My key take away from last year’s Mobile World Congress was that now almost everything is SIM-enabled, the industry focus moving forward will be on how telcos can make use of connectivity being delivered everywhere. Related to this, the open question coming away from the conference was how mobile connectivity can be orchestrated in one environment with effective controls? I have long seen security as the great unifier in this regard – as every user, device, and service demands uniform security on any network. This year I will return to Barcelona to deliver on that vision with an orchestration approach based on the uniformity of Zero Trust delivered via the Zscaler security cloud.For uniformity, the challenge has always been to extend an enterprise’s control, visibility and protection to all its assets, wherever they may be. To do so requires going beyond where physical infrastructure is located, where we have a forwarding router on the edge, or where clients are. To date, our Zero Trust based security cloud has been covering client side software and the edge of a network, and forwarding the edge of the cloud to all things in the IoT or OT-space. But we have not yet addressed the last unexplored territory of cellular connectivity with Zero Trust – meaning that this has still been a blind spot contributing to unsecured data streams from mobile services or things. And I deliberately say “things” here to signify that this goes beyond the scope of devices. The last mile for true uniformity of Zero Trust services has been unrealized – until now. With the extension of our Zscaler Cellular portfolio, we just added the last piece of the puzzle to deliver unified Zero Trust everywhere, at any time, and on anything in the various form factors that we need to deliver.Closing the security gap of mobile thingsZscaler Cellular brings secure Zero Trust-based connectivity into a cellular format; it is designed to enable the secure connectivity of IoT and OT devices or things that move outside the boundaries of a traditional network infrastructure. Typically, the traffic of such mobile devices outside the traditional enterprise perimeter would fall outside the control of IT security teams. Now, by providing organizations with an innovative way to send such traffic of these mobile devices or things through the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange security platform, Zscaler Cellular helps the devices to achieve secure bi-directional connectivity from enterprises or their customers, and therefore close any potential security gaps.Zscaler Cellular can be deployed with existing cellular providers or through an end-to-end service from Zscaler. To deliver this Zero Trust functionality, Zscaler has built the Zscaler Cellular Edge, which can be deployed via three different routes:1. As a bolt-on for existing telco services 2. Through a direct service from Zscaler 3. By moving the cellular edge into private cellular environments. Customers that are looking into replacing their Wi-Fi ecosystem with a high speed, low latency solution based on 5G can use this path to gain secure gateway functionality to enable those devices and services to be protected.Zscaler Cellular makes routable or public IPs obsoleteTraditionally, SIMs would connect via a private APN to the customer’s network, which would require an IP address that makes it fully routable. Once the mobile traffic is inside the private network it is secured via the firewall. Such a set-up repeats the old story of tromboning and backhauling data (i.e. per traditional MPLS traffic flows) which a modern Zero Trust approach already made obsolete. The problem with continuing to use these routable networks is that their security models add latency, vulnerabilities, cost and backhauling to the data center, and also make devices visible to attackers.To simplify such a complex set-up, Zscaler Cellular has a direct relationship with any mobile network – turning the cell edges into the gateway to access private or Internet workloads without having to backhaul data. Similar to the early days when the Zscaler service removed backhauling by providing secure direct access to the Internet for users accessing their applications in the cloud, the cloud platform now also considerably simplifies the infrastructure for mobile connectivity and makes SIMs invisible to the outside world. Rather than the heavy lift of previous network configurations, one unified Zero Trust policy secures all cellular data streams via the Zero Trust Exchange platform. As well as simplifying the set-up, this enables Zscaler to give secure connectivity, protection and visibility via one unified approach that serves a multitude of customer use cases.Simplified security for the mobile world at MWCThe benefit of a unified Zero Trust approach is the universal applicability for various use cases of basically everything that is mobile. Whether it is handheld devices, vehicles, machinery, or other use cases in the logistics or mobility space the concept of simplified combined connectivity and security resonates broadly across a variety of industries. If you want to experience the power of the Zscaler Cell Edge and private cellular networks at Mobile World Congress, visit Zscaler at our Deloitte and NTT partner stands or drop by our booth on the executive meeting room level. We are looking forward to showcase how Zscaler Cellular extends the reach of Zero Trust to shape the future of secure connectivity.
