Managed Cloud-Based IPS Service

Blocking and preventing threats before they do damage

Business Drivers

The rapid pace of technology obsolescence typically means a high cost of capital expenditures, while the ever-changing landscape of network security demands a dedicated focus to monitoring the rising number of potential threats twenty-four hours a day.

Challenges and Needs

Unfortunately, companies face security threats, from worms and viruses to malware and spyware on their corporate network as well as resources that they have on public storage/compute clouds such as Amazon EC2, Rackspace Cloud and IBM Cloudburst on a daily basis. Thousands of new threats are born every day, and staying current with patches and updates incurs time and money.

The costs that accrue can be debilitating for many companies. The need for around-the-clock monitoring, hiring and maintaining highly trained security staff, changing technology and premises-based solutions are only a few of the inflating costs that seem to balloon by the day.

To avoid these high costs, many companies choose to employ a do-it-yourself solution. This presents many obstacles in staffing, hardware, and in cost. Having an around-the-clock staff requires multiple people to cover the shifts. These staff members must be specially trained, and this level of talent is highly in demand and does not come cheaply. The tools needed for this kind of event monitoring are extremely costly, and consistently need to be updated and maintained.

Managed Cloud-Based IPS Service Overview

Virtela's Managed Cloud-Based Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) monitors security events in real time, while offering your employees and partners uninterrupted security. By moving the protection away from the premises and into Virtela's Local Cloud Centers, Virtela's IPS service dispels possible threats before they ever reach your company's network--shielding your network from harm, at an affordable, predictable cost.

The service provides an additional layer of security beyond the firewall to monitor for potential malicious activities, such Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), malware and intrusions, or policy violations and preventing them from affecting your network.

provides an additional layer of security once data has been filtered
through your Managed Firewall service. The system actively monitors network traffic and
system activities through open ports for potential malicious activities or policy violations.

Managed Cloud-based IPS service features include:

  • Managed, cloud-based service. Enabled by Virtela Enterprise Services Cloud (ESC), the Managed Cloud-based IPS service saves you time and money, with its instant service activation, simplicity of use, and elimination of up-front investments in hardware or ongoing costs for additional staff.
  • Flexible implementation options. With Virtela, you have the option to choose managed cloud-based, CPE-based, or hybrid designs based on your specific needs, be they monitoring only or full management. This approach is customized to address your business, budget, or specific location and resource requirements. For CPE-based deployments, Virtela not only can manage your existing IPS, but can also work with you to recommend the best IPS vendor based on your company's specific needs. Virtela offers Cisco, Check Point, HP TippingPoint, IBM (ISS), Juniper, and Unified Threat Management as possible IPS vendor solutions. This wide range of supported vendors makes it easy to transition the maintenance and management of your existing IPS.
  • Predictive analytics. Using VirtelaPredict technology, Virtela can diagnose more than 95 percent of potential enterprise network and security issues before they can impact network health. The service quickly responds to and remediates issues-or avoids them altogether-helping you achieve a 5x reduction in downtime.
  • Expertise, tools, and processes. You can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the monitoring and management of your security infrastructure are in the hands of the experts. Virtela has SAS-70 and ITIL certified and compliant global operations centers. No scrambling to hire additional staff, train existing staff, or throw money at expensive technology. Virtela can review and apply vendor patches and security updates to keep your business secure.
  • Audit and compliance tools. Integration of Virtela's security information and event monitoring (SIEM) and log retention and management tools give you the necessary event-correlation capabilities and reporting that meet strict compliance requirements (Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, GLB, and PCI, for example).
  • Inventory management and configuration modeling. The service allows your company to automatically identify devices within your environment and view the topology within the Virtela dashboard. This can help with rightsizing equipment maintenance spend for CPE-based implementations. It also can model the impact of configuration changes before they are made, further reducing risk of downtime by avoiding common mistakes due to human error.
  • Real-time view and control. The online customer portal, VirtelaView, offers real-time view and control of your service for order entry, service delivery, service management, tracking and reporting, and billing.
  • Exceptional customer support. Virtela is committed to going the extra mile and doing what it takes to provide the best service for its customers. With a business model that's carrier, vendor and technology independent, you can count on flexible, customized solutions--integrating the best partners to meet your specific needs. Virtela maintains an impressive 99 percent rate for opening trouble tickets proactively and responds quickly with 12-second average speed to answer time. And you can be assured of a Tier 1 Engineer technical support.

Business Benefits

The key benefits to your business are as follows:

  • Safeguard critical assets. Virtela's cloud-based system ensures nonstop protection against malicious threats and the potential damage caused by infections or attacks. With a cloud-based IPS, your security is protected long before suspicious traffic even has a chance to access your company's network.
  • Save money. Large capital expenditures are things of the past with Virtela's Cloud-Based, Managed IPS. The service eliminates the need to install, maintain, and manage expensive devices at each location.
  • Save time. With Virtela's support staff working around the clock, you no longer need to hire and train internal staff to oversee your security implementation. Gone is the need to keep up with the constantly changing technology and the latest malicious threats. Additionally, with this cloud-based service, you can activate services rapidly for each of your locations. In short, with Virtela, you can rest assured that your time is strictly being used to further your business.

"Virtela has not only protected us from thousands of infections, but their centralized control plus management of firewalls at the desktop will allow us to concentrate on other key projects. The IPS implementation has been so successful that we're now rolling out the service to protect all of our distributed network as well."--GAB Robins

 

Related Resources

FAQs: Extending Defense-in-depth into the Cloud (PDF)
Podcast: Extending Defense-in-Depth into the Cloud (MP3)
Analyst Report: A Case for Unified Network Security Outsourcing (PDF)