EC News DeskHPE Aruba and Zscaler jointly conducted a round table briefing session for IT and network decision makers in Doha on 14 June at Mondrian Doha Hotel. The focus of the roundtable discussion was about how to secure the network edge using a Zero Trust approach.
The requirement of the roundtable discussion was assessed because of the need to adopt a Zero Trust approach using modern network and cloud-hosted security services to fulfil the promise of the Secure Access Services Edge.
The event was attended by 15+ top executives from Regency Group, Gulf Drilling International, McDonald’s Qatar, Ministry of Interior, Ooredoo, Qatar Media Corp, Qatar Engineering and Construction, Doha Film Institute, amongst others.
The event began with a short introduction about HPE Aruba in Qatar.
The attendees were then given an understanding about the concept of the intelligent edge and the various Aruba solutions supporting SD-WAN. The executive from Aruba touched on Aruba Central and the move away from a hub and spoke network topology towards a modernised WAN architecture.
Brought into focus was Aruba EdgeConnect Enterprise and how it can manage and deploy a unified SD-WAN network fabric. An important takeaway was the fact that successful digital transformation requires transformation in both network and security infrastructure and solutions.
Wissam Saadeddine, Regional Director MEA, Zscaler began his presentation with two important fundamentals. Mobility is a powerful enabler of digital transformation and traditional infrastructure is an inhibitor to digital transformation. Previously, traditional network and security architecture worked well in a pre-mobile world.
Amongst the other points Saadeddine presented were securing users and applications connectivity makes the network de-emphasized. Private Applications needs to be invisible from the Internet. And users should never gain network access when using private applications. Application segmentation is necessary to eliminate lateral movement.
Gartner predicts that 80% of organisations that implement Zero Trust Network Access will choose a consolidated Security Service Edge, rather than a stand-alone offering by 2025. Saadeddine also compared the benefits of Zero Trust network architecture with legacy network and security architectures.
In the end Saadeddine pointed out that Zscaler operates out of 150 datacentres all over the world.
In the last session, there was a demonstration on how Zscaler can coexist and interoperate with Aruba’s SD-WAN solutions including Aruba Orchestrator and Aruba EdgeConnect. The main takeaway here was that the network edge is the pivot point for WAN and security transformation. The presentation was also a hands-on approach on how to set up Zscaler and manage it using the Aruba platform.
The round table discussion was interactive with attendees asking questions during the course of the presentation, as well as at the end. Key takeaways and recommendations were shared with the attendees by the speakers at the end.
“Network security challenges have evolved significantly over the years as users have become increasingly decentralized and attacks have become more sophisticated and persistent. Traditional security approaches that focused primarily on the perimeter of the network have become ineffective as standalone security strategies. Modern network security must accommodate an ever-changing, diverse set of users and devices, as well as much more prevalent threats targeting previously “trusted” parts of the network infrastructure,” said Jacob Chacko, Regional Director – Middle East, Saudi & South Africa at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
“No one vendor or solution will deliver all the protection the organization needs. But, starting with strong, built-in network security means that organizations have a head start on implementing a Zero Trust or SASE framework. We are happy to have been able to join hands with our technology partner Zscaler to educate enterprises in Qatar about protecting their networks and securing their organizations.”
The event targeting IT and network decision makers focussed on how to secure the network edge using a Zero Trust approach.
