Johannesburg, 30 Sep 2020
Contingency planning is essential to ensure business continuity during natural disasters or pandemics like COVID-19. Using mobile applications and cloud-hosted services not only delivers convenient and instant access to critical information and resources, but also enables people to work, study and interact with peers without interruption.
In order to implement work-from-home policies for the line of business (LOB) that handles private or sensitive data as well as for organisations that need to maintain compliance, one needs to consider technology solutions that help mitigate risk and address privacy and security concerns.
“By deploying Aruba Central, a wide range of remote networking requirements can be quickly addressed from a single pane of glass. Aruba Central is the industry’s only cloud-native command centre for all-in-one LAN, WLAN, VPN and SD-WAN operations across remote, campus, branch and data centre locations. Utilising AIOps, Zero Trust Security and integrated help desk services, organisations embarking on new work-from-home initiatives can use Aruba Central to easily connect end-users to cloud and on-premises services for an in-office experience at home or on-the-go,” says Warren Gordon, Business Unit Manager at Duxbury Networking – distributor of Aruba technology.
Cloud-native advantages
To ensure a consistent and efficient remote access deployment, the following capabilities come standard with Aruba Central:
- Centralised management: A single pane of glass to manage network configurations, device inventory, security policies and site installations for any location.
- On-demand IT software and services: Features such as application performance monitoring and URL filtering are enabled quickly over the air.
- Enhanced scale and resilience: Instant remote access for thousands of temporary and permanent work-from-home users – no end-user set-up required. In the headend, capacity and high availability is simplified by installing additional on-premises and virtual headend equipment.
- Over-the-air software and configuration updates: Zero-touch provisioning and after-hours scheduled upgrades ensure networks support the latest features, remain in compliance, and provide consistent experiences everywhere a user connects.
Flexible deployment options
Aruba Central manages the entire life cycle of remote Aruba LAN and WLAN, overlay VPN tunnels and VPN concentrators (VPNCs) – in addition to Aruba VIA VPN client access.
Aruba IAP-VPN mode for Aruba access points delivers full enterprise networking capabilities for teleworkers and remote locations that need one or more APs per site. IAP-VPN mode enables the same, secure connectivity experience that users have in a large campus, including access to the same SSID, Intranet, shared printers and VOIP telephony. Users simply connect an AP to an Internet connection and plug into the power outlet, with no additional manual set-up required.
IAP-VPN mode enables APs to act as gateways, forwarding traffic through secure overlay tunnels to an Aruba Central-managed VPNC, routing for subnets, and providing stateful firewall enforcement of WLAN and LAN traffic.
For students, contractors and employees on public or personal WiFi networks, Aruba VIA is a VPN client that provides secure access to enterprise resources. Aruba VIA provides split and full tunnel connections to an Aruba VPNC managed by Aruba Central.
Aruba Central-managed APs can also establish IAP-VPN tunnels to an on-premises-managed Mobility Controller. This is ideal for organisations undergoing cloud migrations and need to rapidly scale remote access.
“To simplify and secure network access, all Aruba APs are deployed with Aruba’s Policy Enforcement Firewall (PEF), a Cyber Catalyst designated feature to help reduce cyber risk. For IAP-VPN deployments, wired and wireless traffic is bridged at each site, while for RAP deployments, traffic is tunnelled to a VPNC for inspection. This ensures that every remote site maintains consistent policy enforcement at the edge, based on user role (for example, guest, contractor, employee), device type, application and network location.
The following products combine to deliver the corporate office experience to any branch or remote location: Aruba Central, Aruba Access Points and Aruba VIA, Aruba SD-WAN headend and/or virtual gateways.
All Aruba APs are purpose-built for teleworkers, remote offices and temporary work and study locations. Supporting the latest WiFi 6 standard, as well as WiFi 5, APs deliver secure and reliable connectivity to mobile users, IOT devices and latency-sensitive applications.
Optional extras include:
- Aruba ClearPass Device Insight (CPDI) – delivers AI-based profiling capabilities that automatically fingerprint client devices.
- Aruba SD-WAN with threat defence.
- Aruba access switches – for larger branch locations, or to support campus core and data centre environments.
“With Aruba Central, organisations gain access to a simple and scalable cloud-native solution that provides multiple deployment options and security benefits. Whether a user is at home or on the go, they can experience the same corporate office experience, including LAN and WLAN access, Intranet services and VOIP telephony – all while adhering to corporate security policies. Organisations can simultaneously use Aruba Central to deliver WLAN, LAN and SD-WAN connectivity for larger branch and campus networks for added flexibility,” says Gordon.
For more information, contact Duxbury Networking,(+27) 011 351 9800, info@duxnet.co.za, www.duxbury.co.za
Share