How Security is Embedded in Citrix Solutions
Although Citrix itself is not a security vendor, Citrix solutions are designed to overcome security challenges. Citrix technologies enable organizations and their employees to work in whatever manner they want while catering to their advanced security requirements. Traditional security policies may have been enough in the past, but as hybrid and multi-cloud environments become a norm, and the applications and data increasingly shift outside the traditional, on-premise data centers, a static security perimeter encompassing legacy infrastructures has become obsolete. Instead, a dynamic approach that adapts to the specific environment in which an organization is operating is needed. Citrix Secure digital Perimeter or SDP is a new people-centric approach towards securing the digital workspace of enterprises. SDP uses users, their location, access rights, and usual behaviors to dynamically secure enterprise resources, and provide better visibility and control without disrupting the user experience and productivity. Today, security is not the concern of CIOs and CISOs only; it is becoming a major concern for everyone onboard.
Traditional Security Frameworks are becoming Irrelevant
Organizations that push their users to operate within traditional security frameworks are essentially inhibiting their growth and ability to achieve their highest potential. Limiting users due to static security frameworks that revolve around on-premise data centers results in greater control; however, at the cost of usability and performance. To deal with the gaps left behind in a traditional attack-centric approach, companies end up investing in several cloud security services for access management and secure web gateways. Such measures result in expensive and complicated solutions that do not tackle policy problems as a whole.On the other hand, attackers are no longer the amateurs of the past; they have evolved into skilled and organized criminal networks and may very well be state actors. They leverage vulnerabilities to carry out sophisticated ransomware attacks, spying and even propagating political agendas. At this point, companies can no longer afford to think that they won’t ever be a victim; they need to step up and invest in dealing with security concerns proactively.
Being Proactive and People-centric
Attackers are now more sophisticated than ever. They can easily manipulate naive users into divulging private information and use that information to impersonate an employee and gain access to the company’s resources. Secondly, there is a scarcity of information security experts; however, threats and attackers are plenty. In this situation, it is hard to fight against attackers that you don’t know and threats that you can’t predict. Citrix calls its SDP a “dynamic, people-centric security perimeter” instead of an “attack-centric security perimeter”. It protects by leveraging what it knows, the user and expected user behavior- against the unknown threats and attacks. Essentially, the people-centric approach is all about utilizing the information you have about the users and their usual activities, locations and devices to block out activities and attempts that are out of the norm and appear malicious. As a result, organizations enjoy:
- Unrestricted access for authorized users which provides better user experience and enables better performance.
- Security for all enterprise resources
- Simplified management and control, across applications, in a complex hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure
SDP Merges Visibility, Control and Protection
SDP protects beyond the traditional security perimeter and engulfs users, resources and network in a complicated, hybrid and multi-cloud environment. It enhances visibility by giving an overall view of the users, their location, devices, expected and actual behaviors. It manages control by allowing or denying access and other privileges. Finally, it identifies malicious software based on perceived threats and stops it in its tracks. Citrix technology provides secure, on-premise and cloud-based solutions, and SDP naturally fits well with other Citrix products and provides visibility, control and protection across all Citrix technologies.
Citrix Analytics for Visibility
Citrix Analytics is a single framework that leverages machine learning and analytics to achieve cross-product visibility. It analyzes user behavior across all portfolios and creates risk profiles against users. It detects behavior that’s out of the ordinary right away. The earlier IT teams are informed of malicious activity, the sooner they can take action.
Common Policy Framework for Control
Just like Citrix Analytics, Citrix is also working on a Common Policy Framework for providing a single point of control to IT teams. Unusual activities are analyzed, and policies are implemented to cater to those anomalies, all through a single framework. Considering how SDP surrounds all Citrix solutions, on-premise and cloud-hosted, companies who are already using Citrix technology will be the ones to leverage SDP to its fullest potential. The idea is quite similar to Citrix Access Control solution that combines resources from Citrix Workspace with Citrix Analytics to ensure security and better visibility across all web and SaaS applications.
Citrix SD-WAN for Availability
If attackers manage to cause an outage and make a resource unavailable to users, companies can suffer great loss in terms of productivity and performance. Availability is another key parameter of security that SDP takes care of. SDP maximizes availability, in conjunction with Citrix SD-WAN, for network resources and connectivity. SD-WAN provides automated, secure connectivity that provides an always-on workspace and chooses the best available path in terms of jitter and latency. By doing so, it manages to avoid outages and the resulting loss of productivity.
In Conclusion
As important as security is for enterprises, it should never come at the cost of user experience and productivity. Multiple security layers and locking access by default compromise user experience and decrease performance, but on the other hand, is the constant threat of security breaches. A people-centric approach towards security enables greater visibility and control by utilizing the knowledge in possession instead of blindly warding of unknown threats. Citrix Secure Digital Perimeter makes use of this user-based information to differentiate normal from anomalies.
