct network threats. Use a firewall administration tool to centralize control and improve management efficiency. Regularly update rules to lower attack surfaces and strengthen defenses against various cyber threats.

Implement Microsegmentation

Microsegmentation restricts user access to specified network segments, limiting unauthorized traversal of the entire network. This improves security by separating important assets and mitigating the consequences of future intrusions. Unlike traditional firewalls, which focus on external threats, microsegmentation provides inside defense, preventing attackers from moving laterally around the network for comprehensive protection against external and internal threats.

Adhere to the Least Privilege Principle

Limit access to the minimum essentials for specified roles. Use NGFWs for identity-based controls to enforce rigorous access regulations. Conduct a firewall audit and update permissions on a regular basis to revoke superfluous access, lower the risk of illegal entry, and align firewall setups with best security practices to avoid future breaches.

Examine Logs & Monitor Activities

To capture and analyze network traffic, enable firewall logging and evaluate it on a regular basis. Set up automated alerts for crucial occurrences and keep logs protected for simple retrieval. Analyze logs to find anomalies, identify threats, and improve firewall configurations. This strategy enhances threat detection, troubleshooting, and overall security by allowing for informed judgments and optimizing firewall configurations.

Ensure Reliable Backups

Maintain consistent backups by routinely saving latest setups and firewall settings. Schedule frequent backups to reduce data loss during system failures or security breaches. Backups should be stored securely and restoration techniques should be tested to verify their usefulness. This method protects against faults, hardware failures, and malicious assaults. Reliable backups maintain continuity and respond quickly from severe events or cyber attacks.

Discover how to improve the security of your network firewall by reading our comprehensive guide to best practices for firewall management.

3 Network Firewall Solutions

Network firewall solutions enhance network monitoring and management accuracy. Leading solutions like Cisco Secure, FortiSASE solution, and Palo Alto Networks NGFW combine advanced network firewall features with other security tools to deliver strong security and comprehensive protection for small to large businesses.

Cisco Secure Firewall

Cisco’s Secure Firewall solution offers advanced protection against emerging risks in data centers, branch offices, and cloud settings. It connects with your current network infrastructure, delivering strong security without sacrificing performance, particularly when inspecting encrypted communications. Cisco’s solutions include a 30-day free trial and a customizable price calculator via AWS Marketplace. Custom quotations are available through Cisco sales.

FortiSASE Solution

Fortinet’s FortiSASE solution combines several security features into a single product or modular solution, including FWaaS, NGFW, and secure SD-WAN. It enables secure access to the web, cloud, and apps for hybrid workforces. Fortinet SASE combines security features such as SWG, ZTNA, and CASB into a single OS with centralized control to provide full network protection. Cisco provides free live demos, and custom pricing is available upon request.

Dive deeper into our comprehensive review of FortiSASE to better determine its pros, cons, key features, pricing details, and more.

Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall

Palo Alto Networks NGFW safeguards enterprises through unified security and real-time deep learning. It categorizes all data, including encrypted traffic, based on application, user, and content to enable exact security controls. Its management tool, Panorama, streamlines administration by providing dynamic updates across firewalls, threat prevention, and more. The tool includes a 30-day free trial. You may estimate the pricing via Azure and AWS calculators.

Explore the leading NGFW solutions in our detailed review covering their key features, pros, cons, pricing, and more.

Bottom Line: Enhance Security with Network Firewalls

Traditional network firewalls have been effective, but evolving digital threats demand upgrades. Beyond threat prevention, the increasing network ecosystem, which includes both public and private clouds, presents issues. Network firewalls, including virtual ones in the cloud, are critical to perimeter security. They supplement a broader security approach that includes endpoint, application, data security, policy administration, and operations to provide complete protection.

Aside from firewalls, secure web gateways (SWGs) can also help in network parameters security. Discover their complementary roles and differences in our SWGs and firewalls guide.

Drew Robb contributed to this article.

The post What Are Network Firewalls? Benefits, Types & Best Practices appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

To truly understand the differences, get to know each solution at a basic level and then examine key differences. This information can inform how and when firewalls and SWGs can be used separately or even together.

SWG vs Firewall Overview

This table provides a quick overview of major capabilities and deployment options:

What Is a Secure Web Gateway?

A secure web gateway is a security tool that controls traffic to and from the internet to a network or to remote devices that connect to the internet through the SWG. SWGs can be deployed locally to protect specific networks, but many choose cloud-based deployments to take advantage of scale and to protect remote users and branch networks with a consolidated solution.

To enforce control over traffic, a SWG will:

• Block malicious traffic: Uses lists of known-malicious URLs and websites to block traffic to and from these IP addresses to cut off possible infection vectors.
• Deny undesired content: Applies administrator-defined blacklists (aka denylists) to block user access to undesired websites and applications (gambling, pornography, etc.).
• Manage network bandwidth: Limits the amount of bandwidth to less critical functions, such as streaming media, to ensure sufficient bandwidth for critical business functions.
• Monitor employee behavior: Enforces policies, simple rules, and even artificial intelligence (AI) anomaly detection to detect and block unwanted user behavior.
• Prevent discovery: Obscures IP addresses and assets protected by the SWG by inserting a web proxy in between the assets and the internet sources.

Advanced SWG tools often incorporate threat intelligence feeds and data loss prevention (DLP) inspection for sensitive data.

What Is a Firewall?

Firewalls are security controls that control traffic at the border of a network, a host-based or device-specific protection (server, router, PC), an application, a database, or even between two network segments. The most common type of firewall focuses on controlling traffic entering and exiting a network, but more advanced firewalls add features for email security, URL filtering, and malware detection.

When enforcing traffic control, firewalls will:

• Apply policies: Examines packets and drops them based on packet filtering rules, blocked ports, and even complex access rules such as port knocking.
• Block bad traffic: Uses stateful inspection, session filtering, and circuit-level gateway proxy capabilities to drop traffic unrelated to existing communication requests.
• Detect attacks: Inspects network traffic for signs of malware and even, for next generation firewalls (NGFW), decrypts traffic to analyze malicious behavior.

More complex firewall solutions, such as NGFW and unified threat management (UTM) will incorporate features associated with other types of security solutions. For example, they can screen data with an antivirus inspection, block malicious URLs like a SWG or domain name service (DNS), or inspect email like an email gateway. 

Key Similarities & Differences of SWGs vs Firewalls

Secure web gateways and firewalls, once distinct, now share features that deliver similar benefits, advantages, and disadvantages. To find the remaining distinguishing aspects, we dig deeper into the benefits, pros, and cons of these technologies.

