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How Automated Network Management Helps in the Remediation of Human Error

by | Oct 15, 2021 | Increase Productivity, Network Automation

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Large enterprises rely on the management and administration of their networks to continue their daily operations. In recent years, networking trends have pointed towards using automated processes to regulate and administer enterprise networks. Automated networks free up administrators to tackle more complex and specialized problems requiring the human touch. In addition, the automation process offers the advantage of eliminating the possibility of common mistakes caused by user miscalculations.

Network automation isn’t just growing in terms of ability; it’s also becoming much more popular. GM Insights illustrates how the network automation market is expected to grow by 26% CAGR between 2020 and 2026. This trend continues the general move towards automation in previous decades, where its use as a replacement for human involvement has become mainstream. This dramatic rise in usage will likely set the standard for network management in the years to come, making it more important for administrators to wrap their heads around it.

This article discusses network automation and illustrates use cases, the challenges, and solutions of automated network management.

What is network automation?

Simply put, network automation is the use of software to automatically perform tasks and protocols formerly performed manually by network engineers. This means the granular work of configuring and reconfiguring switches and routers is done automatically through preset automated scripting initially set up by the administrator. This shifts the network administrator’s role to focus on creating these processes and adjusting them, when necessary.

The applications for these processes change by industry. For example, a network administrator working in healthcare typically needs to monitor, adjust, and repair broken systems on their own to ensure that the network is running smoothly. In particular, they need this network to be exceptionally secure—if it is not, the medical information on the network could potentially be at risk. Similarly, they have to ensure that their network is updated to comply with HIPAA privacy laws. This process can be incredibly time-consuming, taking up time better spent on different specialized tasks.

Automated network management applications

Although the push to automate networks is far more popular today than five or 10 years ago, some are still waiting for more information before committing to the switch. Network automation offers several advantages over manual network operation, including:

  • Easier management
  • Faster workflow
  • Frees administrator time

The effects of networks not being appropriately managed are too significant to ignore. When a network is left unattended or not managed enough, it experiences difficulties with everything from application performance and lag to (at maximum) major security breaches. The dangers of network failure are even more prominent for businesses, resulting in potential data leaks and cyberattacks. Damages to the business’s reputation are also crucial factors to consider, which creates PR nightmares and financial losses that may take years to recover from.

While automation benefits apply across the board, there are also specific use cases where network automation offers unique advantages. Below we discuss automated networks and how they benefit configuration management, changes, and compliance.

Automating configurations

Network configuration refers to how the network is set up and organized. It contains information on all hardware devices attached to the network and controls all processes involved with repair and maintenance. In this sense, a network’s configuration management database may be one of the essential elements to automate.

The benefits of an automated configuration management network include:

  • Replacing network functions in the event of a failure
  • Saving configurations in different formats
  • Controlling and monitoring network repairs
  • Overseeing network upgrades
  • Storing information on default network systems

Automated networks perform these actions automatically (or automatically notify the administrator, if preferred), taking the labor demand out of them. It similarly offers network engineers the option of saving different configuration options for when they might want to enable them.

Automating changes

It’s important to remember that the systems we use to regulate our networks today are not necessarily the same systems we will use in the future. As the tools and programs used to regulate a network evolve and grow over time, network administrators also benefit from a system that automatically updates and adapts to them. Automated updates benefit every industry from tech to automotive, as businesses are generally more successful when they can quickly adapt and integrate new technologies as they become available.

Automating compliance

Although the internet used to be the wild west in terms of legislative regulations, legal restrictions quickly catch up with technology. The last two decades have seen major legislation regulating user privacy (HIPAA) record-keeping (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and transparency (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), but industry projections expect new laws to be enacted, which networks will have to reflect.

Manual networks pose a much more significant challenge to administrators trying to compensate for these regulations. By switching to an automated system, administrators can ensure that their network meets the criteria as defined by the law and focus their energy on more advanced issues.

