Steve Brasen

Pulse Secure, a renowned provider of software-defined Secure Access solutions, announced that Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) has honored Pulse Secure among the industry’s top secure access platform vendors. Pulse Secure was selected by EMA as a “Top Three” vendor in enabling secure remote access across hybrid business networks. According to the 2020 EMA Secure Access Decision Guide, remote workforces increasingly require access to business applications, data, and services from a variety of devices through the Internet and unsecured public networks, increasing exposures to attack and risks of compliance failures. Secure remote access We surveyed IT decision makers to identify the top 10 key secure access initiatives" Secure access solutions with identity and device security features must create intuitive, compliant and protected connections for workers to access essential IT resources across business networks, private clouds, and SaaS environments. In 2020, requirements for enabling secure access from remote workers to hybrid IT business networks accelerated rapidly and substantially. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and global stay-at-home orders, workforces in nearly every business sector were suddenly required to enable remote access capabilities in order to continue operations. Solutions enabling employees to work remotely became a critical lifeline during the most challenging days of operational restrictions and trends towards increased workplace flexibility and permanent work from home requirements are expected to define secure remote access capabilities as a key element of IT enablement into the future. Minimize risk profiles The EMA Decision Guide provides actionable advice on the best practices and solutions organizations should adopt to empower end-user productivity and minimize risk profiles when enabling secure access to business IT resources. “We surveyed IT decision makers to identify the top 10 key secure access initiatives and then evaluated over 100 products across these business priorities by analyzing a broad array of vendor product briefings, case studies and demonstrations,” noted EMA Research Director and Report Author, Steve Brasen. Access business applications Pulse Secure brings together core secure access capabilities with required interoperability for hybrid IT "EMA's detailed and independent assessment of this market clearly identified Pulse Secure among leading secure access platform providers and top three solution for enabling workforces to remotely and securely access business applications, data, and IT services across hybrid IT environments." Pulse Secure brings together core secure access capabilities with required interoperability for hybrid IT. The company’s Zero Trust value proposition is realized through its Pulse Access Suite, which delivers protected connectivity, endpoint compliance, operational intelligence, and threat mitigation across mobile, network, and multi-cloud environments. Data protection requirements Pulse Connect Secure (PCS), the company’s flagship secure remote access solution, offers rapid deployment and single-pane-of-glass management while ensuring user productivity with easy, optimized and protected access to data center and multi-cloud applications. “Pulse Secure enables enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation strategies and flexibly migrate from data center to multi-cloud computing while addressing diverse user, business and data protection requirements,” said Scott Gordon, Chief Marketing Officer at Pulse Secure. Clientless web access portal Pulse Secure has also extended its Pulse Cares programme through September 30, 2020 “EMA’s recognition of Pulse Secure as an industry-leading secure access vendor for hybrid IT is testament to our focus on enabling user productivity and our passion to innovate while being mindful to optimize our customers’ business opportunities, resources and investments.” Pulse Access Suite and Pulse Connect Secure capabilities highlighted in the EMA report include: Extensive Secure VPN connection modes: always-on, on-demand, or only when utilizing specific applications, as well as split tunneling and multi-tunneling. Layer 2, layer 3 and layer 7 access security with broad application support. Ensures compliance with support for MFA and SSO authenticators (e.g., SAML IdP and SD), and user and device security before and during connections. Simplifies administration with wizards, granular policy settings, and adaptive access with built-in UEBA. Pulse One management platform to automate appliance and policy administration while viewing an operational dashboard. Unified Client, agent and agentless, for VPN, SDP and NAC, as well as clientless web access portal. Accelerate digital business Organizations can try Pulse Connect Secure and other integrated solutions that comprise the Pulse Access Suite by visiting the official website of the company. Pulse Secure has also extended its Pulse Cares program through September 30, 2020, providing flexible licensing and expedited deployment and capacity enhancement to support business continuity as organizations extend workplace flexibility and accelerate digital business in the wake of the COVID-19 global health crisis. The abridged version of the “2020 EMA Top 3 Report and Decision Guide for Enabling Secure Access to Enterprise IT Services” can be downloaded from EMA website.