Notable Benefits Comparison

As security solutions, firewalls and secure web gateways enjoy nearly identical benefits because they perform very similar roles to protect data flows at the edge of the network. Comparisons also become challenging because different types of firewalls offer different capabilities, with simple, traditional firewalls providing limited overlap with SWGs and NGFW providing strong overlap with SWG features.

Both SWGs and firewalls offer the following primary benefits:

• Protect against data loss: Enforce policies, detect anomalous behavior, and inspect data flows for regulated, sensitive, or secret information. 
• Screen attacks: Filter known-malicious domains, enable sandbox file inspection, and detect malicious packets using signatures, indicators, AI, or machine learning (ML).
• Simplify management: Manages the consolidated features that might otherwise require separate, non-integrated tools through a single installation and management dashboard.
• Throttle unproductive content: Block, limit access, or limit bandwidth to streaming media, gambling sites, pornographic sites, and other defined sites and applications.

The primary differences are primarily device, model, and implementation specific. Some vendors will focus SWG benefits on controlling website traffic and firewall benefits on the internal network data. In part, this is because the SWG focuses on analyzing data at the application layer and most firewalls focus on the network layer information of packets.

However, they often fail to note the types of firewalls that also scan packets at the application layer such as NGFW or web application firewalls (WAF). While it can be academically useful to draw distinct lines, in reality, the best SWGs and firewalls have heavy overlap of capabilities.

Primary Pros Comparison

The strongest pro for both SWGs and firewalls is good security protection against attacks. The distinct and shared advantages to their use reveal the specific ways in which each technology provides protection. SWGs provide strong security for email and HTTPS-encrypted traffic. Firewalls block internal network threats, apply quick policy-based filtering, and some firewalls can also inspect HTTPS-encrypted traffic.

Both SWGs and Firewalls can be installed in the cloud for high scalability and performance. SWGs and certain types of firewalls can also save significant money compared to buying the component tools separately, such as mail security, proxy gateways, data loss protection, and antivirus software.

	Firewall	SWG
Email protection
Monitor for network threats (intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS))	Some firewall models (NGFW, UTM, etc.)
Rapid policy-based threat filtering
Cloud-enabled scalability	Depends on installation	Depends on installation
HTTPS encrypted traffic malware inspection	Some firewall models (NGFW, WAF, FWaaS, etc.)
Save money and time compared to buying separate solutions for equivalent protection	Some firewall models (NGFW, UTM, FWaaS, etc.)

Significant Cons In Common

The benefits and pros make a strong argument that every organization needs both SWG and firewalls to add defense in depth security. Both technologies share the exact same drawbacks, which can introduce some hesitation to purchase, yet they don’t significantly undermine either solution.

• Complex configuration: While more simple to manage and maintain than a suite of tools, the consolidated features of advanced SWGs and firewalls create much more complex and time-consuming tools to initially setup and configure.
• High costs: Although cost effective in comparison to many individually purchased solutions, if you don’t need all of the features, advanced SWGs and firewalls are quite expensive to purchase, install, and configure.
• Variable capabilities: The same feature won’t perform the same or provide similar capabilities for all products; most SWG and firewalls offer ‘reports’ but the type of reports and the detailed contents will vary extremely from product to product.

The primary cons can be summarized as product confusion. An inexpensive, simple firewall won’t provide the same protection as an expensive NGFW, but some of the features will be labeled similarly. Likewise, while implementing three to five separate solutions takes much more time than setting up a robust SWG, most companies set up the separate solutions over time and can become overwhelmed by options setting up a complex tool.

Should You Use SWGs & Firewalls Together or Separately?

Most large organizations use both secure web gateways and a variety of firewalls. However, many small and medium businesses (SMBs) start with a firewall for basic security and incorporate a SWG as their security needs mature.

Firewall and SWG capabilities will also be incorporated into other modern security solutions to protect remote users and remote assets. For example, Enterprise virtual public networks (VPNs) enable safer access for remote users by adding basic firewall and SWG URL or malware filtering to cloud-based VPN infrastructure.

Secure service edge (SSE) incorporates FWaaS and SWG capabilities with other security technologies to protect remote users, application data, and cloud resources. Similarly, secure access service edge (SASE) builds off of SSE remote security to add software defined wide area network (SD-WAN) networks for location independent segmentation.

All of these solutions play important roles in securing businesses, non-profits, and government agencies, but buyers need to fully understand their own needs to understand which product provides the best fit. Additionally, given the wide range of capabilities within any product category, or even the products from a specific vendor, buyers also need to fully test tools to ensure that the theoretical capabilities match needs and expectations.

Use Case Comparisons

To best illustrate when and how to use SWG and firewall technologies, it helps to consider a variety of specific use cases. When exploring the needs to secure a headquarters, remote contractors, an international office architecture, or a cloud-based application, the benefits of and need for SWG and firewall solutions will vary considerably.

Headquarters Protection

A municipal government maintains a central headquarters building (city hall) with a data center. Previously established firewall protection is sufficient but they want additional protection against rising internet threats. They might add an on-prem SWG appliance to improve the layers of security between users and potential threats.

Remote Contractor Protection

A medical transcription company employs thousands of international and domestic contractors that use bring-your-own-device (BYOD) laptops and phones to access web-based applications (Google Docs, Office 365, Box, etc.). To protect against malware uploaded to company repositories, require all contractors to access resources through a secure web gateway that monitors up and down traffic for signs of trouble.

Multi-Office Global Infrastructure

A growing restaurant chain continues to rapidly expand overseas and needs to protect a wide number of restaurant networks, branch headquarters, and even monitor remote users. Without the sunk cost of existing infrastructure, they can deploy FWaaS and SWG in tandem to protect a wide variety of network and user data connections with reduced deployment and configuration requirements.

High Performance Web App

A streaming site builds cloud-based infrastructure to host and run the back-end applications to deliver video and audio content. Without users, much of the SWG features won’t be useful for this environment, and even a powerful NGFW would cause too many delays with packet inspections. Instead, deploy simple packet-screening firewalls, WAFs, and database firewalls to protect specific components of the architecture with minimal operational delay.

SWG & Firewall Considerations

To determine which solution or combination of solutions might be the best fit, a buyer needs to answer specific questions about how the technology will fit into the existing security stack and the resources available to use it. Honest answers to these questions filter out unrealistic hopes and deliver practical, functional solutions.

Replace Existing Technology or Add-on More Technology?

