Heavy Networking 693: Securing Workforce Transformation With Cloud SWG (Sponsored)

Remotely accessing applications seems like no big deal, right? We’ve been doing it since client/server architecture was a thing. It’s not the accessing that’s the problem, though. It’s the security. In the old days when you controlled everything in the data path, you could (mostly) differentiate the good guys from the bad guys based on who logged into the VPN gateway paired with some posture assessment.

That’s not the world we live in today. One-time posture assessment for endpoints isn’t good enough, not in the zero-trust world. Accessing web sites securely is an issue not just for what a client is sending a server, but for what the server is sending back. You know the problems, and they are pervasive in a world where anyone can login from anywhere often from any device.

And so we come to the Security Service Edge or SSE category of products. Imagine a middleman that applies a variety of technologies (Secure Web Gateway, Cloud Access Security Broker, and Zero Trust Network Access) to secure connectivity between the endpoints you manage with the applications you might–or might not–manage. Isn’t that just a firewall? No…not exactly.

To give us the big picture is our sponsor today, Palo Alto Networks. Our guests are Nithin Varam, Product Line Manager and Charles Choe, Product Marketing Manager. We’re going to discuss a bit about SSE and SASE and then dive into a specific feature, Secure Web Gateways (SWGs).

We discuss:

• How SWGs fit into Palo Alto Networks’ SASE architecture
• Directing user traffic to the SWG
• Managing SWG policies
• How SWG security policies integrate and interact with firewalls, IPSs, and more
• Monitoring end user experience
• More

Show Links:

Not All Proxies Are Created Equal – Palo Alto Networks

Tech Bytes: Need Those Packets? Palo Alto Networks Introduces Traffic Replication In SASE (Sponsored) – Packet Pushers