IS looks to solve cloud security anxiety

SECURITY

Internet Solutions (IS), in response to industry's growing demand for secure, ubiquitous cloud solutions, has launched IS Cloud Web Security (CWS).

The solution, says IS, not only addresses the full gamut of cloud security concerns, but being a cloud-based solution itself, offers clients the benefit of reduced administration, and zero capex spend on hardware and software.

“Many organisations are hesitant to embark on the journey to cloud, as securing the cloud computing environment adequately has not, until now, been possible to guarantee,” says Graeme O'Driscoll, innovation and technology manager for cloud at IS. “As a result, organisations are losing the undisputed business benefits of cloud solutions. IS can now offer its clients holistic cloud security using Zscaler's secure cloud gateway to deliver the solution. Additionally, a 100% uptime service level agreement guarantees IS CWS is always available.”

The IS CWS proxy has the lowest throughput latency on the market, guaranteed; and is billed per user, per month, regardless of the number of end-devices associated with that user, or that user's bandwidth consumption.

By adopting IS CWS, organisations not only future-proof security needs, but will save about 60% of web security spend. Organisations can avoid inevitable appliance fatigue and refresh cycles.

Says O'Driscoll: For a traditional multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) client to get similar benefits to IS CWS, it would need to invest in numerous machines, including a proxy server, reporting server, a Web 2.0 gateway, and a URL filtering gateway. Costs accumulate – hardware, administration, and software – which need to be doubled if organisations are concerned with redundancy.

“IS CWS reduces all these costs, from rackspace, to carbon footprint, to salaries and capex spend on hardware and software.”

CWS offers organisations comprehensive end-device and mobile device protection – including data-leak prevention, anti -virus, -malware, and -spyware, and auditing of browsing, uploads, and downloads, all in real time.  Policies are granular, and can be applied to application, user, location, time, and volume. Additionally, policies integrate with Active Directory, allowing for rules to be defined based on users and/or groups. “IS CWS offers decentralised internet access, with centralised control. Conservatively, CWS can free-up bandwidth usage by up to 10 times through these rules and policies – allowing for a far more productive, beneficial cloud experience.

“Through CWS clients now have access to a multi-tenant solution, meaning a user is not tied to a specific datacentre, which negatively impacts response times. Rather, related policies will be enforced from the closest of one of 47 nodes world-wide.” The result, says O'Driscoll, is ultra-low latency, and high reliability. In Africa, these nodes are in South Africa. Other African countries will connect via Seacom (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique) to Johannesburg; and WACS (Nigeria and Ghana) to Cape Town. O’Driscoll says nodes will be built in Kenya and Nigeria if there is enough uptake and growth in the solution to warrant dedicated nodes in these regions.

“Gartner has recognised the solution,” says O'Driscoll, as an “innovator” in its Magic Quadrant. “It is rare that a single solution is so comprehensive. With CWS, we have addressed cost in terms of time and money savings, offer the best policies and security available, real-time reporting and forensic auditing, ease of deployment for data loss prevention, and near-zero latency.”