An organization with extensive and older legacy solutions might be ready to rip and replace all solutions with a multi-purpose solution. However, a handful of expensive, recently purchased solutions make it more attractive to add on a separate solution to add specific features. Pick a full-featured SWG or firewall solution when performing rip-and-replace, or select a tool with the specific security features required when adding on to the security stack.

What Architecture Is Required: Full-Control, Cloud, or SaaS?

Organizations with heavy compliance or secrecy needs require full control of all security controls in a local data center, but those prioritizing scalability requirements might prefer cloud-based solutions. SaaS solutions remove direct control and often reduce customization options, but organizations of all sizes enjoy the reduced maintenance and management demands of SaaS solutions. Select the correct SWG or firewall configuration to match the required architecture.

How Much Delay Is Tolerable?

High speed applications and communications systems can’t tolerate extensive packet and connection inspections. Data, connections, and security controls need to be streamlined to balance security with high speed data transmission. Different combinations of SWGs and firewall types can be used to perform specific security screens for different data flows within the network architecture for effective and rapid information transmission.

Is There a Resource Match?

Each tool will require different financial and technical resources to install, configure, maintain, and operate the solution. When comparing solutions, factor in all expected expenses and labor requirements to ensure sufficient resources to effectively reach the tool’s potential capabilities. This analysis will prevent the wasteful acquisition of expensive shelf-ware or a tool that can’t be used effectively with the current resources.

Does the Security Solution Fit the Existing Security Stack?

All security tools must fit into an existing security stack and processes without too many traumatic overhauls. Verify integration capabilities of the SWG or firewall under consideration with other related security tools such as IDS/IDP, privilege access management (PAM), security information and event management (SIEM), and network monitoring. This will ensure smooth transitions and compatibility with existing processes.

Bottom Line: Deploy Both SWG & Firewall Capabilities

As SWGs and firewalls continue to add features, advanced versions may reach the point where only one solution might provide effective security. Of course, that single solution will be quite expensive and complicated to implement, so expect more simple solutions to continue to satisfy needs for years to come. Once you figure out which solution(s) might be a good fit, contact the company for a demo and come armed with a list of features to explore in depth.

SWGs and firewalls help to secure the network perimeter, to consider other solutions might be required for a full security stack, read more about network security architecture.

The post Secure Web Gateway vs Firewall: Learn the Difference appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

How Does SOAR Work?

In general, a SOAR platform’s user interface allows security teams to manage connections between all their existing security hardware and software. It also enables them to create workflows that trigger automated actions when the platform detects a particular threat and to respond to legitimate issues in a quick timeframe.

Security administrators typically have a management console that they use to navigate between the integrated security products, viewing data from multiple sources in a single pane of glass. This is particularly useful for designing cross-platform alerts. For example, admins might want to push phishing emails in Microsoft Outlook accounts to a particular Slack channel; they can set up a workflow to enable that.

SOAR is mainly concerned with streamlining incident response processes so they happen more easily, more consistently, and more accurately. Without automation, incident response is a shot in the dark. Sometimes it works, but other times, manual remediation procedures are too slow, and the threat actor makes it farther than they should or completely takes down a system or network.

A strong SOAR solution should include standard orchestration features, automated processes and workflows, and incident response capabilities that work. SOAR has multiple benefits, but it’s a relatively new technology and presents challenges if not implemented and tested well. It’s beneficial for teams that want to streamline their security operations. When evaluating potential SOAR platforms to buy, consider solutions that integrate with your existing tech stack.

3 Components of SOAR

SOAR combines the three major functions of cybersecurity — process orchestration and planning, automated workflows, and response procedures.

Orchestration

Orchestration handles the integrations of all the other components of your technology stack: firewalls, alert systems, policy management tools, and existing response products.

Orchestration involves:

• Taking inventory of all applications: Teams must first decide which datasets and applications they need a SOAR platform to monitor.
• Integrating the applications: Some SOAR solutions have mostly prebuilt connectors; others use an API to connect the products. Some may have both.
• Testing integrations: Security teams also need to determine whether the integrations work. Do alerts actually send incident information to the SOAR?

A practical example of orchestration in a SOAR platform would be an integration with a threat intelligence feed. One day, a new vulnerability appears on the threat intelligence feed because a popular vendor just discovered it. Your business uses the networking appliance that the vulnerability is exploiting, and because you’ve already set up a prebuilt workflow for that threat intelligence feed, the vulnerability triggers an alert. Your networking team immediately checks it.

Processes like these save businesses considerable amounts of time. Instead of hunting manually for issues, they instead invest significant time in setting up workflows that will eventually do a lot of that work for them and do it faster.

Managing cybersecurity for the entire IT infrastructure is a tall order. Businesses need better methods of handling threat detection and response than just giving manual work to their security personnel and system admins.

Automation

Automating security procedures lifts the burden of manual tasks from administrators’ and engineers’ shoulders. They still work — they just focus on strategic and analytical projects rather than being heads-down in system and application logs all day.

To automate security processes, SOAR solutions use:

• Workflows: These can be pre-built or customizable. Workflows are designed so that if a threat or user triggers a certain criterion, then that’s flagged as an incident.
• Playbooks: They instruct teams on how to proceed when an incident occurs, what specific incident response workflows should look like, and how to respond to alerts.
• Different coding levels: Low-code and no-code workflow builders are better for teams with limited programming experience, while experienced engineers might want the ability to customize.

Although it’ll take time to test workflows and determine what works best for your business, ideally automation leads to faster, successful responses once it’s properly configured.

Response

Once an automation playbook or set of workflows is built and an incident occurs on an endpoint, the preconfigured workflow triggers an automatic chain of events. Maybe your monitoring solution detects a strain of malware on an endpoint.

The monitoring software logs that data, the alert goes off, and the workflows in the playbook perform actions such as:

• Quarantining the endpoint: This keeps it from infecting other systems and spreading throughout the network.
• Disconnect the endpoint from the internet: Without an internet connection, certain endpoints can’t transmit data.
• Sending the malware to a third-party sandbox: In a sandbox, teams can examine the malware closely for further information about the threat.  

Response capabilities are also where SOAR outpaces security information and event management (SIEM). Look for integrations with popular SIEM tools if you’re wanting to use those insights as part of your SOAR strategy. SOAR focuses on response, too, and SIEM typically doesn’t, at least legacy SIEM. It’s not its main goal.

Response is a critical step in the cybersecurity pipeline. If your product can detect incidents all day long but can’t successfully remediate them, you’re no better off than you were before you implemented the solution. A SOAR strategy is only beneficial if every part of the process works.

