With 100 million users in over 100 countries, Citrix has earned a leadership position in digital workspace solutions.
In the evolution of applications, we have enabled IT teams to become more agile by delivering a Citrix Workspace from the datacenter or public cloud. The benefits are clear: reduced downtime and increased security address many of the challenges associated with deploying traditional desktops.
There is new challenge that IT needs to overcome. How to secure users from bad actors, and enterprise data from prying eyes, while working from home or in offices and providing flexibility to access business and personal applications wherever they are working? For enterprises on the IoT journey, how do you provide consistent protection as more and more devices reach out to their services in the cloud? Unfortunately, hub-and-spoke networking and security architectures designed around a datacenter are no longer adequate to meet today’s business needs because of the following constraints:
- Fragmented, service-chained solutions make it difficult to change policies without “breaking” another set of configurations.
- Adding scale in response to changing usage often involves upgrading physical appliances to higher capacity limits, taking weeks for IT to deliver new digital services.
- Manual policy configuration separately for security and the network expose the business to risk and downtime.
- Routing all internal traffic through the datacenter introduces latency and risk when cloud services and SaaS are widely distributed, and likely closer to the user’s location
Today I am excited to announce a new addition to the Citrix services portfolio that will address these challenges and more. Citrix Secure Internet Access (SIA) is a comprehensive, global security cloud service that serves the full security requirements of modern enterprises. The service includes Secure Web Gateway, Next-Generation Firewall, Cloud Access Security Broker and AI-driven forensics with real-time threat intelligence from over 10 engines. The SIA cloud architecture offers a multitude of benefits:
- 100+ PoPs across the globe provide consistent protection for all users and lower latency for a better employee experience. No more backhauled traffic to centralized hubs or datacenters.
- Segregation of data between each customer maintains privacy in the cloud.
- Auto-scale and built-in resiliency that allows on-demand scale as traffic volume increases.
- Single-pass data processing offers higher performance and lower latency compared to service-chained architectures, which add complexity, latency, and fragmented policy provisioning.
- Inspection and protection of all encrypted and compressed traffic for compliance, malware, and data loss prevention with no performance limitations.
- An API-based platform for future integrations for security, compliance, automation, and business workflows.
- Local inspection and logging of data for GDPR compliance based on administrator-controlled zones.
Most importantly the competitive advantage for our customers is the integration of the new SIA platform with Citrix SD-WAN to make it easier for IT teams to deploy a converged security and networking solution from the cloud much faster than separate point solutions. Some key benefits of the integration are:
- Automated “dual resilient” connections connectivity between Citrix SD-WAN locations and Citrix SIA PoPs.
- Unified view of infrastructure across SD-WAN locations, SIA PoPs, and connecting tunnels with combined reporting across the networking and security architecture.
- Granular control and traffic steering with allocation of bandwidth across SIA, cloud providers, and other WAN links.
Our 400,000 customers are starting with a powerful advantage with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. Their IT teams have strong protection of internal apps and content, and as employees use Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to directly access the internet, Citrix SIA can protect the network from external threats. Additionally, Citrix Secure Workspace Access, a key component of zero trust access, gives IT an additional level of protection to the corporate network.
SIA is delivered as a service on Citrix Cloud, with a multitude of integrated value that simplifies the life of IT. Whether it is the unified admin experience through built-in SSO, multi-factor authentication for IT security, integrated reporting across services, Citrix Secure Internet Access eliminates manual and error prone configuration mistakes and delivers simplified management and operations for IT personnel.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, Citrix has been laying the foundation for Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and with today’s announcement we are adding a critical piece to our SASE architecture.
With SIA, only Citrix offers a fully unified, ready-to-deploy SASE solution that combines comprehensive, cloud-delivered security with SD-WAN to provide the workforce with the best, most secure experience for any application, anywhere, on any device. The unification of networking and security, Citrix gives IT the agility needed to drive new business initiatives at scale.
Learn more about Citrix Secure Internet Access. Looking for more information on Citrix SASE? Check out the SASE chapter of our Unified Security Guide.