[#item_full_content] My key take away from last year’s Mobile World Congress was that now almost everything is SIM-enabled, the industry focus moving forward will be on how telcos can make use of connectivity being delivered everywhere. Related to this, the open question coming away from the conference was how mobile connectivity can be orchestrated in one environment with effective controls? I have long seen security as the great unifier in this regard – as every user, device, and service demands uniform security on any network. This year I will return to Barcelona to deliver on that vision with an orchestration approach based on the uniformity of Zero Trust delivered via the Zscaler security cloud.For uniformity, the challenge has always been to extend an enterprise’s control, visibility and protection to all its assets, wherever they may be. To do so requires going beyond where physical infrastructure is located, where we have a forwarding router on the edge, or where clients are. To date, our Zero Trust based security cloud has been covering client side software and the edge of a network, and forwarding the edge of the cloud to all things in the IoT or OT-space. But we have not yet addressed the last unexplored territory of cellular connectivity with Zero Trust – meaning that this has still been a blind spot contributing to unsecured data streams from mobile services or things. And I deliberately say “things” here to signify that this goes beyond the scope of devices. The last mile for true uniformity of Zero Trust services has been unrealized – until now. With the extension of our Zscaler Cellular portfolio, we just added the last piece of the puzzle to deliver unified Zero Trust everywhere, at any time, and on anything in the various form factors that we need to deliver.Closing the security gap of mobile thingsZscaler Cellular brings secure Zero Trust-based connectivity into a cellular format; it is designed to enable the secure connectivity of IoT and OT devices or things that move outside the boundaries of a traditional network infrastructure. Typically, the traffic of such mobile devices outside the traditional enterprise perimeter would fall outside the control of IT security teams. Now, by providing organizations with an innovative way to send such traffic of these mobile devices or things through the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange security platform, Zscaler Cellular helps the devices to achieve secure bi-directional connectivity from enterprises or their customers, and therefore close any potential security gaps.Zscaler Cellular can be deployed with existing cellular providers or through an end-to-end service from Zscaler. To deliver this Zero Trust functionality, Zscaler has built the Zscaler Cellular Edge, which can be deployed via three different routes:1. As a bolt-on for existing telco services 2. Through a direct service from Zscaler 3. By moving the cellular edge into private cellular environments. Customers that are looking into replacing their Wi-Fi ecosystem with a high speed, low latency solution based on 5G can use this path to gain secure gateway functionality to enable those devices and services to be protected.Zscaler Cellular makes routable or public IPs obsoleteTraditionally, SIMs would connect via a private APN to the customer’s network, which would require an IP address that makes it fully routable. Once the mobile traffic is inside the private network it is secured via the firewall. Such a set-up repeats the old story of tromboning and backhauling data (i.e. per traditional MPLS traffic flows) which a modern Zero Trust approach already made obsolete. The problem with continuing to use these routable networks is that their security models add latency, vulnerabilities, cost and backhauling to the data center, and also make devices visible to attackers.To simplify such a complex set-up, Zscaler Cellular has a direct relationship with any mobile network – turning the cell edges into the gateway to access private or Internet workloads without having to backhaul data. Similar to the early days when the Zscaler service removed backhauling by providing secure direct access to the Internet for users accessing their applications in the cloud, the cloud platform now also considerably simplifies the infrastructure for mobile connectivity and makes SIMs invisible to the outside world. Rather than the heavy lift of previous network configurations, one unified Zero Trust policy secures all cellular data streams via the Zero Trust Exchange platform. As well as simplifying the set-up, this enables Zscaler to give secure connectivity, protection and visibility via one unified approach that serves a multitude of customer use cases.Simplified security for the mobile world at MWCThe benefit of a unified Zero Trust approach is the universal applicability for various use cases of basically everything that is mobile. Whether it is handheld devices, vehicles, machinery, or other use cases in the logistics or mobility space the concept of simplified combined connectivity and security resonates broadly across a variety of industries. If you want to experience the power of the Zscaler Cell Edge and private cellular networks at Mobile World Congress, visit Zscaler at our Deloitte and NTT partner stands or drop by our booth on the executive meeting room level. We are looking forward to showcase how Zscaler Cellular extends the reach of Zero Trust to shape the future of secure connectivity.
