Having a highly secure network is one thing, but being secure AND saving time and money while you’re at it – now that’s something that is sure to catch the attention of any resourceful CTO or IT manager. Is it possible to eat the cake and have the cake, too? Let’s see how to achieve it with Extreme Fabric Connect!
For many business and organizations, protecting mission critical systems and data is a priority number one. It’s one thing to have your smart lighting system hacked, but it’s quite another to have your customer data stolen. From the networking point of view, both are virtualized functions, but in terms of potential business damage and liability – they couldn’t be more far apart.
Many organizations address network segmentation by deploying multiple Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) with Access Control Lists and distributed physical or virtual firewalls. Firewalls are very strict and follow established firewall rules, but they don’t do everything to protect our digital assets and they also can quickly become outdated. Such measures are also quite expensive and complex to plan, deploy, and maintain – especially, when your IT environment is complex.
Let’s see how Extreme Fabric Connect can help you solve that conundrum!
Easy and scalable network segmentation
Extreme Fabric Connect addresses the question of traffic separation by allowing you to segment and protect critical applications, data and users easily and at scale. To that end, the solution enables the creation of private virtualized networks called Virtual Service Networks, or VSNs in short.
The key thing about VSNs is that they are completely isolated, without any IP reachability – in or out. User or device in one segment can’t communicate with a user or device in another segment, unless configured otherwise. Additionally, Fabric Connect allows you to drum up thousands of those secure zones very easily.
With traditional approach, network segmentation requires box-by-box configuration and is limited to only certain areas of the network. With Extreme Fabric Connect, secure zones can be effortlessly expanded across the entire network infrastructure. We call this functionality “Hyper-segmentation”.
What does it mean for your organization?
Separation of the traffic is one of the fundamentals of network security and more often than not, the more complicated the architecture, the bigger the need for segmentation. So what are the benefits from taking the Fabric approach? From the hacker’s perspective, a fabric network is like a maze. Even if he or she manages to gain access – for example through the lighting system mentioned at the beginning – they’ll only find a dead end. At this point, most hackers will get discouraged and simply look for easier targets.
And let’s not forget: today, everything is connected, which puts a big strain on network security. Extreme Fabric Connect takes a lot of pressure off your shoulders by enabling you massive scalability. In traditional networks, the original VLAN specification limits the number of unique services to just 4000. Hypersegmentation allows you to set up 16,000,000 (yes, sixteen million!) of secure segments that can span the entire organization – from device to data center. In other words: the attack perimeter may be growing bigger, but so does your defense line.
And the beautiful thing is that you’re enhancing network security while making it more flexible and cheaper to operate. The ability to extend security to the branch offices the same way you do it in the campus – without extra cost – brings significant savings. Let’s also remember that services are provisioned automatically, without risk. On the other hand, limiting access to those who need it means less users in specific zones, which means better network performance. So we’re talking about improved experiences both for IT teams and users, as well!
But don’t just take our word for it – take Federal Justice Service in Belgium, for example. Extreme Fabric Connect enabled over 23,000 of its employees and thousands of other users to access critical applications and securely exchange information. Improved operational efficiency also helped to reduce the number of engineers managing the distributed network from 3 to 1.
Thanks to Extreme Networks and Orange Cyberdefense Belgium arming us with a new network and 24/7 technical support, we have been able to meet this objective to improve information-sharing and offer new digital services. Our new network is truly a game changer for the way our justice system operates.
Jimmy De Laet, ICT Infrastructure Director, FPS Justice
FPS Justice – read the full Customer Story
FPS Justice advances its network with Orange Cyberdefence and Extreme!
According to an old saying, the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly fine. But what if God had a super-fast, efficient and easy-to-manage Wi-Fi? We don’t know about that. But we do know that such setup serves the Belgium’s Federal Justice Service very w...
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What comes next?
Has Extreme Fabric Connect caught your attention? Would you like to explore the solution in more technical detail?
Consider checking out our compact e-book ‘Fabric Connect Key Capabilities’ which provides an overview of the technology as well as breaks down useful features in the area of OA&M, infrastructure, services, routing, Data Center, Campus Edge and branch. Just click the button below! 👇
And in our next ‘Exploring the Fantastic Fabric’ article we will show you how to segment your network into highly-secure zones easily and at scale. Stay tuned!