The challenges and solutions of network automation

Despite everything that automated networks provide for administrators and users alike, many are hesitant to embrace them, citing a variety of potential problems with their use. A few major concerns include:

  • Perceived loss of security
  • Complex tools which require management themselves
  • Need for customization
  • Legacy systems & devices

Some of these issues are more about the perception of automated networks rather than the networks themselves. However, others represent real concerns. A banking company, for example, may have excessive security needs to protect customer funds. The consideration of legacy systems—outdated non-integrative software still in use—affects all industries.

These concerns are understandable, but often don’t reflect reality. The complex tools involved in an automated network, no matter how difficult, do not hold a candle to the energy required to manage a manual network. Nearly all automated networks offer the customization options sought by significant industries, and legacy devices are, in reality, not quite as unreachable as most of us think. More information on the steps to network automation will illuminate how automation can adapt to practically any setting.

Network Automation; the next steps

The trend of automation is becoming more critical to understand than ever. As network management trends move further away from traditional human-centered models, the hardware used to manage them will quickly become outdated. It will become vital for competitive enterprises to automate their networks to stay relevant with that in mind.

Moving forward, automated network management is much easier with the help of an experienced partner.

ZPE Systems offers excellent options to bring your network management to the next level. Feel free to contact us for more information.

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What Is Zero Trust Security? 5 Critical Things You Need to Know

by | Oct 12, 2021 | Zero Trust Security

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Zero trust security is not a new concept, but it has gained popularity in recent years. As companies become increasingly distributed, they must offer flexible network access without putting sensitive data at risk. That’s where zero trust security comes in. What is zero trust security? Let’s discuss the five critical things you should know.

What is zero trust security?

Zero trust security can be boiled down to a simple concept: never trust, always verify. That means you must always verify the identity and trustworthiness of every user and device trying to access your network. Traditional networking safeguards are based on a castle-and-moat architecture. This means that all users and devices within the network are assumed to be trustworthy and can access the resources they need. Those outsides of the network (or moat) must be verified and trusted before gaining access. One of the glaring problems with this approach is that it doesn’t consider the possibility of insider attacks coming from an authorized user/device within the network. That means that an attacker simply needs to hack into the network—for example, by compromising a user account—and then there are few, if any, obstacles remaining in their way. What is zero trust security? It’s a reimagining of network security based on the concept that you shouldn’t automatically trust anyone or anything trying to connect to your network. Instead, you should verify users and devices that try to connect, whether they’re coming from the outside or inside the network perimeter. In other words: trust no one.

Where did zero trust security come from?

The concept of zero trust was first prototyped more than a decade ago by John Kindervag at Forrester, but it didn’t truly gain traction in the industry until recently. The zero trust security architecture came from the realization that the traditional castle-and-moat model was becoming increasingly vulnerable. Years ago, a typical organization’s sensitive data was kept in a central location. This made the network and its resources easy to monitor for threats and protect from attacks. Now, many enterprises are adopting technologies that offer more outstanding networking capabilities for distributed access. These technologies include public and private clouds, service-based software and infrastructure, virtualized SD-WAN and firewall solutions, and more. Securing an entire enterprise network means putting multiple safeguards in place. The traditional security architecture is being replaced by the more flexible and robust zero trust security model.

Zero trust security benefits

One of the fundamental goals of networking is to allow the flow of information between computers, people, and organizations. However, that information is becoming more decentralized and must be relayed through various channels, which increases risk.  Since traditional security architectures simply can’t provide omnipresent protection for data and communications, organizations around the globe are adopting zero trust security.

Zero trust security use cases and examples

  • Scaling with remote and branch offices: Setting up new branches comes with its own set of security risks. However, using a zero trust model, you can get granular control over who and what can access your network. This can help eliminate attacks from stolen equipment, devices, or credentials.
  • Remote and work-from-home: When setting up a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) configuration, whether for faraway branch offices or remote and traveling workers, zero trust security keeps networks and resources secure. Zero trust requires user identities and devices to be verified, which eliminates many methods of attack.
  • Securing data at HQ: When you define access rights using an SD-Perimeter approach, zero trust enables you to restrict access to sensitive resources to only the personnel who need it. This restricts lateral movement on your network and keeps data secure from both outside actors and malicious insiders.

