Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

New Research Warns IT: Network Controls at Risk: Page 3 of 3

Context Is Required to Control LAN Sprawl

Faced with an increasingly dynamic environment, virtualized organizations, and limited financial resources, IT departments need to find a new approach to address LAN sprawl. ConSentry commissioned the Yankee Group report to examine this issue. The study concludes that to align business networks with business processes and maintain full visibility and control, the role of the network must evolve from that of a passive infrastructure to one of being the underlying orchestrator of services and the central point for providing policy enforcement. To be the orchestrator, the network must have context--stateful knowledge of each flow including the end user's identity, organizational roles, devices, applications at Layer 7, and other environmental factors such as location and time of day. Only a network that is context-aware can control traffic and provide services based on higher level business rules efficiently to capitalize on the productivity potential of the virtualized workforce.

"A decade ago, everything that touched a corporate network was known and owned by that enterprise, but today's picture is very different," continues Kerravala. "Today companies are seeking to gain competitive advantage by bringing their entire supply-and-demand chains into the network and building dynamic alliances involving not only internal users, but external users, applications, and devices. IT needs an automatic, flexible way to identify users and give them the access they need to participate in the competitive game plan of the parent company. That means context awareness has to extend across the entire LAN, even as its boundaries continually expand and change."
About ConSentry Networks
ConSentry is the leader in context-driven switching, a new class of switches that marries business policy with L7 visibility of users, applications, and devices to make forwarding decisions on the LAN. ConSentry's LANShield switches and controllers provide an integrated and programmable architecture for managing access to corporate assets across the LAN today and in the future. This fuels the virtualized organization by protecting assets, simplifying operations and improving productivity. More than 250 enterprises worldwide rely on ConSentry solutions for unprecedented visibility and granular, flow-based control of network access, at LAN speeds.

ConSentry Networks, the ConSentry Networks logo, and LANShield are trademarks of ConSentry Networks Inc., for use in the United States and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.