3 Common Use Cases of SOAR

Some of SOAR’s most common uses include streamlining large teams’ security operations, helping smaller teams manage their workload, and automating response procedures.

Improving Security Operations for Large Enterprises

While SOAR isn’t only for large enterprises, those businesses are often its most likely users at this point, until it’s become less expensive and a more standard product choice. Security operations centers need automation technologies to eliminate manual threat hunting and analysis. When successfully deployed and integrated into your IT infrastructure, SOAR eases the workload of SOC teams and frees them to do more strategic work.

Empowering Smaller Security Teams

Enterprises with limited security personnel benefit from solutions that combine all aspects of cybersecurity under one roof. A SOAR platform helps businesses with small security teams manage the tasks that they might normally not have a lot of time to perform. Some smaller businesses with the budget for a SOAR solution also benefit from such widespread security management; they won’t have to use as many products as they would otherwise.

Automating Incident Response

SOAR platforms reduce the danger of full-scale cyberattacks by introducing automated threat detection processes that don’t rely on security personnel’s manual work. They cut down on human error — if responses to threats are based on predefined workflows, any potential intrusion that triggers the SOAR platform will receive attention. But if people are solely in charge of finding threats, they’ll likely miss some.

Benefits of SOAR

Advantages of using a SOAR solution include looping all your security procedures into one platform, reducing the chance that you’ll miss threats, and customizing automations for your team’s needs.

Centralized Solutions & Processes

SOAR products combine your teams’ regular operations, threat detection capabilities, automated procedures, and response actions into one overall solution. This lifts some of the workload from security personnel, since they aren’t having to switch back and forth between multiple products to determine which platform caught which threat.

SOAR products do integrate with other solutions, so you won’t just stop using all your existing products. But it does help centralize all your data in one platform and reduces security data silos, so you aren’t left wondering if an incident really was taken care of when different products are reporting different things.

Reduced Opportunity for Security Team Mistakes

SOAR solutions reduce the number of errors made by security analysts by automating the response procedures for which they were once responsible. An overload of manual work can easily lead to exhaustion and burnout, and security teams run this risk if they’re doing all the threat hunting without automated processes to help. Remediation steps in SOAR playbooks also help personnel walk through response and mitigation processes with fewer errors.

Automated Procedures Tailored to Your Business

Automation plays a key role in SOAR solutions, setting SOAR apart from other security platforms that don’t focus on it quite as intensely. The ability to easily design if/then workflows allows your security team to get granular about the threats you want to catch.

Perhaps you found a strange type of malware and analyzed it using a sandbox. To catch it in the future, you can use an automated workflow that triggers an alert whenever the predetermined criteria for alerts happens again. You could even configure a workflow that sends any unfamiliar software straight to an integrated sandbox for further analysis.

Challenges & Limitations of SOAR

While SOAR offers plenty of benefits to businesses that want to standardize and automate their security processes, it has a few drawbacks. Potential customers should consider its relative newness to the industry, its true functionality, and the time commitment needed to implement a SOAR.

Brief Time on the Market

SOAR technology and approaches are newer than other security offerings, like intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) or SIEM. This doesn’t automatically mean SOAR won’t work or that it’s a bad idea to buy. But it does mean potential buyers don’t have a lot of long-time industry proof to see how SOAR has been successful over time.

Lack of market presence also makes choosing a provider more difficult. While many SOAR vendors have offered other complementary solutions for years, SOAR as a whole is new. It can be challenging to know how well a vendor’s product performs over time if the product in question hasn’t been around for very long.

Unclear Actual Functionality

To determine whether a SOAR solution works well, you’ll need to research and examine vendor claims and have conversations with potential providers. Talk with other industry professionals in your network who have used the solution to gauge whether it may work as claimed.

Look at user reviews, too. These aren’t foolproof, and they can be downright false in some cases, but a broad selection of customer reviews from different sources will give you a general overview of potential issues or blind spots of the solution. Lastly, consider integrations. For example, if you have a lot of Cisco networking hardware and want your SOAR to detect network security issues, make sure the solutions you’re considering support Cisco appliances.

Significant Time Required to Learn

A SOAR solution can take considerable time to learn, configure, and get all personnel on the same page. You’ll need to build workflows that actually work for your team and test them out over a period of time. Then invest time to fix them if they don’t detect incidents well. If workflows don’t fit the actual threats happening in your infrastructure, the SOAR solution won’t benefit your organization as a whole.

While it’s normal for this process to take time, it might be jarring for buying committees or SOC teams who expect instant return on investment. Just because a SOAR platform can be up and running in a day doesn’t mean it’ll be a stellar tool immediately. It requires time to customize workflows to identify the sort of threats your business actually faces.

SOAR can help your business respond to plenty of threats. To learn about the types of issues your business network faces, check out our guide to major network security threats next.

Top 3 SOAR Platforms

The best SOAR solutions in the security industry include Splunk SOAR, Rapid7 InsightConnect, and Microsoft Sentinel.

Splunk SOAR

Splunk is a popular SOAR provider that offers more than 300 third-party integrations with other tools — it’s a good choice for teams with significant security ecosystems already in place. It comes with prebuilt playbooks but also provides a visual playbook editor to create your own workflows and edit playbook designs. Splunk SOAR can be deployed in the cloud, on your business’s premises, or in a hybrid environment.

Splunk offers a free trial of Splunk’s community edition, but the length of the trial isn’t specified on the website. The SOAR platform is priced per user seat; potential buyers can contact Splunk for details. You can also buy through Google Marketplace, AWS Marketplace, Splunk partners, and Carahsoft.

Rapid7 InsightConnect

Rapid7 InsightConnect is a SOAR solution that aims to simplify automation processes and give security teams flexibility. InsightConnect integrates with threat intelligence feeds, sandboxes, and other tools that help teams investigate and remove suspicious emails and attachments. On the vulnerability management side, InsightConnect integrates with ticketing solutions like Jira and ServiceNow to automatically create tickets when a vulnerability needs to be mitigated.

InsightConnect pricing is available by custom quote when you contact Rapid7’s sales team directly. You can try Rapid7’s entire Insight platform free, although the vendor doesn’t specify how long the trial lasts.

Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Sentinel is a SIEM and SOAR solution ideal for businesses with an existing Microsoft or Azure Cloud ecosystem. Its automation rules allow teams to tag and close security incidents and develop task lists for security analysts to use when investigating and remediating threats. Playbooks are collections of actions based on workflows that you build in Azure Logic Apps. You can configure playbooks to automatically run when initiated by a particular alert or incident.