Zero trust security benefits your business by giving you granular control over security controls and access policies, so you can better protect the network.

How to implement zero trust security

Now that you understand what zero trust security is, you can create a plan for implementing it. The best strategy is to break your implementation process up into a series of small, repeatable steps so you can slowly build out your zero trust architecture while improving and refining things as you go. The five basic steps to implement zero trust security are:

Step 1: Define your protect surface(s)

You may be familiar with the term “attack surface,” which is the sum of all the potential access points an attacker could use to penetrate your network. With traditional network security methodologies, you need to defend your attack surface by creating a perimeter of security controls (like firewalls and intrusion detection systems) that extends around your entire network. This used to be easy when all of your sensitive data was located on one centralized server, and you could only access it from inside the local network. Now that your enterprise data, devices, and users can be located in and accessed from anywhere in the world, it’s essentially impossible to identify, define, and defend every potential access point. The zero trust security model asks you to focus on the micro-level—the individual data, applications, assets, and services you need to protect. These items are known as your protect surfaces, and your goal is to create access control policies and establish security controls specifically designed to protect each of them. So, the first step towards implementing zero trust security is to identify and define each protect surface. You may find it helpful to use the acronym DAAS—Data, Applications, Assets, and Services—when determining what to include in your protect surfaces: D: Identify any data that contains sensitive or proprietary information that may be valuable to a hacker or damaging to your organization if it were stolen—e.g., HIPAA data, financial records, trade secrets. A: Do any of your enterprise applications process sensitive data or contain proprietary code? Those applications need to be included in a protect surface. A: All network assets, including laptops, point-of-sale terminals, IoT devices, cell phones, and manufacturing equipment, need to be inventoried and protected. S: Identify and locate all critical network services that could impact your business productivity or security, such as DHCP, Active Directory, and VoIP.

Step 2: Map your interdependencies

How do traffic and data flow between each of the items you identified in your DAAS? You need to know how each of these resources interact with each other to account for these interdependencies when you create access policies and enable security controls around protect surfaces. By mapping your interdependencies ahead of time, you can safeguard each protect surface without accidentally breaking anything.

Step 3: Construct micro-perimeters

You’ve already narrowed your focus from one attack surface to many small protect surfaces. Now you need to shrink your big network perimeter into a series of smaller micro-perimeters. That means you need to segment your network around your DAAS and implement security controls for each individual protect surface.   One of the greatest things about zero trust security is getting very granular with your security controls. Since you’re focusing on a small network segment, you can use the best security technology for that specific job. You want to segment your network as much as possible to create small protect surfaces that target security controls with a high level of specificity.

Step 4: Establish access control policies

Your micro-perimeters will rely on access control policies to determine who can have access and how to establish trust. You should use the “Kipling Method” to decide who should have access to each protect surface, which means asking the following questions:

  1. Who should have access to this resource?
  2. What application is being used to access this resource?
  3. When is the resource being accessed?
  4. Where is the user or device that’s requesting access?
  5. Why do they need access to this resource?
  6. How should you allow access to this resource?

Again, the smaller your network segments, the more precise you can get with your access control policies.

Step 5: Monitor and optimize

Once you’ve segmented your network, created micro-perimeters, and enabled your zero trust access control policies, you need to monitor each protect surface and conduct frequent log reviews to ensure operations are running smoothly. You should look for signs of latency and performance issues, as well as make sure your policies are being applied correctly and your security controls are restricting access appropriately. By following these five basic steps, you can create a zero trust security implementation that’s completely customized around your business requirements, protect surfaces, and security vulnerabilities.

Zero trust security best practices

Here are some additional tips for implementing zero trust security in your enterprise.

1. Assess your current strengths and weaknesses:

Zero trust security doesn’t necessarily require an expensive technology upgrade to implement. Instead, you should look for ways to augment your existing network and security architecture using zero trust principles and policies. By thoroughly analyzing your existing tools and solutions, you can identify gaps in your zero trust readiness and avoid spending money on things you don’t need or already have.

