iPass Policy Orchestration:
Achieving Perfect Harmony for Mobile Security

If there's one thing every CIO is in tune with, it's security—particularly the vulnerabilities and challenges posed by securing remote and mobile connections. After all, it's one thing to know that you've deployed security software to your end-user devices. It's another to know that it's operating correctly every time one of your remote users connects to the Internet or your enterprise network.

iPass Policy Orchestration is being designed to give you the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your security systems are doing their jobs as your users connect from all around the world.

Measuring Up the Security Challenge

The Internet by its very nature is a shared network, open to anyone with a connection. Given that employees today must remain mobile and connected to stay productive, companies must take specific actions to safeguard network endpoints and assets to:

• Ensure private communications over a shared network, using technologies such as VPNs.
• Establish a trust relationship with remote users accessing the enterprise network through authentication and authorization.
• Make sure the remote endpoint device is secure from attack and safe to connect to the enterprise network using personal firewalls and anti-virus software.
• Ensure that endpoint security and operating system software is kept up to date and properly configured using endpoint assessment, remediation and patch management solutions.
• Coordinate policies and relationships across numerous enterprise security tools, access methods and user groups.

Coordinating Security to Fill the Gaps

Today, there are numerous point security products designed to protect different areas of vulnerability. However, there is no effective coordination among these tools or between them and remote and mobile connectivity services. This can lead to gaps in security enforcement, which may undermine the potential value of these solutions.

Connectivity to the enterprise network is a process comprising multiple, sequential stages. As an endpoint device moves through these various stages, different security vulnerabilities arise. To combat these vulnerabilities, different tools must interoperate to deliver increasing levels of trust and protection. All this must occur via a logical and coordinated process.

The challenge is identifying all the vulnerabilities and ensuring that the proper security tools are installed, up-to-date and working. Only then should remote network access be allowed. Coordinating these events balances user convenience with endpoint device protection.

That's where iPass' vision of Policy Orchestration comes in. This first-of-its-kind approach will be based on a new layer of software intelligence being built into the iPass platform which will allow iPass services to coordinate and sequence the various security tools, based on the user's connection state, at the point of the Internet connection attempt. These new capabilities can integrate with solutions from the broad spectrum of iPass Alliance technology partners, providing a vendor-neutral platform that leverages a company's existing security investment.

"iPass recognizes that secure connectivity solutions must combine robust remote and mobile access methods. Moreover, policy enforcement is needed to protect user identities, endpoint assets, the corporate network, and session data. From a management standpoint, all this complexity should be largely transparent to users and IT staff," said Chris Christiansen, vice president of IDC's Security Products program. "The iPass vision for Policy Orchestration treats all of these aspects as components of a coordinated system. This offers customers network coverage, security, and zero-tolerance management control in a single package."

"With its Policy Orchestration vision, iPass has once again demonstrated its ability to bring together best-of-breed solutions to enhance the end-to-end security of the enterprise. We look forward to continuing our relationship with iPass to ensure security tools are communicating intelligently."

- Doug Neal
President and CEO
Mobile Automation