Sentinel’s pricing is either fixed or pay-as-you-go. The on-demand pricing option is $5.22 per GB ingested for analysis; there are commitment prices available for fixed numbers of gigabytes, too. Microsoft offers a 31-day free trial for Sentinel.

When evaluating potential SOAR vendors, ask them for examples of customers who have had success using their products to secure networks, computer systems, or endpoints. Make sure you can see concrete evidence that the solution works before committing to one. Additionally, check compatibility — does the product integrate well with your business’s existing hardware and software?

Also consider vendors’ mean time to detect threats and respond to them. This timeframe dictates how quickly the SOAR provider will be able to find a security issue within your network or system and eradicate it. Compare these times to your compliance requirements, too — whether a solution handles threats within a certain period dictated by your industry.

If your business is considering implementing SOAR but you want to look at some other options, check out our buyer’s guide, which includes some additional products.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What Is the Difference Between EDR & SOAR?

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) is similar to SOAR in its detection and response capabilities, and it may use automated processes, but SOAR is a broader category than EDR. It always includes automation, and it may be able to detect incidents on other parts of the network than just endpoints, depending on product configuration and support. EDR, on the other hand, isn’t as focused on automation as SOAR overall.

Is SOAR Part of XDR?

SOAR technology is not necessarily part of an extended detection and response (XDR) solution, but it can look similar to one. SOAR and XDR have similar functions, like improving threat detection and incident response in business IT infrastructures. XDR also has a wider range than complementary technologies like EDR, covering more than just endpoint devices. But despite its similarities, SOAR doesn’t automatically belong to an XDR platform or fall under that umbrella.

Can You Have SOAR Without SIEM?

SOAR solutions can exist with or without an integrated SIEM solution. Depending on your business infrastructure and the specific products, it may be helpful or unhelpful to connect a SIEM to your SOAR to ingest data and manage events. But you don’t automatically need a SIEM for your SOAR to work. SOAR platforms are designed to operate as a single major detection and response solution.

Read more about the differences between SIEM, SOAR, and XDR next.

Bottom Line: SOAR Enhances Security Teams’ Abilities to Respond to Threats

With a SOAR platform, your organization’s threat detection and response are based on logical rules. Your team can customize these workflows and playbooks over time as you gather more data about the threats your business faces and determine how to better combat them. When properly implemented and tailored to your IT environment, a SOAR solution can be a powerful tool to not only reduce your manual work but also improve your overall cybersecurity strategy.

Implementing a strong security platform is a good step, but it’s not the only task you should do to protect your enterprise network. Learn more about how to secure your networks.

The post What Is SOAR? Definition, Benefits & Use Cases appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

How Does SSE Work?

Security service edge introduces a control that connects to remote users and assets before they connect to each other. It solves the problem organizations experience in a modern IT environment where many users and assets reside outside of the protected corporate network.

Some organizations use virtual private networks (VPNs) to pull remote user access within the network, but these solutions cause huge bottlenecks and some users will bypass the VPN to access software-as-a-service (SaaS) and third-party websites. All SSE tools borrow from network security concepts to isolate communication within an envelope of protection and many introduce the granular security controls of zero trust as well.

5 Key Components & Capabilities of SSE

An integrated SSE tool needs to include capabilities for access control, acceptable use, data security, security monitoring, and threat protection. Additionally, SSE should integrate with other operations and security controls to enable connections to data centers, cloud resources, local networks, websites, and both in-house and third-party apps.

Access Control

Access controls validate user credentials, authorize access to specific assets, and block unauthorized devices, users, and access requests. The solution must also control access to external SaaS apps and third-party website access. Typical identity access management (IAM) tools won’t provide enough protection for cloud resources.

More robust solutions, such as a cloud access security broker (CASB), enterprise VPNs, or zero-trust network access (ZTNA), need to be used to ensure that remote users use the tool to access remote assets. Some SSEs will even check device posture and check for missing patches as part of additional network access control (NAC) features.

Acceptable Use

Within a local network, acceptable use of IT security policies needs to be enforced to prevent users from visiting unacceptable websites or misusing data. As with access control, traditional solutions generally can’t sufficiently protect SaaS app data, cloud resources, and direct website access for remote users.

SSEs combine CASB, secure web gateway (SWG), and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) capabilities. Combined, these controls monitor and block unacceptable access or use for all assets, applications, and websites.

Data Security & Threat Protection

Data security must protect incoming and outcoming data flows against leak or attack with equivalent protection to internal network firewall and network monitoring. SSE tools will often deploy a cloud-hosted firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) as the fundamental tool to decrypt and examine traffic flows to block threats. SWG capabilities can also screen IP addresses and websites to protect against known-malicious sites.

Some SSEs add further protection to the endpoint through remote browser isolation (RBI) that maintains all work within the browser application to prevent data exfiltration and minimize malware access to the endpoint. Even more information security can also be applied through data loss protection (DLP) capabilities that track sensitive or secret data use.

Security Monitoring

The internal network intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) don’t extend beyond the firewall, but traffic still needs monitoring to capture signs of attack on remote assets. Secure service edge tools use the FWaaS scanning to capture many signs of attack and can use CASB capabilities to scan SaaS data used to complement the firewall scanning. Some tools even use cloud security posture management (CSPM) capabilities to monitor cloud infrastructure.

Security Stack Integration

SSE tools provide strong security but must integrate with other systems to provide more comprehensive network security and protection for the organization overall. Common integrations needed include:

• Identity and access management (IAM): Connects identities and permissions to the SSE tool for appropriate access level grants and group authorizations.
• Managed detection and response (MDR): Provides security monitoring for the organization as a whole including local networks and the SSE environment.
• Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN): Creates the interlink connections and microsegmentation to segregate assets or connect internal assets to the SSE.
• Security information and event management (SIEM): Captures activity logs for security review and potential event investigation.
• Security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR): Automates some incident response and prioritizes alerts and threat intelligence for security analysts.
• Threat intelligence platforms: Consolidates vulnerability news, malware changes, and attack trends to inform security teams and security tools for improved response.

Connectors can be explicit and tailored for common solutions, but others will require using standardized application programming interfaces (APIs).

Primary Benefits of SSE

Secure service edge tools directly address the security and operations problems created by attempting to secure remote users and assets. Adopting SSE will reduce complexity, secure remote assets, and improve remote security, network traffic, and visibility into user behavior.