2. Invest in discovery and classification tools:

Identifying your DAAS is the critical first step in your zero trust journey, so you should make things easier on yourself by investing in the right tools for the job. Look for solutions that can automatically discover network assets, application interdependencies, and sensitive data. These automated tools won’t just make your job faster—they’ll ensure you don’t let anything slip between the cracks.

3. Assess trust dynamically and consistently:

Verifying the identity of a user or device is only part of the zero trust equation— you also need to determine their trustworthiness, which may change depending on context. For example, is this an average time for this user to connect to your network? Is this device in a geographic location that makes sense in this situation? Has the user or device been involved in any suspicious behavior elsewhere on your network? You need to determine trust on a dynamic basis, and apply the same criteria to every account, whether they’re in the office, at home, or abroad.

4. Implement zero trust identity and access management (IAM):

Without an identity and access management (IAM) solution that supports zero trust security principles and security controls, you can’t verify identities and establish trust. For example, you may want a solution that incorporates user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), which monitors account and device behavior so it can spot unusual or risky activity, report it, and block access. You’ll also need features such as single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to provide additional identity verification and security levels. SSO allows users to access all enterprise resources using the same user name and password, which means you can enforce the same password complexity requirements and access control policies across your entire network. MFA requires users to provide a second method of identity verification, usually with a code texted to their smartphone or generated by an app.

Zero trust security simplified

What is zero trust security? It’s both a mindset and a methodology for security that addresses the limitations of a castle-and-moat architecture for today’s distributed business network. By following the principle of “never trust, always verify,” and using the implementation steps and best practices outlined above, you can take advantage of zero trust security’s benefits for your enterprise. Are you looking for a way to streamline your zero trust deployment without sacrificing security? Nodegrid’s Zero Trust Security Framework Foundation is a family of network management hardware and software that supports zero trust principles through features like:

  • Secure boot and geofencing technology so only you can install and boot your configuration
  • Integration with zero trust IAM providers like Duo, Okta, and Ping for SSO and MFA capabilities
  • Unified cloud management, control, and access for consistent configuration across branches

What is zero trust security?

Learn more about zero trust or request a demo of Nodegrid’s zero trust framework by contacting ZPE Systems today at 1-844-4ZPE-SYS.

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3 Data Center Management Challenges—and How to Solve Them for Good

by | Oct 8, 2021 | Data Center Management

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Data center infrastructure adds an extra layer of complexity to enterprise networks since you need to remotely manage hardware at scale. The network perimeter needs to extend across a geographical distance—which could be several miles or several continents—while maintaining your enterprise infrastructure’s visibility, security, performance, and availability. Accomplishing these goals is often a challenge for engineers.

However, every challenge is an opportunity to learn and improve. Here are the top three data center management challenges, and the proper solutions to avoid or overcome them for good, while optimizing your network infrastructure.

Top 3 data center management challenges and their solutions 

The challenge: Infrastructure monitoring and visibility

One of the most significant pain points for network engineers managing data center infrastructure is the difficulty of gaining complete, real-time monitoring and visibility of remote systems.

Different vendors may offer varying degrees of remote monitoring for their devices, but managing a patchwork of monitoring tools is time-consuming and can leave gaps in coverage. Even a minor issue with critical data center infrastructure can balloon into an enterprise-wide catastrophe if it’s left unnoticed for too long. For example, a database server generating redundant or unnecessary logs seems like no big deal at first. However, if those logs accumulate so much that the hard drive fills up and database operations fail, it could impact your enterprise applications, financial systems, and more. Because of this, it is essential to make sure nothing falls between the cracks.

The solution: Data center infrastructure management solutions

As the name suggests, a data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution provides a centralized platform for managing data center infrastructure. DCIM is essentially a bird’s-eye view of physical and digital assets to track network traffic loads, hardware and VM performance, power usage, and environmental conditions in the data center in real-time. 