Despite security issues and concerns resulting from the massive and sudden increase in work-from-home (WFH) initiatives caused by the global COVID-19 healthcare crisis, one-third (38%) of U.S. companies observed productivity gains during remote work and a staggering 84% anticipate broader and more permanent WFH adoption beyond the pandemic, according to new data released by Pulse Secure, the provider of software-defined Secure Access solutions. Anticipate positions moving to permanent remote work The 2020 Remote Work-From-Home Cybersecurity Report, sponsored by Pulse Secure and produced by Cybersecurity Insiders, offers an in-depth perspective on WFH challenges, concerns, strategies and anticipated outcomes. The survey, conducted in May of 2020, polled over 400 IT security decision practitioners across a broad representation of industries and companies between 500 and over 5,000 employees. The survey found that 33% of U.S. companies anticipate some positions moving to permanent remote work and over half (55%) plan to increase their budget for secure remote work in the near-term. “This new research provides organizations comparative insight into how enterprises are addressing immediate work-from-home requirements and cyber threat challenges to ensure business continuity and employee well-being,” said Scott Gordon, chief marketing officer at Pulse Secure. “Beyond offering a wake-up call for emergency preparedness, the findings indicate a strong likelihood of organizations permanently extending work-from-home flexibility and advancing secure access capabilities.” WFH adoption accelerated cloud app growth The research indicates that three-quarters of businesses now have more than 76% of their employees working from home compared to just under 25% at the close of 2019.  While a third of respondents cited their business being “ill prepared or not prepared” for remote working, 75% of businesses were able to transition to remote working within 15 days. Surprisingly, less than a third expressed cost or budget problems, demonstrating the urgency to support their business. Additionally, more than half (54%) expressed that COVID-19 has accelerated migration of users’ workflows and applications to the cloud. In terms of security risks, two-thirds (69%) are concerned with WFH security risks with the majority expressing low user awareness training, insecure home/public Wi-Fi networks, use of at-risk personal devices and sensitive data leakage as prime threat contributors. WFH adds security and compliance challenges In terms of application exposure, respondents feel anxious over file sharing (68%), web apps (47%), and video conferencing (45%) risks.  Two-thirds of IT security professionals anticipate malware, phishing, unauthorized user and device accessWhile 78% expressed enforcing the same level of security controls and data management for on premise and remote users, a further 65% allowed access from personal, unmanaged devices. Two-thirds of IT security professionals anticipate malware, phishing, unauthorized user and device access, and unpatched/at risk systems to be the most exploitable WFH attack vectors. In addition, 63% expressed that remote work could impact compliance mandates that apply to their organization; especially GDRP, PCI-DSS, HIPAA and those with data breach notification. Survey respondents employed various tools to secure remote work / home office scenarios with the top four controls being endpoint security, Firewalls, virtual private networks (SSL-VPN) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).  According to separate research by Enterprise Management Associates, 57% of organizations regard the consolidation of access management solutions into a single platform to be a high or extreme priority for their business this year. Wider trends toward security tools consolidation Adoption of WFH has highlighted the need for organizations to embrace more holistic secure access strategy" “The mass adoption of WFH has highlighted the need for organizations to embrace more holistic secure access strategy that supports both flexible working and the growing shift towards hybrid IT. The most effective IT management solutions are platforms that are both modular and integrated,” noted Steve Brasen, research director with Enterprise Management Associates. “Modular solutions allow organizations to adopt the exact feature set they require to meet business needs. However, solutions must also be fully integrated to yield desired management efficiencies. Solutions, such as Pulse Secure Access Suite, address broad secure access needs while yielding operational and economic benefits.” The WFH and tool consolidation trends coincide with a recent update to Pulse Access Suite, a secure access solution set that provides easy access for mobile workforces and a single-pane-of-glass to streamline provisioning, management and scalability. The Suite integrates adaptive identity and device authentication, protected connectivity, extensive visibility and analytics, and threat response for hybrid IT. Organizations can centrally orchestrate Zero Trust policy to ensure compliant access to applications, resources and services across cellphone, network and multi-cloud environments.

