The number of remote and roaming employees has been steadily on the rise for the last few years. But today, there are now millions of new people that are being forced to work from home. Luckily, most business tasks can be done on the internet with the proliferation of SaaS solutions on the market. So, problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. What about security?
In a recent Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) research survey, they found that most successful attacks involved a remote or roaming user.
“68% of the targeted attacks in the last twelve months compromised a remote or roaming user”
Remote and Roaming User Security Requirements, ESG, 2019
So, attackers were already targeting this weak point in security before the massive influx of new remote workers. What do you think is going to happen now?
There is a strong need to secure all this new remote web traffic and to do it quickly and efficiently. In the past, many organizations used to set up a proxy appliance at headquarters and backhaul all the remote traffic to that centralized point to perform web security. Not only is this practice expensive and outdated, but it also takes a lot of time to set up and configure. What’s needed now is a cloud-delivered solution that can easily scale to cover the influx of new remote users and provide the security necessary to protect modern web traffic.
Last year, Cisco Umbrella released a cloud-native secure web gateway (SWG) which provides a broad set of web traffic control and security (and works with both Cisco and third-party VPNs). It includes antivirus and malware scanning, sandboxing, content and file type controls, application visibility and control, HTTPS/SSL decryption, and full URL level reporting. SWG capabilities are available as part of the Umbrella SIG Essentials Package, along with firewall, DNS-layer security, cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality, and interactive threat intelligence in one cloud-delivered solution.
So now there’s a powerful and scalable way to secure your remote and roaming user web traffic. But how do you get that traffic to the cloud service? That’s where the Cisco AnyConnect client fits in. In January, Cisco released a new version of the AnyConnect client that is fully integrated with the Umbrella SWG. Existing AnyConnect customers can simply update their client and connect it to a new or existing Umbrella SIG Essentials account to get the full advantages of a web proxy in the cloud. New Umbrella customers can simply sign up for an Umbrella account and choose the SIG Essentials package to get secure web gateway functionality. Once Umbrella has been deployed in the environment, just deploy the included AnyConnect clients to remote endpoints to gain the benefits.
Some of the key benefits of this solution are highlighted by recent world events. The Umbrella service is powered by an elastic infrastructure that can expand to cover new users quickly with no need for new hardware or manual on-premises deployment tasks. You get full visibility across all your web users to enforce acceptable use policies and compliance regulations as well as detect and block millions of attacks.
It’s time to embrace the new reality of remote workers and enable your organization to provide secure internet access from anywhere.
For more information visit: umbrella.cisco.com/products/secure-web-gateway
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