Additionally, DCIM consolidates all the data center devices under one management UI, allowing you to monitor and administer all systems in the same place efficiently. DCIM provides complete visibility of your data center infrastructure while simplifying and streamlining data center management for IT teams. To fully reap the benefits of DCIM, you should look for a solution that can seamlessly integrate both digital and physical assets, to have full visibility on your cloud-based and hardware-based infrastructure. 

The challenge: Data center network security

Just because the critical infrastructure is hosted in a secure data center doesn’t mean it is entirely safe from cyberattacks. Another common data center management challenge involves maintaining enterprise security policies and controls across one or more colocation sites. This can be especially difficult if you utilize managed services and provide access to data center employees or third-party vendors. 

According to a recent study, 74% of organizations who reported a breach say it resulted from giving third parties too much privileged access. You need a way to verify the identity and trustworthiness of any account trying to access data center resources, as well as apply enterprise security policies consistently across all your remote infrastructure.

The solution: Zero trust security with identity and access management (IAM)

The zero trust security methodology forces enterprises to rethink their approach to trust and authentication in their IT environment. Instead of operating under the assumption that all authorized users are trustworthy, zero trust assumes that every user, device, and application is unsafe until proven otherwise. Zero trust security uses identity and access management (IAM) solutions to verify identities, apply enterprise security policies, and restrict access to only the systems that are necessary for the task at hand. 

Zero trust security provides the framework to establish better data center network security through tighter security controls and precise security policies. An IAM solution is one of the key security controls that allow you to dynamically assess the identity and trustworthiness of data center staff, third-party vendors, and any other users or systems that access your data center resources. In that way, zero trust with IAM helps keep data center infrastructure secure.

The challenge: Performance and availability

Your ultimate data center management goal is to maintain the data center infrastructure’s high performance and availability so your organization can run as efficiently as possible. That can be incredibly challenging when managing geographically diverse data centers without local staff or managed services at every location. If a critical switch goes down at a data center 3,000 miles away, you need to get it back up and running fast—which means you don’t have time to fly an engineer to the other side of the country to get eyes on the problem.

The solution: Out-of-band management

Out-of-band (OOB) management separates the production network from the management plane, enabling you to remotely troubleshoot, monitor, and administer your data center infrastructure without needing a LAN or ISP connection. For example, using a separate network via 4G LTE cellular connection, you can reach routers, switches, and servers even without an IP address. Use OOB management to perform higher-level remote access and control tasks on multiple devices from one pane of glass. That means you can reboot devices, perform health checks, and troubleshoot connection problems remotely from anywhere in the world at any time. That’s how out-of-band management improves data center performance and availability.

Solving data center management challenges with the right solutions

Three of the biggest data center management challenges involve monitoring and securing your infrastructure while ensuring high performance and maximum availability. To overcome these challenges, you should invest in tools that provide data center infrastructure management (DCIM), zero trust security and identity and access management (IAM), and out-of-band (OOB) network management solutions like ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid.

Nodegrid is a vendor-neutral platform of hardware and software solutions to overcome your data center management challenges. Nodegrid’s serial consoles and management interface monitor and administer all your critical data center infrastructure and physical assets behind one pane of glass. Nodegrid also provides out-of-band management solutions to troubleshoot your network from anywhere in the world, even during an outage. Plus, you can use Nodegrid’s Zero Trust Security Framework to integrate zero trust principles and IAM providers with your data center management solutions.

To learn more about how ZPE Nodegrid can help you overcome the top data center management challenges, contact us today!

Learn more about how ZPE Nodegrid can help you overcome the top data center management challenges.

Contact us today!

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Data Center Modernization Strategy: How to Streamline Your Legacy Environment

by | Oct 5, 2021 | Data Center Management

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The rapid development of data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools leaves most software quickly becoming outdated. Consequently, it is replaced by the next trend on the market, after a short time. The use of such software following its “expiration” creates what is known as “legacy programs.”

Legacy programs are ones that a company implemented years ago and still use, despite being outdated or abandoned by the original makers. This means updates in security or integration options are limited or non-existent. As a result, they present several data center management challenges for network architects intent on staying reliable and reducing the need for human intervention.  