Security today announced it is extending its artificial intelligence (AI) technology originally developed to protect users in the financial services industry, to clients in all industries via the company's identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) offering. IBM Cloud Identity now features AI-based adaptive access capabilities that help continually assess employee or consumer user risk levels when accessing applications and services. The solution escalates suspicious user interactions for further authentication, while those identified as lower risk are “fast tracked” so they can access applications and services they need. Using AI for a holistic view of context of user access With data breaches on the rise, traditional means of securing access, like passwords, are often not enough to prevent unauthorized access. The rise of credential-stuffing attacks, where a malicious actor obtains a list of credentials and tests them at various other sites using a bot, demonstrates that many password combinations have been leaked. Companies are constantly trying to optimize both security and user experience" According to a 2019 report, compromised and weak credentials are cited as the cause for more than 80% of data breaches. Meanwhile, 2017 research found that large companies are managing hundreds of applications - up to 788 custom applications on average for companies with more than 50,000 employees. Considering the amount of programs and passwords that employees are managing between their professional and personal lives, it is increasingly important that new security measures do not hinder user experience. “Companies are constantly trying to optimize both security and user experience, but the trick is ensuring security is not disrupting the everyday user journey” said Jason Keenaghan, Director, IBM Security. “IBM Cloud Identity with adaptive access is using AI to give organizations a holistic view of context for user access, based on indicators like malware and risk indicators, device insights, and user behavior, to help them focus security on high risk logins and give the majority of user’s seamless access to their accounts and applications.” IBM Cloud Identity Many organizations continue to rely on older username and password methods to provide employee and consumer users access to services. Due to the patchwork of applications and solutions organizations are working with, they may not be able to deploy more modern security layers. This can create a blind spot that prevents security teams from easily implementing rules that flag suspicious indicators like malicious logins, unknown locations, unrecognized devices, and whether a user is on a company’s network VPN. IBM Cloud Identity is an identity-as-a-service solution that helps organizations connect every user to every application using adaptive access. Through the use of AI, the service helps simplify access management and security for users by assigning user risk levels based on a defined set of factors. With these risk levels, administrators can create rules that level up or level down authentication - implementing strong authentication but only when needed. Artificial Intelligence IBM Cloud Identity with adaptive access leverages IBM Trusteer AI technology to assess users The service leverages the following features to determine risk and enable adaptive access decisions: A user behavior score is assigned based on the level of trust or risk assessed for each user. A number of factors are assessed including web intelligence, location data, malware and risk indicators, and device insights. For example, using AI, the system can detect irregular mouse movements or flag a user trying to login from a browser infected with keylogging malware. IBM Cloud Identity with adaptive access leverages IBM Trusteer AI technology to assess users based on a fraud evidence database, fraudulent pattern analysis, and cross-organizational patterning. Smart access and seamless login Since AI capabilities are able to assign risk levels, only users considered to pose a higher threat are prompted to go through multifactor authentication or denied access. By only prompting specific users to further verify their identification, rather than all users, organizations may be able to reduce operational expenses related to items such as two-factor authentication and help desk password resets for both current and new users. This can potentially lead to cost cuts considering organizations spanning different sectors have allocated more than $1 million per year to password-related support alone. Low-code deployment Adaptive access policies can be created and applied to applications and APIs with little to no development effort, and without application changes.“According to our primary research results, the establishment of low-friction end user experiences has the potential to help boost security effectiveness while reducing management efforts and related costs,” said Steve Brasen, Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates. “By injecting intelligence into access processes, IBM is helping its customers implement the appropriate level of authentication enforcement for users while minimizing impacts to their productivity.”  

