Security, Automation, Agility and Other Takeaways from A10 Connect
A10 Connect recently went on the road, making stops in the Dallas and Washington, D.C. areas to dig deeper into issues and challenges in cloud, security and application delivery.
Throughout the two single-day events, we noticed a theme emerge: secure application delivery isn’t one-size-fits-all, and it certainly isn’t as easy as “set it and forget it.”
With that in mind, here are a few key takeaways from A10 Connect:
Modern Applications Require Modern Solutions
The dawn of the cloud ushered in a new era for application delivery and load balancing, and this modern era is putting even more demands on IT pros. Delivering modern applications requires agility and flexibility. It demands an understanding of hybrid infrastructures and the acumen to know which applications to deploy in the cloud, on-premise or in a hybrid configuration. And applications must be secure – sacrificing security for performance and vice versa are no longer options.
At the same time, automation is key. Automating once-manual processes eliminates stress and headaches and ensures swifter response times and easier application management. That’s a win-win.
Scale is a Must
Capacity planning is difficult to get right, and often leads to significant capital outlays and long procurement cycles. This limits IT agility and restricts business operations. Hence the need for scale and flexibility. Cloud and other modern solutions were built with scale in mind, so the capacity planning challenges of yesterday are lessened by the ability to scale on-demand or with minimal manual intervention.
And today’s consumption models ensure that you only pay for what you use. It is up to IT departments to determine their own mix of hybrid deployments to address scalability and capacity planning challenges and to accommodate current and future business needs.
Application Security is Still a Concern
If you’re not concerned about application security, you’re not paying attention. At A10 Connect, much of the conversation turned toward how security is still a challenge for organizations of all sizes. For example, today’s sophisticated DDoS attacks that are increasing in complexity, intensity and sources and organizations require not only fast DDoS attack detection, but swift DDoS attack protection before services are impacted.
Meanwhile, the threat of attacks hidden in encrypted traffic show no signs of slowing. Roughly 70 percent of all network traffic is encrypted, creating a blind spot in perimeter security, but organizations that rely on firewalls and other point security products to perform SSL decryption and inspection suffer performance degradation and can only decrypt for themselves, leaving the rest of the security stack blind. A dedicated decryption solution that decrypts once and enables all security devices to inspect SSL/TLS traffic is more cost-effective while not forcing your security stack to pay the performance tax.
Those are just some of the takeaways we heard from the experts at A10 Connect Texas and A10 Connect Maryland last week. What were your key learnings? Let us know in the comments below.
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