This blog will explain the importance of having a data center modernization strategy and provide a list of key considerations and actionable steps enterprises need to take to modernize their legacy systems. In addition, it will offer a couple of suggestions on where to start the modernization process. 

Challenges of a data center modernization strategy presented by legacy systems

Legacy systems create a critical challenge for companies looking to implement an efficient data center modernization strategy. Data centers often hang on to these programs due to staff familiarity. Still, the “convenience” they provide to employees masks a difficult-to-manage backend with the potential disaster for the network engineers using them; this is also why enterprises should prioritize modernizing their strategy. The obstacles presented by legacy systems include: 

  • Integration: Legacy systems are dated enough that they don’t work well with newer software.  
  • Security: Older software may not work well with modern security systems, leaving the data kept on them especially vulnerable to cyberattacks. 
  • Data storage: Pre-cloud software stores data in a company data silo, making it challenging to transfer legacy data when needed compared with newer software. 
  • Maintenance: Legacy systems may not have repair options available, forcing companies using them to go to expensive 3rd party maintenance vendors.

These setbacks are endemic to legacy systems found in data centers. We should, consequently, consider how enterprises can modernize them. Before we get into possible solutions for legacy systems, here are some additional considerations regarding use cases and maintenance in data center management.

Key considerations of legacy systems

Despite the pitfalls associated with legacy systems, many data centers still utilize them for various reasons. Maybe their strategy has worked just fine so far; perhaps their problems are minor, at most. In this way, it might be helpful to modernize the data center strategy as less a complete replacement and more as a comprehensive reformation.

Data centers hoping to hang on to their legacy systems might do so because:

  • Ease of use: The center’s network engineers are familiar with it, contributing to daily operations running smoothly (if it’s not broken, don’t fix it). 
  • Specific features: Perhaps this system offers something not available on newer systems that helps make running the center more efficient. 
  • Cost/benefit analysis: The center knows it needs to update, but the high cost of doing so constantly places it on the backburner.
  • Integration breakages: Updating one legacy system may create new issues and breakages with other legacy systems a data center might be using, leaving the company reluctant to modernize

All points are worth considering—for the many features legacy systems might lack, there are many reasons why a data center might want to hang on to one. For more information, we recommend further reading on legacy system considerations. Let’s move on and discuss what steps are most effective for a data center modernization strategy.

Data center modernization strategy

data center modernization strategySo far, we have discussed what a legacy system is, established the most significant data center management challenges, and presented some points against legacy modernization. While this information is essential for network engineers to understand, it only answers questions of “why” enterprises should modernize their strategy; yet to be answered is the question of “how.”

Listed below are two paths to modernizing data centers and some insights on what works best between them. 

Legacy maintenance

By their nature, legacy systems do not automatically integrate with newer software. However, this does not mean they’re unreachable. It is possible to purchase special equipment designed to integrate with legacy systems, such as ZPE’s Nodegrid Serial Console R-Series, and render them controllable from any web browser.

An option that allows network engineers to control and manage legacy systems this way offers advantages over traditional data migration paths:

  • Less expensive: Purchasing a single piece of hardware will cost less than upgrading all data center software. 
  • Faster: Following a brief setup, returning to a legacy system will take less time than a complete data migration method.
  • More user-friendly: Network engineers will be able to continue using programs they are familiar with instead of struggling to learn new tools.

It is also essential to understand that choosing an option like the R-series does not exclude data migration (discussed below) as a long-term solution. Both can be used in tandem, allowing for a seamless transition between systems, ensuring that staff can continue working without problems. This process, particularly when applied gradually over time, offers a smooth transition into a more streamlined data center. 

Data migration

The best long-term answer to these data center management challenges is migrating existing data from the legacy system onto a new program better suited to the ever-changing workplace. Data migration can be a difficult task, but it generally consists of a couple of steps:

  • Extracting existing data from the legacy system
  • Transitioning data to match new formats
  • Refining data to address quality issues
  • Verifying data to make sure the move goes as planned
  • Uploading data into a new system

The challenges with this approach involve high costs, significant time investment, and the risk of something going wrong with the migration path and endangering the data being migrated. Although data migration will likely play some part in a long-term modernization campaign, it does not necessarily need to be the centerpiece.

