Versa’s SASE figures front and center to protect Japanese business AI, IoT and sensor data
Security software maker Versa Networks and wireless broadband equipment provider Nabiq announced this week a collaboration to bring private 5G services to Japanese enterprises. It’s a three-way partnership that also involves wireless equipment maker Tamagawa Holdings: Nabiq is offering the private 5G services as a managed service first through Tamagawa’s local 5G platform.
Nabiq will offer the cloud-based private 5G services deployed through Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Versa Operation System (VOS) manages the service chain on premises, hosting the User Plane Function (UPF) and Control Plane Function (CPF) of the private 5G service. Tamagawa and Nabiq have added Versa’s enhanced managed capabilities to the private 5G sharing service, the companies note.
In a statement, Nabiq president Tomohito Takatsu explained that his company chose Versa for its experience and security capabilities, while Nabiq brings to bear support for enterprise end uses and partners like Tamagawa, which develop local 5G services. He sees 5G as an important emerging communication infrastructure service for Japanese business and industry.
“These applications require solid security functions. Versa’s SASE is great not only for SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Networking) but also for SD-LAN (Software-Defined Local Area Networking) on which those applications run. Nabiq chose Versa for its excellent security capabilities and its worldwide experience,” said Takatsu.
VOS combines Virtual Machines (VM) with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) multi-tenancy support. This enables hosting and slicing of the UPF data plan, connectivity and security for the 5G control plane, Versa noted. This helps keep customer data secured on-site while delivering low latency and performance needed for Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, Internet of Things (IoT) data and sensors.
“Versa also supports many customers with a single edge platform, which is important in dense metro areas such as Tokyo,” said the company.
SASE combines network security functions together with principles of SD-WAN. SASE is typically delivered on-demand in the cloud, as a managed service — part of the ever-expanding tapestry of “as a Service” solutions made possible by cloud computing. SD-WAN enables IT departments to direct network connectivity and functionality as discrete software functions instead of relying on specialized networking hardware.
SASE aligns network security functions including Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and Zero-Touch Network Access (ZTNA). Versa’s SASE solutions add a variety of additional security-minded features and functions like Unified Threat Management (UTM) including Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI), and User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA). The company touts VOS’s efficient single-pass parallel processing architecture and “single pane-of-glass” management.
Nabiq and Tamagawa announced in May 2021 they had acquired a mid-band 5G radio license; the companies said the plan was to commercialize local 5G support.
“In addition to supporting license applications by land and building owners, Nabiq will enhance its system to support the smooth operation and commercialization of local 5G systems. We will provide a communication environment that customers can use “faster, larger capacity, less delay, safer and cheaper,’” reads a statement on their website, translated into English.