Improved Remote Security

Remote users often bypass VPN security to directly access cloud apps such as Office 365 and Salesforce or to browse the web. These direct connections lack security controls to adequately defend against viruses and prevent endpoint infections. SSE introduces additional cloud-based and scalable security controls to improve remote user security with minimal disruption.

Improved Network Traffic Performance

Traditional solutions use VPNs to route traffic within the corporate network only to send many connections right back out to the internet. Additionally, the traffic will be subject to network firewall and other security inspections for each traversal. SSE eliminates these bandwidth-wasting practices to improve performance and user experience.

Reduced Security Tool Complexity

A number of tools can replicate SSE capabilities for teams with the expertise and capability to perform the complex integration and installation. However, most will choose to benefit from an integrated SSE that consolidates the capabilities under a single management pane with dramatically less complicated integration and installation requirements.

Secure Access to All Assets

Traditional network security can only secure traffic rerouted into the local network using VPNs, so many users directly connect to SaaS apps and websites without sufficient protection. SSE extends security to all users, Internet of Things (IoT), operations technology (OT), cloud assets, and applications that reside outside of the internal network.

Visibility & Control of User Activities

Traditional security can’t track or monitor remote users that bypass VPN controls, which allows malicious insiders or users with stolen credentials to access or potentially exfiltrate sensitive data from remote assets (SaaS applications, cloud databases, etc.). SSE introduces full visibility into user behavior to detect and control unauthorized behavior.

Common Challenges of SSE

SSE provides distinct benefits to protect remote users. Yet the technology still introduces challenges that affect adoption or successful implementation.

• Integration difficulties: Some existing communications and security tools may lack support from specific SSE tools and require additional integration efforts or workarounds.
• Legacy architecture issues: SSE performs security in a dramatically different fashion for improved efficiency, but forcing SSE processes into legacy network architecture or security processes will introduce delays and performance issues. 
• SSE adaptation struggles: New technology requires review and heavy modification of policies and procedures developed for traditional security tools to cover SSE capabilities; may potentially need entirely new incident response plans and processes.
• Third-party packet inspection: Cloud-based SSE providers perform data inspection to protect against malware and malicious insider data use, which technically can expose secrets to third parties; this might be unacceptable and require modification.
• User resistance: SSE introduces new security controls where none previously existed, which may cause user complaints and other issues during implementation and training.

5 SSE Use Cases & Applications

The primary use case for SSE is to protect the remote users and assets outside of the network. However, what this means exactly will vary dramatically from organization to organization. To make this concept more tangible, consider the following five specific use cases incorporating video editing, international shipping, medical, human resources, and sales reps.

Break VPN Logjams

A large number of remote users at a video editing company still use VPN connections to access video editing suites that have moved to the cloud. The high-bandwidth video streaming requirements now pass through security and through the company’s VPN structure multiple times crushing bandwidth and performance. SSE adoption eliminates the VPN logjam to make direct connections that require less inspection to dramatically improve performance.

Global OT Monitoring

A fleet of transport ships will deploy a large number of sensors to monitor engines and other systems but lack the IT talent to maintain local networks. Deploying SSE enables secure connections between world-wide OT deployments, the cloud-based monitoring applications, and data lakes for sensor data storage.

Improved Medical Professional Experience

Doctors and nurses rush to address patients’ needs in a medical center, which makes them prone to forgetting login credentials or phishing attacks. Implementing SSE can enable single-sign-on experiences that eliminate login requirements and add security protection to block additional malware exposure. This improves the experience and security when checking Office 365 emails or accessing remote resources for medical imaging, billing, or messages.

Safer Resume Screening

Telling employees not to click on attachments to avoid malware doesn’t work for human resources professionals who must open and evaluate resume attachments as part of their job. An SSE deployment with remote browser isolation protects remote-work HR professionals with a sandboxed environment in their browser to open and evaluate PDF files and other attachments safely and securely.

Secure Remote SaaS Users

Sales reps need access to Salesforce, Box, and other SaaS tools to manage leads and distribute sales materials securely. To protect against unauthorized access using stolen credentials or unauthorized download of leads by quitting sales reps, SSE can be implemented to protect the reps, secure the SaaS resources, and block unauthorized use.

Top SSE Solution Options

For those considering an SSE tool, start with the top-ranked vendors in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge:

• Fortinet: The only vendor in the Challenger quadrant, FortiSASE also includes SD-WAN and builds off of their next-generation firewalls for strong packet filtering.
• Lookout: This cloud security provider in the Visionary quadrant focuses on data protection and claims a 60 minute or less deployment.
• Netskope: Using a private cloud network in 70+ regions, Netskope claims a spot in the Leader quadrant with strong operations capabilities for ZTNA.
• Palo Alto Networks: Strong security performance for ZTNA and firewall capabilities earn Prisma SASE (includes SD-WAN) a Leader quadrant position for SSE.
• Skyhigh Security: Remote browser isolation and data loss protection included in their SSE secure data effectively and earn Skyhigh a spot in the SSE Visionary quadrant.
• Zscaler: Their cloud-first architecture and built-in zero-trust capabilities for a wide variety of assets earn ZScaler a position in the Leaders quadrant for SSE.

While there is some overlap between secure access service edge (SASE) and SSE tools, many quality SSE tools will not qualify under SASE because they lack full SD-WAN integration.

Difference Between SSE, SASE & VPNs

SSE, SASE, and VPNs all manage remote access using different techniques and network security architectures. SASE essentially integrates SD-WAN capabilities into SSE to add additional network segmentation and operations capabilities such as quality of services (QoS). SASE vendors offer more capabilities but will also require more setup, network equipment, and possibly migration time to reproduce network connections.

Traditional VPNs route all traffic through the local network to use traditional network security controls to protect remote users and assets, but often suffer scalability problems and both network and internet connection bandwidth issues. Enterprise VPN addresses scalability and bandwidth problems through cloud-based gateways and access points but lacks the full SSE or SASE capabilities to secure remote applications and cloud infrastructure.

Key SSE Future Trends

Buyers can expect their own needs for service secure edge to change as the security standards, industry regulations, and the SSE tools themselves evolve. Look for changes to the market to center around tool adoption, expanding requirements, and improved support in addition to increased SSE capabilities.

Adoption Motivated by Security & Operations Advantages

SSE introduces additional agility, scalability, and operations improvements for organizations even as the need to secure remote users and assets continues to increase and add pressure to security and operations teams. These advantages and trends will drive increased deployments for organizations of all sizes.