Streamlining your legacy environment with the right solutions 

Legacy systems do not have to be your worst nightmare. While modernization can be difficult and time-consuming, the current market offers multiple options to make it easier.

To summarize, the reason why data centers need an efficient modernization strategy is primarily for legacy systems. Mainly because these outdated programs are not adequately secured, do not integrate well, and often require third-party maintenance.

Legacy Maintenance or Data Migration are your best options for dealing with the data center management challenges presented by legacy systems. Suppose you are looking for more information on ZPE Systems’ data center management tools. In that case, the Nodegrid Serial Console R-Series helps to control your legacy system using only a browser. 

Want to learn more about data center modernization strategy?

Get in contact with us for more information, and start your journey today!

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ZPE Systems hosts Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SD-WAN for edge flexibility

by | Oct 1, 2021 | News & Announcements, Press Releases

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Fremont, CA, September 21, 2021 – ZPE Systems, an innovator of network and critical IT infrastructure management at the data center and edge, today announced its ability to host Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SD-WAN solution. Until now, organizations migrating to cloud-based edge networking were required to deploy disparate hardware and software solutions for security, SD-WAN, out-of-band, and cellular failover. These complicated deployment and management, leaving organizations with edge networks that lacked resilience and forced them to compromise due to vendor lock-in.

ZPE Systems’ Nodegrid edge routers directly host Prisma SD-WAN, helping customers overcome the distributed networking challenges of traditional WAN architectures. This consolidates the networking stack to simplify deploying, scaling, and managing the cloud-delivered branch. Prisma SD-WAN gives organizations peace of mind with secure traffic routing, while Nodegrid serves as a reliable foundation with built-in out-of-band and 5G/4G LTE. Customers gain transparency across their networking and security solutions, along with the tools they need to maintain uptime and respond quickly to issues.

    In addition, the Nodegrid platform eliminates vendor lock-in by serving as a micro-cloud at the edge. Customers no longer need to compromise with fixed function devices, and can instead run software of their choice, such as Prisma SD-WAN, directly on Nodegrid. This long-term sustainability frees customers from infrastructure and connectivity problems, allowing for flexible customization to address evolving needs.

      “We know how frustrating it can be to juggle traditional edge solutions,” says Arnaldo Zimmermann, Co-founder and CEO of ZPE Systems. “Deploying sites, diagnosing issues, and restoring services at the edge are such a hassle. This integration puts everything into a single box. Security, automation, failover — it’s all there and can be managed under one UI.”

      To explore this solution and its real-world implementations, download the brief.

      For information about ZPE Systems’ Edge Transformation Partner Program or to apply, visit partners.zpesystems.com.

      Read the official press release

      About ZPE Systems, Inc.

      ZPE Systems frees enterprises from today’s networking challenges.

      Nodegrid’s Intel-based serial consoles & modular services routers deliver power to datacenter & branch applications, while the Linux-based Nodegrid OS replaces vendor lock-in with limitless flexibility. With ZPE Cloud for fast & secure provisioning, this platform streamlines networking using virtualization, prevents downtime using automation, and offers convenience via remote management capabilities.

      Intel-based serial consoles & modular services routers deliver unparalleled power to datacenter & branch applications, while the Linux-based Nodegrid OS replaces vendor lock-in with limitless flexibility. With ZPE Cloud for fast & secure provisioning, it’s the only networking platform to streamline the stack using virtualization, prevent downtime using automation, and offer convenience using in-depth remote management capabilities.

      ZPE collaborates with best-in-class technology partners, to add value by integrating with SD-WAN, firewall, IoT, and other solutions. The world’s top companies trust ZPE Systems to provide advanced out-of-band management, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platforms, and SD-Branch networking.

      Top companies trust ZPE Systems to provide advanced out-of-band management, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platforms, and SD-Branch networking.

      ZPE Systems is based in Fremont, California with offices worldwide. Visit ZPE Systems website at
      www.zpesystems.com.