A postcard from the 17th IT Security and Audit Forum SEMAFOR

Our first SEMAFOR conference? Mission accomplished!

03 April 2024

Once again, SEMAFOR confirmed its position as one of the most important cybersecurity and IT audit events in Poland and Central Europe. Debuting at this year’s edition as a Content Partner, Extreme Networks contributed a unique and valuable proposition both to the conference program and the extensive exhibition zone, enjoying interest from a number of professionals from retail, manufacturing, banking & finance and more!

2 days, 4 content blocks forming the agenda, dozens of keynotes and plenary sessions, around 40 exhibitors and approximately 500 participants representing a wide variety of businesses, industries, and roles… that’s the 17th SEMAFOR in a nutshell. But numbers aside, the trade show once again turned out to be a real celebration of the cybersecurity industry, filled with knowledge, informal conversations and social meetings. If you’re an IT professional or security manager interested in expanding your knowledge about the evolving cyberthreat landscape and the new and emerging technologies that can help you better protect your organization – you don’t want to miss SEMAFOR next year!

Among the wide range of ICT providers focusing on different aspects of cybersecurity, one definitely stood out from the rest as the only networking vendor on the floor. Marcin Laskowski, Piotr Szołkowski and Jakub Soprych from our Polish team presented the portfolio of Extreme products and solutions with an emphasis on the host of advanced security functionalities and capabilities.

ExtremeCloud Universal ZTNA – a zero-trust approach that’s easier and quicker to implement

Since its introduction in 2019, zero-trust has gone from a little-known term to a buzzword on lips of everyone in the industry. However, actual deployments are still taking time to catch on. With the advent of remote work, increase in the number of cloud applications, and the need to connect third-party users to corporate resources, many companies are still struggling to implement Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) fully. According to a research study by ESG, more than half of respondents stated that their current organization's zero-trust initiatives have been in place for less than two years¹.

In his presentation on the first day of the event, Piotr Szołkowski discussed the many interesting features and advantages of the new ExtremeCloud Universal ZTNA solution. Announced in November 2023 and making its way into a regular distribution this year, our latest offering stands out among the competition particularly thanks to its unrivaled simplicity of deployment and operation.

Universal ZTNA simplifies network security management and access control by bringing zero trust device and application access together, both for campus and remote branches. With the inclusion of radius as a service, there is no need for additional platforms, which also translates into additional time and cost savings. We designed this solution with simplicity in mind, making it a perfect choice for those companies and organizations that want to improve their security posture right here, right now, in a flexible and cost-efficient manner.

Marcin Laskowski

Country Manager Poland & Bulgaria at Extreme Networks

Customers can deploy and scale our Universal ZTNA solution quickly through a SaaS deployment integrated with identity providers such as Google Workspace and Azure AD, enabling quick user onboarding. The integration with mobile device management platforms such as Microsoft Intune also enables augmented access decisions linked to granular device health and authentication capabilities. With just one simple solution, customers can manage and enforce consistent security policies for users, devices and applications, wherever they reside.

Piotr Szołkowski

Senior Systems Engineer at Extreme Networks