IT Briefcase Exclusive Interview: How to Protect and Ensure Perimeter Security in Today’s Increasingly Complex IT World

The challenges facing today’s IT organizations around perimeter security continue to mount, especially in the face of IT infrastructures that include hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud deployments. Making it even more complex is the fact that most organizations, whether they are business, non-profit and/or government, have an ever expanding mobile workforce – accessing data from wherever they are, whenever they need it. Traditional approaches such as virtual private networks (VPNs), continue to prove themselves unreliable while still becoming increasingly complex to deploy and manage, as well as expensive. Today, we discuss this critical topic with Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder of DH2i (www.dh2i.com).

• Q: What are the top challenges being faced by today’s networking and security IT professionals when working to efficiently and securely connect on-premises sites and/or multi-cloud environments?

A: The biggest challenge they face is that the traditional perimeter security solutions are obsolete for the new IT reality of hybrid and multi-cloud. They weren’t designed for them. They create too large of an attack surface. One need only open today’s paper to confirm this fact. The issues that surround using traditional approaches such as virtual private networks (VPNs) for perimeter security to connect on-premises sites and/or multi-cloud environments include:

–        Complex configuration requiring dedicated routers, ACLs and FW policies increasing risk

–        Users get a “slice of the network,” creating a lateral network attack surface

–        Inbound connections create attack surfaces (e.g., DDoS)

–        No ability to reduce attack surfaces with application-level segmentation

Customers need a new perimeter security model to support hybrid and multi-cloud computing.

• Q: What is a “zero trust” architecture?  What types/sizes of organizations benefit most from its employment?
  

A: The analyst firm Forrester defines a Zero Trust (ZT) architecture as one that abolishes the idea of a trusted network inside a defined corporate perimeter. ZT mandates that enterprises create micro-perimeters of control around their sensitive data assets to gain visibility into how they use data across their ecosystem to win, serve, and retain customers. Every organization would benefit from deploying the principles for ZT, but their first implementation should start with one high value workload/business process.

• Q: You have announced a new solution DxOdyssey.  How does it help your customers to overcome their networking and security challenges?  And, how does it help to enable a “zero trust” environment?

A: DxOdyssey enables network admins and IT security personnel to dynamically deploy perimeter security where needed in order to isolate services for fine-grained user access, creating Zero Trust micro-perimeters. DxOdyssey was purpose built to give medium and large organizations the perimeter security model needed for Zero Trust network connectivity to secure application- and workload-centric connections between on-premises and/or multi-cloud environments, with virtually no attack surface. DxOdyssey makes our customers hybrid cloud application infrastructure always-secure and always-on.

• Q: Where can readers go to learn more about DxOdyssey?

Please visit www.dh2i.com/DxOdyssey for more information.

About Don Boxley, CEO and Co-Founder, DH2i (www.dh2i.com)

Don Boxley Jr is a DH2i (www.dh2i.com) co-founder and CEO. Prior to DH2i, Don held leadership roles at Hewlett-Packard where he was instrumental in sales and marketing strategies that resulted in significant revenue growth in the scale-out NAS business. Boxley spent more than 20 years in management positions for leading technology companies, including Hewlett-Packard, CoCreate Software, Iomega, TapeWorks Data Storage Systems and Colorado Memory Systems.  Boxley earned his MBA from the Johnson School of Management, Cornell University.

About DH2i

DH2i Company is the leading provider of multi-platform Smart Availability™ software for Windows Server and Linux Server databases and stateful Docker containers. Its flagship product, DxEnterprise®, drastically reduces IT management complexity, enables nearest-to-zero planned and unplanned downtime, unlocks 30-60% cost savings and can reduce the number of OSes under management by 8-15x. DxEnterprise gives you data tier portability from any host, to any host, anywhere. Intelligent automation ensures that workloads and containers only come online where they can perform at an optimal level, compliant with business requirements and SLAs. To learn more, please visit: www.dh2i.com, call: 800-380-5405 or +44 20 3318 9204, or email: info@dh2i.com.