Captive Portal

captive portal is a web page that users must interact with before accessing a public network. It's often used by public venues that offer free Wi-Fi, such as airports, hotels, and coffee shops

Gartner Given Terms

Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Gartner Magic Quadrant is a research report that helps identify and assess the top 10-12 players in a specific global market
It provides a visual representation of different types of technology providers and their position in fast-growing markets.

SASE(Secure Access Service Edge)

- Gartner gave SASE term in year 2019 to define networking and security capabilities into a single service sitting on cloud. Providing network security at wide-area networking (WAN) delivered as a cloud service.
- All users in branch office, home, roaming(airport) if he want to access any of cloud service() he will go thru SASE.
- Examples: Juniper Secure Edge, ZScaler Zero Trust SASE, Cisco Umbrella
Example
- Consider a multinational corporation(HCL Tech) with branch offices across different regions. Each office requires secure access to the corporate network and cloud-based applications.
- With SASE, security and all services delivered from cloud, allowing employees to securely connect to the corporate network and cloud applications from any location using a unified and consistent security policy
N/W Without SASE N/W With SASE
Challenges: How can change my Network when?
- All applications(salesforce, office365) are moving to cloud
- More users are moving out of office(WFH, Roaming, BYOD(bring your own device))
- Companies have central HQ, where branch offices connect via WAN, home users via VPN(but also connecting to cloud directly)
- How to do authentication, authorization sase
Solving the Challenges
- All traffic(WFH, Office, Roaming) will go thru SASE
- All security policies are applied, a single n/w stack is provided

Benefits
- Uplevel my security
- Simplify my N/w(as devices for VPN,LB,FW,SSL,DLP,IPS sitting in HQ) can be removed
- Branch office to HQ WAN not needed this Saves Million of $
sase

SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network)

What?
- Helps organizations to connect branch offices, central office(HQ), Services on cloud in fast, cost effective way
- Uses SDN(software defined network) to separate hardware and control mechanisms.
Example
- Consider a retail chain(Relaince) with numerous branch offices across the country.
- Each branch office(store) requires reliable connectivity to Central or HQ services(eg: DB) to POS devices.
- 1 solution is to use MPLS for connectivity between stores and headquarters(But this is expensive), other is SD-WAN.
- With SD-WAN retail chain achieves cost savings, improved application performance
sdwan

SSE (Secure Service Edge)

What? Gartner gave SSE term in year 2021 to define limited scope of network security convergence including SWG, CASB, DLP, FaaS, ZTNA into a single cloud native service.
Example
- Consider a healthcare organization(Apollo) that needs to provide secure access to electronic health records (EHR).
- Organization implements secure web gateways (SWG), next-generation firewalls (NGFW), intrusion prevention systems(IPS) into the network edge.
- Allows organization to enforce consistent security policies, inspect and filter internet traffic, and detect and mitigate threats in real-time
sse
CASB, SWG, SASE
CASB(Cloud Access Security Broker) SWG(Secure Web Gateway) SASE
Subset of SASE Yes Yes
Purpose Protects applications sitting on cloud
(SaaS, IaaS, PaaS)		 Protects web traffic going to cloud
to access applications		 Networking, Cloud services converged under 1 umbrella
Features DLP, Access Control SSL Inspection, Malware Detection SWG, SD-WAN, ZTNA, CASB
Deployment Cloud based(mostly) Cloud & onprem cloud based
Use Cases Protecting data in cloud applications
Compliance with regulatory requirements 		Securing web browsing for employees
Blocking malicious web content

Security information and event management(SIEM)

This is a Solution that helps organizations recognize and address potential security threats and vulnerabilities.
It can detect user behavior anomalies(Eg: from Active Directory event logs).
(Early Days) SIEM platforms were log management tools, They enabled real-time monitoring and analysis of security-related events.
(Present Day) SIEM software has evolved to incorporate user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) & other advanced AI methods to identify anomalous behaviors and indicators of advanced threats.

How SIEM Works?
1. Collect logs(from wide range of sources(on-premises and cloud environments)
2. Consolidate and sort to identify threats and adhere to data compliance requirements.

Incident monitoring and security alerts
SIEM consolidates its analysis into a single, central dashboard where security teams monitor activity, triage alerts, identify threats and initiate response or remediation.

Open Source SIEM Solutions
opensearch (Java)

Software Defined Networking

Separating S/W from H/W. Routers, Switches can be controlled remotely.
Forwarding Plane(lies on Switch), Control Plane(lies on GUI).
Controlling switches routing decisions from GUI. Person does not have to go physically to control/change Switch/Router.
sase