FlexComplete: A Complete Enterprise Solution
Flexible Networks reduces the complexity and cost of enterprises' migration to the cloud, including the networking and security components that are often overlooked. Our complete enterprise-class solution comprises the following:
| Service Feature | Benefit |
| Unified Threat Management (UTM) | Protect corporate resources and assets against security threats. |
| Identity and Access Management (IAM) | Protect corporate resources and assets from unauthorized access. |
| Remote Access Service (RAS) | Provide secure remote access to teleworkers and road warriors. |
| VPN Services | Securely connect all sites on a single virtual network using MPLS and IPSec. |
| Application Performance | Guarantee network bandwidth to business-critical applications over less-critical applications. |
| Cloud Integration | Direct connectivity to major cloud providers to overcome poor application performance over the Internet. |
| Single Sign-On (SSO) | Secure cloud services by extending corporate authentication and authorization to applications by major SaaS providers. |
FlexComplete is 100% cloud-based, resulting in significantly lower cost and complexity. Carrier-class redundancy and 24/7 support provide a highly reliable and available service.
Security
Security is the greatest concern of any enterprise using the Internet. The increasing sophistication of DoS attacks, network break-ins, viruses and other attacks can overwhelm less-capable network defenses. The attackers can be external or internal. In addition, protecting an enterprise from zero-day attacks requires constant vigilance and constantly updated security infrastructure. The impact of ignoring such attacks can be severe, including direct monetary losses and indirect losses such as loss of reputation. Evolving regulatory compliance obligations are also significant factors driving concerns over network security.
Flexible Networks improves enterprises' network security at a lower cost than existing solutions. Our cloud-based managed security solution begins with a comprehensive Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution. This is the most critical part of any security solution: it protects an enterprise from the broadest class of attackers, both external and internal. The Flexible Networks UTM solution includes:
- Firewall
- Anti-virus
- Anti-spam
- Web filtering
- Intrusion Prevention System/Intrusion Detection System (IPS/IDS)
- DoS attack prevention
- Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
We then add Identity and Access Management (IAM), which includes hosted authentication and authorization. IAM adds another layer of security by enforcing enterprise authentication and authorization policies for all users. Such policies include multi-factor authentication, password expiry and multi-level authorization.
Flexible Networks' IAM solution includes Single Sign-On (SSO) with SaaS applications, allowing enterprises to extend their security policies into the cloud.
Finally, a robust SSL-VPN based remote access component rounds out the security solution. Remote access is authenticated and authorized by the IAM system, thereby enforcing a consistent security policy across all users and across all platforms. This is especially important as non-traditional devices such as smartphones and tablets are increasingly used to access corporate networks.
Figure 1: Comprehensive Security
Networking
The Wide Area Network (WAN) connecting an enterprise to the rest of the world serves a business-critical function: it supports communications to other office locations as well as to remote services such as cloud services. It is vital that traffic on this critical asset is secure, and that the most critical applications get the bandwidth they need.
Our networking solution reduces complexity and cost by creating a secure, cloud-based VPN over any Wide Area Network (WAN) access technology. For enterprises that use Internet circuits for network connectivity, we use IPSec to secure traffic to their main sites. For smaller sites that do not warrant a full IPSec solution, SSL-VPN technology provides security. For enterprises whose requirements warrant a full MPLS VPN solution, a point-to-point circuit connects each site to the Flexible Networks cloud, and MPLS is used to connect all the sites attached to our cloud.
Regardless of the WAN technology chosen for a particular enterprise, performance of business critical applications is optimized using Class of Service (CoS) throughout the network. This protects business-critical traffic from being crowded out by lower-priority traffic such as streaming media and BitTorrent applications.
Finally, some applications may be latency sensitive and may perform poorly over a wide area network. Our WAN acceleration addresses this issue using state-of-the art equipment in the cloud.
Figure 2: End-to-End Network Optimization
Cloud Integration
Most enterprises are harnessing the power of the cloud to reduce cost and, at the same time, increase elasticity and speed to market. However integrating on-premise data and application assets with cloud-based assets can be complex. In addition, application performance over the Internet may be poor.
Flexible Networks enables enterprises to extend their in-house networks and security into the cloud. Our solution takes a three-pronged approach to the cloud integration problem.
Firstly, we connect directly with the major Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers. This direct connectivity, coupled with our CoS-based WAN access, guarantees the highest possible application network performance.
Secondly, on top of our cloud peering, we harness our IAM solution to provide Single Sign-On (SSO) to the major cloud services. This alleviates the complexity of enterprises running their own SSO software and federating their internal authentication systems with multiple cloud providers.
Lastly, we integrate flow-through provisioning of cloud users and services to ensure a seamless cloud experience. All user and service configuration changes made on the Flexible Networks portal are active immediately.
Manageability
Flexible Networks' powerful solution is augmented by a complete, consumerized portal that allows enterprises' IT personnel to easily and effectively manage their network, security and cloud services. In addition to providing complete manageability of all services, the portal also features a comprehensive service dashboard which allows IT personnel to quickly see and query anomalies in their services.
A Complete Solution
Flexible Networks provides a comprehensive solution for enterprises' network, security and cloud integration needs. This solution simplifies the enterprise's network, secures on-premise and cloud-based assets, and saves money. Download the FlexComplete data sheet here.
Please contact us to learn more.