What We’re Reading, Week of 8/27

InfoWorld – Apple Devices Only? That’s not BYOD
Dark Reading – 10 Tips For Protecting Mobile Users
LifeHacker – How Secure Are You Online: The Checklist
SearchSecurity – Mobile security survey 2012 audio slideshow

The Awards Keep on Coming!

Good news – NCP engineering  has been named a finalist in the 2012 Golden Bridge Awards  in the VPN/IPSec/SSL – Innovations category. This recognition comes on the back of continued awards momentum for NCP, reinforcing its position as the leading provider of robust enterprise VPN solutions. Earlier this year, NCP was selected as a finalist in the Golden Bridge’s sister awards, the Network Products Guide’s 2012 Hot Companies and Best Product Awards and the Info Security Product Guide’s 2012 Global Excellence Awards.

A bit of background on the Golden Bridge Awards. Now in their fourth year, the awards  were created to generate industry-wide honor and peer recognition for all facets of the IT industry.

NCP was named a finalist for its  Secure Enterprise Solution, which is comprised of the NCP Secure Enterprise Client, the NCP Secure Enterprise VPN Server and the NCP Secure Enterprise Management System, and is designed specifically for companies with large, complex remote access environments. The centrally managed software solution provides IT staff with a single point of administration for a company’s entire remote access system, including hybrid IPsec/SSL VPNs, personal firewalls, certificate management, provisioning and practical Network Access Control (NAC) functions. NCP’s flexible solution makes remote access management simple by integrating to any third-party hardware or software already in place, while maintaining strong policy enforcement and rule-set creation.

Winners will be announced in San Francisco in October – stay tuned and best of luck to all finalists!

Readers’ Poll – Windows 8 Uses

Our last poll asked readers whether they plan on upgrading to Windows 8 come the platform’s launch in October. Since almost one-quarter of all respondents indicated that they will be upgrading, we would love to learn a little more as to why. Will you be doing so for work purposes? Or are you planning on using the new touchscreen-friendly interface primarily during off-hours?

Conversation on Multi-Tenancy in VPNs, Part 2

VPN Haus recently spoke with Rainer Enders, CTO of NCP engineering, about multi-tenancy in VPNs and its advantages. In the final post of this two-part series, we look into some of the drawbacks of multi-tenancy and what it all means for enterprise users. For part one, click here.

Q: Are there any disadvantages to deploying a multi-tenant network? What are they, and how can they be mitigated? 

Enders: The main disadvantages of multi-tenant networks come into play at the backend. Great care must be taken that data domains are not breached so that unauthorized access can occur and potentially result in data leakage. From a technical standpoint data domains must be shielded against unauthorized access in multiple ways implementing the classical defense-in-depth approach. This can be accomplished by building software/virtual firewalls around the virtual containers. Those firewalls allow for filtering of customer assigned address spaces as well as protection against traffic that originates in adjacent domains from co-located VMs. Additionally implementing an integrated AAA approach is mandatory to enforce strict user and device authentication. Centralized authorization and provisioning systems play a key role in this strategy.

Q: Why are multi-tenant VPNs important to the enterprise sector? 

Enders: Multi-tenant VPNs play a key role in the service provider sector. The technology serves as a powerful enabler for cloud-based secure services, as it delivers the power and balance of operational and economical scale and efficiency without compromising security to the enterprise network customer.

What We’re Reading, Week of 8/13

CIO – Wifi on Buses and Trains: Better Service Ahead
PCWorld – How Police Tracked Down Steve Jobs’ Stolen iPads
SearchSecurity – SearchSecurity survey reveals top 5 enterprise mobile security issues
VentureBeat – Security flaw in iOS lets hackers spoof texts