The Fast Mode spoke to Christopher Rudolph, Product Marketing Manager for the Americas at Cato Networks on the impact of traffic visibility on ZTNA networks. Christopher joins us in a series of discussions with leading cybersecurity and networking vendors, assessing the evolution of ZTNA technologies, the roadmap for ZTNA deployments, the benefits of ZTNA for enterprise and telco networks, and the need for real-time traffic visibility technologies such as DPI for ZTNA.
Ariana: What challenges do you see across ZTNA deployments?
Christopher: A couple of the most common ZTNA deployment challenges include the ability of the ZTNA solution to scale to the size of an organization to meet their needs and provide granular access control for users to the required applications and data. Most organizations were impacted in one way or another by the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020, and most organizations also quickly implemented some remote access solutions that covered their immediate needs. Now that things have returned to normal (a.k.a. the “new normal”), we can revisit those solutions. Most of those hardware-driven solutions that were hastily installed are limited in their scalability and access control options. Hardware-driven ZTNA solutions require more and more hardware to grow as the organization grows, which isn’t sustainable from a management or financial standpoint. Also, with all that additional hardware, maintaining control over who has access to what applications and data becomes a nightmare to manage and maintain.
Ariana: How important is traffic visibility for ZTNA vendors?
Christopher: Traffic visibility is key for ZTNA vendors and end users. Traffic visibility allows ZTNA administrators to ensure that their policies are dialed in correctly, and they can also see what applications and data their users are either accessing or attempting to access via their ZTNA connections. The ZTNA traffic visibility also adds more context to their other security analytics that provide insight into potential vulnerabilities and threats in their environments.
Christopher Rudolph is the Product Marketing Manager for the Americas at Cato Networks. Chris has over 18 years of technical experience in various roles, including system administration, sales engineering, solutions architecture, enablement, and marketing at several companies, including Citrix, Trend Micro, and several startups. Christopher holds an Ed.D. in Transformational Leadership from Concordia University, an M.Ed. in Educational Technology from Liberty University, and multiple industry technical certifications.
This interview is a part of The Fast Mode's Next-Gen DPI Traffic Visibility for ZTNA segment, featuring over 40 leading cybersecurity and networking solution providers and their views on the importance of traffic visibility for ZTNA. A research report on this topic will be published in January 2024 - for more information, visit here.
