Aryaka has rolled a secure web gateway into its managed secure access service edge (SASE) solution.
Available now, the new system adds further perimeter security to an offering designed to help organizations deliver wide-area networking services to offices, branch sites, and remote work locations without leaving data, devices, and applications exposed, according to Dave Ginsburg, Aryaka’s vice president of product and solutions marketing.
“It’s just really the next step in bringing to market a complete set of cloud edge security capabilities,” he says.
Key features include URL category filtering, an internet firewall, antivirus and malware scanning, SSL inspection, and user identification and control functionality, along with analysis, reporting, and log services. Administrators can also provide or deny access to specific online destinations, like social media sites, to specific sets of users.
“You can have role-based access where certain groups like marketing are allowed to go to LinkedIn or Facebook during the day because they need to,” Ginsburg says, noting that the feature lets businesses limit access to specific times of day if they wish.
Aryaka’s secure web gateway joins existing VPN and firewall-as-a-service components in an integrated networking/security solution that also includes SD-WAN, WAN optimization, WAN acceleration, bandwidth aggregation, and other network-as-a-service features, plus a variety of backend managements services. The entire package is delivered on the vendor’s traditional fiber-based Layer 2 infrastructure and its more recently introduced Layer 3 backbone, both of which are in turn supported by over 40 global points of presence. Aryaka is currently building an additional 15 PoPs as well.
The entire solution shares a single-pass architecture with one management plane, control plane, and distributed data plane. The end result, according to Ginsburg, is a truly “unified SASE” platform.
“It’s a single code base and a single set of functions,” he says. “It’s really a common experience, a common set of capabilities, whether you’re a remote worker or whether you’re on premises.”
The solution’s unified foundation allows Aryaka to deploy it faster and more easily as well, Ginsburg continues, while enabling service providers to offer tightly bundled connectivity and security services to customers with hybrid workforces. “It really gives additional stickiness that our channel partners can leverage in addressing their customer’s business concerns,” he says.
The solution is fully managed by Aryaka, he adds, which allows channel pros and end users to deploy SASE technology without first investing in SASE expertise. “It doesn’t require hiring skills, training, budgeting, anything like that,” Ginsburg says. “It’s really one-stop shopping.”
A co-management feature delivered through the self-serve MyAryaka portal enables organizations to perform some or all management duties themselves instead.
Partners receive a percentage of the solution’s total contract value and can add further margin by bundling in additional services like unified communications, Ginsburg notes.
Secure web gateway services are included in Aryaka’s Private Access subscription for remote workers and its Prime Pro and Prime EZ plans for offices, data centers, and cloud environments. Prime EZ runs exclusively on the vendor’s Layer 3 core. Prime Pro relies chiefly on the Layer 2 core.
According to Ginsburg, all of those options are appropriate for both SMBs and larger businesses. “We have customers that have 250 employees. We have customers that have 25,000 employees,” he says. “I would say through the channel community, the sweet spot is probably towards the lower end of that spectrum.”
Originally a WAN and then SD-WAN provider, Aryaka has been building security functionality into its platform as well in recent years to meet surging demand for secure networking services by businesses with ambitious digital transformation goals but limited in-house technical expertise. The company introduced its managed SASE and managed SD-WAN solutions, along with its Layer 3 core, last December.
“This is really the next step in that evolution,” Ginsburg says of the new secure web gateway, noting that CASB, data protection, next-generation firewall, and threat protection services are on the roadmap as well for release in 2023 and beyond.