Blurred Product Definitions

SSEs and VPNs once represented very distinct and different solutions. However, as enterprise VPNs and firewall providers continue to add additional SWG, CASB, and UEBA features to their products, the distinctions will blur as capabilities become similar. In the future, buyers will focus on implementation, integration, and price models as top distinguishing aspects.

Expanded Service Provider Support

Managed service providers (MSPs) will reflect the needs of their customers and continue to expand support for SSE integration and ongoing management. The current cloud-based providers already provide multi-tenant capabilities and service providers will discover opportunities to support customers as they add more and more users and assets to the SSE umbrella of protection. 

Increased Connectivity Requirements

As more IoT and OT become connected through traditional and mobile (5G, etc.) networks, SSE tools will need to expand capabilities to integrate protection for an increasingly diverse array of endpoints. Future endpoints should include sensors, security cameras, radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors, and much more.

Advanced Zero Trust Features

Currently, vendors with zero trust network access (ZTNA) promote it as a basic component of SSE. As Zero Trust becomes more defined by regulation and adoption of zero trust improves, vendors will apply zero trust principles to other aspects of the SSE tool, such as identity and website access, to further enhance security.

Bottom Line: SSE Locks Down the Modern Network

Secure service edge more than replaces traditional VPN security for remote users. SSE encompasses the remote IoT devices, cloud infrastructure, and SaaS apps that operate beyond normal VPN protection in our modern IT infrastructure. If it’s time to secure your remote assets, schedule a demo with a couple of top SSE candidates to learn how this solution can secure your architecture.

For those that only need to secure remote users, consider a more basic approach and read about VDI vs VPN vs RDP.

The post What Is Security Service Edge (SSE): All You Need to Know appeared first on eSecurity Planet.

How Does Digital Rights Management (DRM) Work?

Digital rights management wraps digital data into an encrypted wrapper tied to a license that contains the rules for how the content may be used. After encryption, you can distribute the file and users will access it according to the DRM license rules. DRM typically requires four stages to function: encryption, management, authorization, and verification.

• Encryption of digital files enforces content owner’s rights and restricts the future use of the protected data. A common restriction involves controlled access that will only allow file access in the presence of specific hardware (microchip set, etc.), IP address, geographic location, or device type. Other restrictions could include limited duration access, flagged ownership (watermarks, metadata, etc.), or use restrictions such as limited copies or blocked printing.
• Management of DRM defines the encryption process, controls the software performing encryption, defines the license terms, and controls the file access restrictions. The management software will also track encrypted file use and continuously enforce digital rights.
• Authorization provides the key for the encrypted file tied to the digital license with rules for how to use the content, but doesn’t unlock the asset without verification. The authorization can be associated with specific hardware, shared encryption keys, passwords, and more.
• Verification of the DRM process validates the authorization key and finally unlocks the file. This process can be built-in to the DRM encryption file itself for a combined authorization and verification step or require an internet connection to verification servers.

6 Benefits of Digital Rights Management

When an organization applies digital rights management to an asset, most seek the primary benefit of securing content. Yet, DRM also helps to claim ownership of the digital content, enables potential revenue streams, helps track files, provides enforcement evidence, and reduces labor costs for internal use.

Secures Content for Specific Use

DRM secures content to limit theft and restrict use to authorized users. This primary benefit extends to third-party partners to limit use and prevent damage from data breaches or attempts to illegally distribute or access the content. Secured content remains private until unlocked and can also be regionally restricted to comply with local laws regarding age or content restrictions.

Claims Ownership of Content

Applying DRM to content stakes an ownership claim as unobtrusive as a watermark for photos or marketing material or as complete as password-protected content with highly restrictive use restrictions. DRM reinforces copyright with tangible restrictions and can secure secret or sensitive information against theft or breach.

Enables Payment Opportunities

Secured DRM files protected against free use enable opportunities to unlock the files. Payments could be direct or related to subscriptions through third parties, such as a movie licensed to Netflix. Without DRM, copyright owners risk widespread distribution of intellectual property without compensation.

Permits File Tracking

The full range of free-use to fully-secured DRM content can be configured to contact a validation server. The IP address that sends the validation request can be tracked and used for usage statistics, geographic use limitations, or to comply with local regulations such as age restrictions or territorial licensing.

Provides Evidence for Enforcement

DRM incorporates watermarks and metadata that provide third parties with evidence of ownership. Third-party licensees will be more confident that their licensing fee investments are protected and law enforcement can also use the DRM to verify ownership when pursuing piracy or IP infringement cases.

Reduces Internal Use Labor Costs

DRM can apply to internal digital resources to help marketing, sales, legal, and other teams understand where and when digital resources may be safely used. By affiliating licensing or use information to the files themselves, teams save significant time because they don’t have to check databases, expiration dates, or go through permissions processes. Additionally, risk of misuse will be decreased which saves further time and legal costs from mistakes.

5 Challenges & Limitations of DRM

Digital rights management helps rights holders, but the technology also has limitations. It can bring about disrupted availability, usability issues, dissatisfied consumers, and insufficient security, and the tools tend to be limited.

• Disrupted availability: Products that require validation fail when used without internet access or when validation servers are disrupted or discontinued. Reduce this poor user experience by protecting servers sufficiently or a different DRM validation option.
• Diminished usability: DRM schemes can slow performance, fail to meet industry standards, or lose copyright holder support, which affects a user’s experience. Test DRM tools for potential performance issues in advance to avoid this issue.
• Disgruntled consumers: Consumer rights concerns and notable DRM incidents, such as the security flaw added by the 2005 Sony BMG DRM, introduces strong consumer resistance. Minimize resistance with a non-disruptive DRM experience.
• Incomplete security: Even good DRM exposes assets to theft or copying from expert users or under specific conditions (analog conversion, screen recording, etc.). Consider overlapping security controls where possible in anticipation of a small failure rate.
• Limited tools: DRM tools won’t protect all digital assets equally and may be specialized in specific types of assets or under specific conditions (ex: video streaming). Be sure to select a tool appropriate for the asset and maintain realistic expectations.

In addition to the challenges for an organization to use DRM, network security professionals must also worry about malicious use of DRM. Some attackers take advantage of DRM capabilities to protect files against antivirus inspection and conceal malware. While this proves the capabilities of DRM to secure assets, it also creates circumstances that undermine DRM adoption.

Common Use Cases of DRM-Protected Contents

Many different companies use DRM protection to protect assets. The most common examples seen daily include music, books, protected files or emails, software or games, and stock photography.

