The new SSE offering expands Orange’s growing telco cloud cybersecurity portfolio
Orange, through its Orange Business Services and Orange Cyberdefense groups, and cybersecurity firm Netskope announced Thursday they’ll embed Secure Service Edge (SSE) functionality in the Orange Telco Cloud platform. The two firms are calling the new solution “carrier-class connectivity.” For Orange’s telco cloud customers, the new solution promises continuously updated cloud security and reduced security complexity. The solution embeds Netskope’s own points of presence, or PoPs, within Orange’s own telco cloud network. Netskope’s new offering provides more granular visibility, as well as real-time data and threat protection.
SSE provides enterprises with more flexible security as they migrate workloads to the cloud and increasingly must manage workforces demanding “hybrid work” environments – the freedom to work from the office, home, or while on the road. Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri said in a statement that adding Netskope SSE into Orange’s telco cloud offering will help enterprises adapt to the new normal without limiting business productivity.
“Cloud transformation and hybrid work models mean that traditional security architectures are no longer effective or efficient,” he said.
“Increasingly, enterprises are using the internet as their only WAN transport, even in a growing threat landscape.” added Orange Cyberdefense CEO Hugues Foulon. Foulon said that Orange and Netskope were working together to deliver a SASE-ready WAN edge without diminishing or downgrading the user experience.
SSE itself comprises functionality including a Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) functions. A SWG intermediates between users and the Internet, making sure that malicious software is blocked. ZTNA makes sure that users only have access to the network resources they need to accomplish their task. CASB provides a security policy enforcement framework. FWaaS services comprise Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) functionality as software: NGFW systems incorporate traditional firewall abilities like dynamic packet filtering, or stateful inspections, network address translation (NAT) and Virtual Private Network (VPN) support.
Orange’s partnership with Netskope is only Orange’s most recent telco cloud-associated cybersecurity announcement: In March, Orange Business Services announced a similar partnership with security firm Fortinet to incorporate its Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution into Orange’s telco cloud offering; SSE and SASE are similar, but SASE adds Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) support.
Last month, Orange announced a partnership with data center specialists Equinix to expand telco cloud services globally using Equinix’s Bare Metal as a Service. The new partnership promises on-demand telco cloud Points of Presence (PoPs) with services including Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), 5G roaming and voice services, all delivered with latency below 10 milliseconds. The companies plan to roll out the new service in Amsterdam, Madrid and Seattle by the end of the year. Each telco cloud PoP can host virtualized network service functions and connect to content and cloud service providers.
These days, however, even Orange Cybersecurity isn’t immune to potential threats. Earlier this month, the company confirmed that it was researching a potential breach after hackers posted what appeared to be data from the firm on a popular forum. The company said an investigation was underway and that customers affected by the alleged breach had been notified.
Orange Business Services scored a major win with Siemens earlier this year, helping the German manufacturing conglomerate with a global SD-WAN conversion which they claim is one of the world’s largest non-retail SD-WAN deployments.
