Sangfor a Sample Vendor for Three Security Technologies
We are excited to announce that Sangfor has been recognized as a Sample Vendor for three security technologies in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Security in China, 2022[1].
The three technologies we are recognized for are:
- Situational Awareness
- Secure Access Service Edge
- Cloud Security Resource Pool
The latest recognition follows on from us being acknowledged as a Sample Vendor in five other Hype Cycles for various technologies, including Hyperconvergence and Secure Web Gateway. These are:
- Gartner Hype Cycle for Storage and Data Protection Technologies, 2022[2]
- Gartner Hype Cycle for Compute, 2022[3]
- Gartner Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategy, 2022[4]
- Gartner Hype Cycle for Workload and Network Security, 2022[5]
- Gartner Hype Cycle for ICT in China, 2022[6]
If you are not familiar with the Gartner Hype Cycle, check out this article that explains what the Hype Cycle is and how organizations use it to their advantage.
Read on to learn more about the technologies Sangfor is recognized as a Sample Vendor for.
Situational Awareness (SA) in China
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: 20% to 50% of target audience
Maturity: Early mainstream
Definition of Situational Awareness
The Hype Cycle defines Situational Awareness technologies in China as “modern, centralized, and evolved versions of security information and event management platforms. They integrate with other security tools and collect data from assets, network traffic, logs, vulnerabilities, user behaviors and threats. Additionally, SA technologies can analyze and display the security situation based on gathered data, and then predict the trend of the security situation.”
Based on this definition, we understand that Situational Awareness in China is more commonly known as Network Detection and Response (NDR) technology.
Business Impact
- One business benefit of SA technology noted in the Hype Cycle is to “identify processes and comprehend information in real- to near-real time.”
- For readers who are unfamiliar with SA/NDR, we would like to explain that this is achieved through the continuous monitoring and analysis of network-wide traffic. By capturing and analyzing traffic metadata, SA/NDR solutions identify all users, applications, processes, services, and devices in the network. This provides security operators with complete network visibility to assess their security posture and detect the presence of sophisticated threats in the network. Indeed, this is one of the technology’s drivers as per the Hype Cycle, “Cybersecurity risks are developing and evolving in terms of diversity, scalability, complexity, and continuity. The growing dependence on cyberspace has greatly increased the need for SA technologies — essentially, providing visibility, risk scoring and responding to potential cybersecurity issues.”
- Another business benefit of SA technology listed in the Hype Cycle is to “enable efficient and effortless integration of security tools. For example, the SOCs can unify security information in a single console instead of logging onto different platforms.”
- Indeed, we agree that this is one of biggest advantages of SA/NDR solutions. To explain, different security technologies such as firewalls, endpoint security software, and access control solutions have their own roles and sphere of influence. However, gaps between these spheres of influence may allow advanced cyber-attacks to evade the detection of individual security tools. SA/NDR solutions integrate these security tools to close these gaps and create a foolproof security system commonly known as an Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Platform. The integration of security tools also means that SA/NRD solutions allows security orchestration and automation to carry out correlated responses to detect threats.
For more information about our NDR solution, Cyber Command, visit the Cyber Command product page to learn more about its advantages, features and capabilities, use cases, videos, and more.
Secure Access Service Edge
Benefit Rating: Transformational
Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Definition of Secure Access Service Edge
The Hype Cycle defines Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) as “deliver(ing) multiple converged network and security as a service capabilities, such as SD-WAN, SWG, CASB, NGFW and zero trust network access (ZTNA). SASE in China supports branch office, remote worker, internet and cloud access security, low latency access to cloud, use cases. CASB is an optional component for SASE in China due to the country’s less spending in PaaS and SaaS services than the global average.”
Business Impact
The Hype Cycle notes that “the SASE service platform with national footprints provides low latency access to cloud, data center and edge facilities” as one of SASE’s benefits.
As a SASE provider, Sangfor can attest to this. One of SASE’s key benefits is to deliver security capabilities close to where resources are consumed to reduce latency. This replaces the hub and spoke architecture where traffic is hauled back to the security stack at HQ, which is expensive and causes lagging. SASE, on the other hand, diverts traffic to the nearest point of presence (PoP), where traffic undergoes policy enforcement and is diverted to the SASE platform for threat analysis. However, this is only meaningful if there is a PoP nearby. If not, SASE solutions would also suffer from high latency. With 23 PoPs in 18 major cities across China, Sangfor’s SASE solution, Sangfor Access, delivers high speed connectivity throughout the country.
Cloud Security Resource Pool in China
Benefit Rating: Moderate
Market Penetration: 5% to 20% of target audience
Maturity: Adolescent
Definition of Cloud Security Resource Pool
The Hype Cycle defines Cloud Security Resource Pool as “a software-based security set integrated with unified management and monitoring, security orchestration and automation, and compliance management services. It is integrated with various security tools from vendors’ ecosystems and can be incorporated into third-party security tools. Additionally, it offers on-demand and flexible usage of security resources.”
Based on this definition, we understand that Cloud Security Resource Pool in China is like Security Service Edge (SSE). SSE is the security subset of a SASE solution, that is, without the converged networking capabilities.
Business Impact
One of the benefits highlighted in the Hype Cycle is that Cloud Security Resource Pools “improve efficiency and reduce the burden on security staff by employing unified management and monitoring, and security orchestration and automation services.”
We believe that reducing the burden on security staff is especially important amid the global security talent shortage. This is especially true given the need to secure increasingly complex IT environments because of the rise in cloud adoption and edge computing. By integrating multiple security capabilities into a cloud-delivered service, Cloud Security Resource Pools/SSE do away with the complex deployment of security devices and greatly reduces the O&M workload of security staff using a centralized single-pane-of-glass management and monitoring interface. This ultimately gives them the best chance of ensuring the organization is adequately protected.
Sources:
[1] Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for Security in China, 2022, Feng Gao, Anson Chen et al., Published 10 October 2022
[2] Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for Workload and Network Security, 2022, Charlie Winckless, Published 18 July 2022
[3] Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for Compute, 2022, Tony Harvey and Jason Donham, Published 11 July 2022
[4] Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategy, 2022, Philip Dawson and Nathan Hill, Published 11 July 2022
[5] Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for Workload and Network Security, 2022, Charlie Winckless, Published 18 July 2022
[6] Gartner, Inc., Hype Cycle for ICT in China, 2022, Kevin Ji, Owen Chen et al., Published 26 July 2022
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