• Digital music: Applies various DRM to allow purchases of single songs (iTunes, etc.), or to track songs played to pay artists for streaming (Spotify, YouTube, etc.).
• eBooks: Limits sharing and devices, and can impose time-based restrictions for digital book files distributed to devices and apps such as the Kindle.
• Intellectual property: Implements DRM protection for patent documents, pharma research, and other top secret documents for secure sharing and tight access control.
• Regulated emails: Adds DRM email encryption for HIPAA-regulated health information and other sensitive content that must be shared with external parties.
• Software licenses: Use license numbers to unlock DRM and allow installation and continued use of software or games from Microsoft, Activision, Adobe, etc.
• Stock photography: Applies watermarks to photos and tracks metadata for licensed photos to ensure compliance with the terms of purchase and use.

The use of DRM will continue to expand as costs lower and more organizations seek the benefits of DRM protection.

DRM License Models & Architecture

Digital rights management uses three categories of licensing models and four general verification architectures to unlock DRM-protected assets. Once implemented, DRM will use one of two possible support architectures to enable DRM access. Each option provides unique advantages and disadvantages for implementation and user experience.

Licensing Models

DRM users license access to DRM products through subscriptions, pay-per-use fees, or perpetual licensing options.

• Subscription-based: Charges regular fees on a regular basis (monthly, annually, etc.) for continued access to the asset, such as a streaming music subscription.
• Pay-per-use: Requires users to pay for each access attempt or can allow for a limited duration with each purchase, such as seven-day access to a streamed movie.
• Perpetual licensing: Unlocks access to the asset for a single payment, either directly to the asset holder or through resellers, such as a video game purchased at a store.

All three models may be implemented directly by the DRM rights holder or may be outsourced to a third party to manage both the DRM and the payment infrastructure. For example, Disney offers a subscription-based access to movies through Disney+, pay-per-use access to movies through Amazon.com, and perpetual licenses when consumers buy DVDs from a retailer.

Subscriptions and pay-per-use options allow a rights holder to specify strict limitations for use and offer lower prices than perpetual licenses. However, many consumers prefer the ownership bestowed by a perpetual license, which can give additional rights (see Fair Use below).

Verification Architectures

DRM owners need to implement architecture to enable a selected licensing model. The four categories of verification architectures include online, always-on, offline, and hardware.

• Online verification: Requires a DRM license server available for users to access to validate access. This model supports all three license types but requires implementation of a licensing server, which can be vulnerable to disruption.
• Always-on verification: Provides a specialized version of online verification that regularly re-validates access. This model provides more stringent control over use (geolocation, time duration, etc.), but significantly increases server disruption risks.
• Offline verification: Eliminates DRM server requirements in favor of authentication and validation within the DRM encryption. This model broadens usability for the user and reduces support infrastructure, but requires validation mechanisms built into the DRM.
• Hardware verification: Represents a subcategory of offline verification using external hardware (ex: microchip), to validate access. This model improves protection, but requires significant preparation and expense. Costs can be offset by selling the hardware, such as a DVD player, for a separate fee.

To avoid poor user experiences, select a DRM verification that can be supported easily with the current available resources (budget, labor, technical talent).

DRM Support Architectures

Choosing a DRM solution also requires consideration of the technology required to continue to support the DRM. The two main options to select for support are DRM servers and viewers and each comes with associated security concerns:

• DRM license servers: Provide remote DRM validation on the web or through a local network and manage license restriction checks. However, server implementation requires various security solutions to protect this infrastructure from attacks such as distributed denial of service (DDoS).
• Specific DRM viewers: Enforce DRM capabilities through plugins, browsers, or installed software.
  • DRM plugins (ex: PDF plugin) enable quick and easy deployment, but can be bypassed by updates or other plugins. Users also need to download plugins and keep them updated.
  • Browser viewers use cloud-based asset storage and require the least user effort to implement, but can be slow, especially when combining large image files and slow local networks. 
  • Installed software offers the most control over user experience and the best security, but the local software installation will be resisted by some users and IT admins because it introduces requirements for regular maintenance and updates.

These security concerns will affect both corporate and user adoption and must be considered when examining DRM options to determine fit.

6 DRM Technologies to Use Now

Many vendors offer technologies to help manage internal and external assets with DRM protection. Some options, such as hardware-based DRM, will require extensive engineering and expense beyond the scope of this article. For much more turnkey DRM options, consider:

• Adobe Experience Manager: Supplies brands with cloud-based infrastructure for digital asset management (DAM) and DRM integrated with Creative Cloud applications.
• Fortra Digital Guardian: Facilitates secure collaboration for any file types without any software required for the end user to install.
• Kiteworks DRM: Provides editable file access for partners while retaining usage rights for office files, PDFs, graphics, and video files.
• Lock Lizard: Offers DRM protection for PDF files and a secure PDF viewer that provides control over file copies, printing, screenshots, or sharing.
• Red Points DRM: Supplies brands with a focused DRM solution to locate and counter counterfeits, gray markets, domain abuse, piracy, and similar issues.
• MemberSpace: Adds a membership paywall and DRM protection for websites to protect and monetize digital assets in a SaaS turnkey fashion.

When selecting a DRM option be sure to align the capabilities of the tool with the DRM needs. Specifically, the format of the digital files, tracking or monitoring requirements, infrastructure requirements, user installation requirements, and potential alerts to manage.

Legal Considerations of DRM

Digital rights management adds additional technical protections for assets, and the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed in 1998 makes it illegal for anyone but the entity that applied the DRM to remove it. However, enforcement of DMCA remains weak and many other countries tacitly or explicitly allow for DRM removal or circumvention:

• China: Doesn’t enforce or protect international copyright holders.
• European Union: Allows DRM circumvention under certain circumstances.
• Israel: Doesn’t prohibit DRM circumvention.
• Pakistan: Currently doesn’t criminalize DRM circumvention or enforce copyrights.

Some aspects of DRM that tightly restrict use conflict with the Fair Use clause of the US copyright law that allows free use under specific circumstances (parody, teaching, research, etc.). Similarly, DRM can conflict with the First Sale Doctrine, which provides the owner of a copyrighted work to sell, rent, lend, or share copies of the work. When adding DRM, be specific in the license terms presented to consumers to avoid potential conflicts with these laws.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Bottom Line: DRM Provides Special-Use Encryption

Digital rights management progresses past the normal locked or unlocked nature of encryption to provide more granular control over digital asset use. When adopting DRM, you retain the protections of encryption and add additional options for collaboration, monetization, and secure distribution. Consider how DRM can expand your opportunities and explore the option that fits your specific use case.

To learn about various categories of more traditional encryption, read about the best encryption software and tools.

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