Exploring Single Vendors with Integrated Console
Hi, Max Clark. This is 20 minutes, Max, and wanna talk quickly about single vendors and integrated consoles. So constantly see this friction. Friction is maybe not the right word. This idea of let's go out and buy a solution from a single vendor.
Speaker 1:Right now, it's commonly put into SSE or SASE, this secure access service edge, SD WAN appliance, the firewall instance, remote access, your CASB DLP, all these functions gets enveloped into one place. We can go way more simple. Let's just talk about a basic firewall switch and Wi Fi, access point environment for for your locations. Having all of these things integrated into a single console makes administration much easier. Now the trick, of course, becomes is the vendor is gonna tell you that they've got integrated solutions and that they can integrate all these things into a single console.
Speaker 1:The reality, that's not always the case. You're gonna find maybe at most basic. So, you know, a Zscaler type solution where you have ZIA and ZPA and different interfaces. So you have to click back and forth in order to see and make changes to to things. I can pick on Cisco for a moment.
Speaker 1:Cisco Meraki. Cisco purchased Meraki. Meraki has become by the way, Meraki is phenomenal with a caveat. Their firewalls do not do SD WAN, so don't don't think that they do. They do do software defined VPN between Meraki firewalls, but rest of the SD WAN function, they don't have.
Speaker 1:When you look at Cisco strategy here, you have a strategy of acquisitions. So they acquired Meraki. They acquired OpenDNS. OpenDNS provides the umbrella framework. They acquired, Duo for 2 factor authentication.
Speaker 1:And now Cisco is trying to integrate these things into something that that looks like a unified environment. It's not. You'll go to your Meraki console to do your Meraki stuff. You're gonna go to your Umbrella consoles to do your Umbrella stuff. So it's a single vendor, but they're not integrated.
Speaker 1:It's not a single view. Palo Alto purchased Cloudgenix for their SD WAN. So now you've got the same sort of scenario where, you know, you can use, Cloudgenix SD WAN, which, by the way, is a phenomenal SD WAN. But you can use a Cloudgenix SD WAN and then use what they were calling CloudBlades to integrate, the Palo Alto Prisma access product and the Prisma firewall into your environment. But you're still gonna end up in a situation where you've got a Palo firewall, you've got your SD WAN, you've got your Prisma access, and you also have still have your switch and your and your Wi Fi, your Fortinet.
Speaker 1:You know, same story over and over and over again. So when the vendor is pushing you towards this idea around, hey. We've got everything in one solution. Spend some time to actually understand what that means and ask the question. Okay.
Speaker 1:You know, if I need to make a change to my switch, how do I do that? Make them show you a demo of that. You know, if I need to make a change to my access or my users or my security groups or my security policies or my CASB rules or DLP or or whatever the actual different pieces are, get the vendor to show you what that actually looks like and how you were gonna click around and how you're gonna use that tool. This is not an argument that everything has to be integrated in one place. It's an argument that you should be aware and understand what you're actually buying and what this is gonna mean to you from an admin standpoint and whether you're getting what you actually want out of it.
Speaker 1:Are you buying best of breed point nonintegrated solutions? Are you buying a totally integrated platform that's gonna cut down an administration and make your life easier because you could see everything at one place? So just a quick thought from this morning from conversations I'm seeing and having a lot of times right now. I anticipate that we're gonna see more and more of this conversation coming up and people trying to drive into single solution vendors because it makes things easier. By the way, as a quick aside before I go, this also comes out a lot in in the case of vendors that don't necessarily have the core technology and then need to meet a Gartner definition in order to be competitive in the market.
Speaker 1:Easy example that that makes, that that that goes with what I'm talking about right now would be the case of SD WAN vendors that are introducing and trying to chase the Sassy or SNC definitions. So these are now companies that have really good SD WAN appliances, but did not build and do not have the security side of it. So what's happening? They're going out and they're partnering with Checkpoint Harmony in most cases. Checkpoint providing the cloud firewall, the ZTNA function, the remote access, the secure web gateway, all these, the CASB, the DLP, all these sorts of things get implemented inside of Checkpoint, but then don't get implemented in the SD WAN.
Speaker 1:So you've multiple consoles. Cloudflare 1, Cloudflare, another, you know, phenomenally, Cloudflare 1, Cloudflare, another, you know, phenomenally regarded tool for the same thing, enveloping and integrating all of these functions that you need in terms of secure proxy, remote browser inspection, ZTNA, secure up gateway, yada yada yada. It doesn't have the SD WAN. So now you've gotta go out, and you've gotta find the SD WAN that you wanna integrate it with. You've gotta then bring in your switches and your access points, and you still have this relatively diverse stack.
Speaker 1:So if your goal is single vendor or single console, make sure you understand is that vendor actually giving you a single console. Or if they're telling you this packaging of lots of different tools under the same logo with different interfaces that have been cobbled together to try to meet the needs of the market and what the market's out there today. That's all I got for you right now. Hope this helps in some way. If you're out there in the market and you're looking at these things, just just ask to see it.
Speaker 1:Make sure you're you're getting the the actual interfaces. Make them click from one thing to the next thing. Understand where the lines really stop and start, and you'll be much happier as a result. Have a great day.