Pulse Secure, a provider of Secure Access solutions, announced that EMA, an analyst firm specializing in IT and data management technologies, has honored Pulse Secure as the industry’s leading hybrid IT secure access platform vendor. Pulse Secure was selected by EMA as a “Top Three” vendor in three related product categories and was the only vendor, among more than 60 assessed, to achieve the highest ratings across these Hybrid IT categories. Driven by digital business transformation, the world of securing access to enterprise applications, data and other IT services continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Emerging requirements for workforce mobility, distributed data center, virtual and cloud-based IT environments, and data protection have yielded significant access control complexities.  Identifying Access Security Issues The published report identified ten priorities for enabling secure access to enterprise IT servicesEMA conducted research to identify the access security issues facing organizations, including a survey of leaders from over 200 enterprises and an analysis of hundreds of vendor product briefings, case studies and demonstrations. The published report identified ten priorities for enabling secure access to enterprise IT services and offers insight into key challenges, considerations and technologies. The report also supports IT decision makers’ vendor-selection process as it heralds 30 of the most innovative vendor solutions addressing the greatest array of requirements for secure access enablement, highlighting Pulse Secure’s leadership ranking across three categories: Unifying access control across hybrid IT ecosystems Enabling secure remote access to business networks Network Access Control with IoT enablement Hybrid IT Secure Access Platform “Increased pressure to enable workforce mobility and scale IT services across a variety of data center, public and private cloud environments have challenged organizations to grant secure and reliable access,” said Steve Brasen, research director at Enterprise Management Associates. “Based on the breadth, depth and interoperability of its solutions, Pulse Secure is distinguished in the market as providing the most comprehensive, integrated and flexible Hybrid IT Secure Access platform.” “EMA’s recognition of Pulse Secure as an industry-leading secure access vendor is testament to our focus on customer needs and our drive to ensure superior user experience while delivering simple, highly manageable and integrated solutions,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, CEO at Pulse Secure. “Our Secure Access portfolio enables organizations to improve productivity by addressing a wide variety of business, visibility and compliance requirements as they evolve from data center to hybrid IT environments.” Software-Driven Access Solutions Pulse Secure offers a portfolio of software-driven Secure Access solutions Pulse Secure offers a portfolio of software-driven Secure Access solutions that satisfy usability, contextual intelligence and orchestration to support hybrid IT environments. The EMA comparative vendor research resulted in three Pulse Secure products being awarded as top solutions: Pulse Cloud Secure, Pulse Connect Secure and Pulse Policy Secure.    In the “Unifying access control across hybrid IT ecosystems” category, key considerations for solution adoption included: console interface breadth of support, endpoint identity management capabilities, hybrid hosting environment support, connectivity governance and IT service integrations. The report highlights Pulse Secure’s hybrid IT access management solution, Pulse Cloud Secure, as offering: Access to on-premises and public cloud-hosted services enabled through Pulse Connect Secure Broad SSO and MFA support with stringent host checking of endpoints Visibility and policy-enforcement for security compliance by validating endpoints and verifying levels of access before connections Integration directly with identity providers, including Ping Identity, Okta and Microsoft ADFS Secure Network Connections The Pulse One management platform can be used to automate appliance software updatesIn the “Enabling secure remote access to business networks” category, key considerations for solution adoption included: persistence of secure network connections, context awareness, breadth of supported endpoints, onboarding process and third-party integrations. The report highlights Pulse Secure’s data center and cloud VPN platform, Pulse Connect Secure, as offering: Secure VPN connections may be optionally set as always-on (routing all network traffic), on demand (only when needed) or only when utilizing specific applications The Pulse One management platform can be used to automate appliance software updates and policy changes while viewing a dashboard of appliance status Unified client that supports a variety of endpoint types, including Windows, macOS, Linux (CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu), iOS, Android and Chrome OS When a user transitions from a remote location to an on-premises location, connectivity is dynamically switched without any interruption to the existing network connections Application certifications that include: Common Criteria (NDcPP), FIPS and JITC UC APL IoT Device Authentication Designed for scale, Pulse Policy Secure can support up to 20 million endpointsIn the “Network Access Control with IoT enablement” category, key consideration for solution adoption included:  scalability, IoT device authentication, contextually-aware policy controls, inclusion of a RADIUS server, dashboarding, reporting and alerting, and third-party integrations.  The report highlights Pulse Secure’s NAC solution, Pulse Policy Secure, as offering: Profiles network devices with real-time detection, classification and monitoring of managed, unmanaged and IoT devices to deliver an intuitive user experience via a unified client for both NAC and remote VPN access to the data center and cloud Contextual information for endpoint visibility and policy enforcement are referenced from a wide variety of network protocols, data collection tools and multivendor integrations Automates onboarding, sponsored-based guest and device management, and BYOD enablement Integrates with next-generation firewalls for identity-based admission control and sends user identity information to other 3rd party solutions via API, Syslog and the IF-MAP protocol Built-in, high-performance RADIUS server eliminates proxy latency while simplifying network planning and reducing TCO Centrally managed from the cloud or on-premises with the Pulse One administration console and includes dashboards that provide a high-level snapshot of all managed, unmanaged and IoT devices as well as granular reports delivering inventory, access, security and compliance details Designed for scale, Pulse Policy Secure can support up to 20 million endpoints