How to Protect Multicloud Environments with a Virtual Firewall

By Tiju Cherian

Virtualization technology is powering amomentous revolution in today's modern data centres and clouds, leading todesigns that are commonlya mix of private, public andhybrid cloud computing environments.

International DataCorporation (IDC) research predicts that more than 90 per cent of organizationswill have some portion of their applications or infrastructure running in thecloud by the end of 2024.

As multicloud migrationhappens and organizations embrace technologies, such as containers, networkvirtualization must expand to adequately secure highly dynamic environmentsranging from public clouds to private clouds to data centres. Otherwise,organizations face the risks of visibility blind spots and control challenges.

To circumvent this, organizationsneed to implement cloud security solutions that operate together and are easilymanaged. Thebenefits ofcloud computing are well-known and significant. However, so arethe security challenges, exemplified bymany recent high-profile databreaches. Whether stored in a physical data centreor in a public, private or hybrid cloud, your data is the hacker's goal.

How toidentify the right cloud security solution

Securing the cloud introduces a range ofchallenges, including a lack of network traffic visibility, unpredictablesecurity functionality and the struggle to keep pace with the rate of changecommonly found in cloud computing environments. To be effective, organizationsneed a cloud security solutionthat:

• Identifies and controls network traffic within the cloud based on identity, not the ports and protocols they may use.
  
• Stops malware from gaining access to and moving laterally within the cloud.
  
• Determines who should be allowed to use the applications, and grants access based on need and credentials.
  
• Streamlines deployment and gets a new instance up and running with a click. You do not want to configure each virtual firewall, since that is time-consuming. Ideally, you would have a pre-defined configuration pushed to the device and it is up and running.
  
• Cost-effectively replaces expensive WAN connection technologies, such as MPLS, with secure SD-WAN.
  
• Simplifies administration and minimizes the security policy delay as virtual machines (VM) are added, removed or moved within the cloud environment.

Securing the cloud with SonicWall NSvvirtual firewalls

Recently, SonicWall announced a new firmware,SonicOS 6.5.4, on its virtual firewall platforms to provide feature parity with its hardware firewall platform.

SonicWallNetwork Security virtual (NSv)firewalls now support secureSD-WAN, zero-touch deployment, DNS security,Restful API and many more features that help solve the aforementioned problems.

SonicWall NSv firewalls help security teams reduce different typesof security risks and vulnerabilities, which can cause serious disruption tobusiness-critical services and operations.

With full-featured security tools andservices, including reassembly-free deep packet inspection (RFDPI), securitycontrols and networking services equivalent to what a SonicWall physicalfirewall provides, NSv effectively shields all critical components of yourprivate/public cloud environments.