A Cloud Secure Web Gateway Flexes to Secure Employees Everywhere

Now more than ever, the need for a modern, complete security solution is top of mind for most organizations. When combined with the new reality of employees working from just about anywhere, network and security professionals are being forced to reevaluate their existing solutions. So it’s no surprise that 61% of organizations struggled to provide the necessary remote security to support work-from-home capabilities.

This can be especially challenging when an organization relies on multi-vendor on-premise security appliances that were never designed for today’s cloud-centric world and global remote users. According to a survey by industry analyst ESG Global, when asked “What are the biggest challenges your organization faces relative to access control and management network security tools?” the leading responses include:

• Inconsistent management across physical and cloud/virtual environments
• Introduce performance issues that negatively impact user experience
• Too many disparate tools
• Difficult to implement

Additional research from ESG Global shows that many organizations are open to a new approach to secure web gateway, with only 8% of research respondents indicating they are very satisfied with their current solution and not planning to change any time soon.

Example: Global Airline

For many years, a popular global airline had used on-premise web proxy appliances to provide employees with access and security for internet-bound traffic. Spread across several data centers, the web proxy and other multi-vendor appliances met their needs at the time. However, as more applications moved to the cloud and employees transitioned to remote work locations, the company quickly learned that on-premise security appliances were unable to adequately support over 20,000 remote users. Some of the key challenges faced by the airline include:

• Incomplete Security. On-premise web proxy appliances, along with other multi-vendor legacy products fail to provide complete, consistent security across all users, locations, and devices. Also, they weren’t designed for cloud-based apps, so they lack the flexibility and scalability required in today’s environments. The lack of integrated security policies; single, pane-of-glass management; and limited visibility expose organizations to advanced threats.
• Limited app coverage. Over half of all remote workforce threats are for non-web apps, which are invisible to web proxies. Security teams can’t block what they can’t see and without security for all apps (web and non-web), the risk of a data breach increases.
• Poor End-user Experience. Deploying web proxy appliances at the data center for access and inspection of internet-bound traffic made sense when most workers were at the main office. However, with the majority of staff now working remotely, the backhauling of internet traffic to the data center creates bottlenecks. Poor performance along with inconsistent app access–which can vary depending upon the user’s device, permissions, and location–results in frustrated users, reduced productivity, and more calls to the IT support desk.

According to analyst ESG Global, the consistency with which users are protected regardless of where they are or what they are accessing should be a priority for nearly every organization. Given this, it should come as no surprise that 69% of research respondents indicated secure web gateway (SWG) will be the starting point or a secondary consideration for their SASE implementation.

A Modern, Complete, Cloud-Delivered Solution

Today, organizations require a solution that seamlessly protects their remote workers as they access web and non-web applications from just about anywhere. Our Cloud Secure Web Gateway delivers modern, complete cloud security through Prisma Access, as well as:

• Protection for All App Traffic. Provides access to all apps and secures against all threats, not just web-based apps and threats, helping organizations reduce the risk of a data breach by up to 45%.
• Complete, Best-in-class Security. Industry-leading capabilities converged into a single cloud-delivered platform, providing more security coverage than any other solution. We deliver more than 4.3M unique security updates per day, 24.5x more than our nearest competitor.
• Exceptional User Experience. Our massively scalable network with ultra-low latency and backed by industry-leading SLAs ensure the best digital experience possible for end-users. We provide 10x more total encrypted tunnel throughput than the nearest competitor, with performance SLAs that are 10x better than any other cloud-delivered service.

Cloud Secure Web Gateway also provides flexible connectivity options that make it easy for organizations to protect all users and applications, wherever they reside. For example:

• Managed mobile devices can be protected via the GlobalProtect agent to secure all ports and protocols, protecting web and non-web traffic.
• Unmanaged devices can use our agentless access for full protection.
• Branch offices can seamlessly connect via IPSec.
• Legacy proxy-based solutions can easily transition to our complete, cloud-delivered security platform by using our cloud explicit proxy that simply redirects your existing PAC files to Prisma Access, without the need for network architecture changes.

Learn how our Cloud Secure Web Gateway can help your organization by providing complete, award-winning security through Prisma Access for a single, cloud-delivered platform to protect all users and applications, everywhere.