VPLS Now Authorized to Participate in HPE’s NASPO Indirect Fulfillment Program

VPLS is part of the Server/Storage contract for California

Published

Jul 30, 2020

Written by

VPLS Marketing Team

Filed under

Government, HPE

Today, VPLS announces that we are now authorized to participate in HPE’s National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) Indirect Fulfillment Partner Program under HPE’s NASPO ValuePoint Server/Storage MNNVP-134 agreement for California. VPLS secured the same designation for the State of Hawaii in 2019. The NASPO ValuePoint contract allows public entities to purchase HPE’s industry-leading storage and server solutions from VPLS via a pre-negotiated cooperative contract.

Our team is excited to be one of a few select partners to be listed as an Indirect Reseller for HPE’s NASPO contract for California. VPLS has been a dedicated partner to government agencies for many years, and this new designation allows us to continue offering state, local, and educational organizations with the excellent service and solutions they need to achieve their IT objectives.

John Minnix, VP of Sales & Marketing at VPLS

As an HPE Partner for over eight years, VPLS has both the technical and industry expertise required to address the various IT needs of government agencies and school districts. Recently, we completed a network refresh for the City of Beaumont, the third fastest-growing city in California. In addition to its strong partnership with HPE, VPLS is also on the HPE NASPO contract for Aruba Wireless, as well as the NASPO contracts for RUCKUS, Extreme Networks, Cisco Systems, and other industry-leading technology partners. Learn more about the solutions we offer government agencies.

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The Zero Trust Model

Blog Post / By Natwar Darak

Blog Post

The Zero Trust Model

Published

Jul 9, 2020

Written by

Natwar Darak

Filed under

Cybersecurity, IT Solutions

With the ever-increasing number of breaches, it is quite evident that the traditional “trust but verify” model hasn’t been able to withstand today’s cybersecurity threat landscape.

In the “trust but verify” model, the network is divided into either “untrusted” network ( a network connected to the public internet) or “trusted” network (a network connected to the inside of the organization where all the users are trusted and have unrestricted access to anything and everything). As reported by Verizon, 34% of data breaches in 2019 involved internal actors. As a result, trusting anyone, on either side of the perimeter, should not be the de-facto anymore. Thus, it is quite imperative to redesign the network on a Zero Trust Model.

Defining Zero Trust

A Zero Trust Model refers to a threat model where no users, agents, or actors are trusted, irrespective of their location. Instead, all access is based upon a “need-to-know” philosophy and is enforced strictly. This even boils down to cutting off access to any network resource until the user is identified by the network and the need to access the requested resource is proven. Zero Trust Model shifts focus from securing just the network boundaries to securing the network endpoints, which implies a need for redesigning the network from the inside out.

Building a Zero Trust Model

The Zero Trust Model is vendor-agnostic and is built upon the following systems:

Micro-segmentation

Micro-segmentation is a granular approach of segregating the network according to workloads or applications. Virtualization solutions such as VMs and containers, cloud services, and Software Defined Networks (SDNs) are all part of the Micro-segmentation strategy. Being built onto the software, Micro-segmentation comes with an added benefit of reducing the management overhead of the ACLs or the security policies on the firewall.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

The principle of least privilege should be the modus operandi to implement IAM systems for managing the access to all resources. Technologies such as Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and Privileged Access Management (PAM) forms the core of any IAM system.

Log and Analyze Traffic

All traffic traversing through the network should be logged and analyzed. Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions can help easily corelate all the traffic and provide a centralized view to monitor the environment.

In today’s cyber world, it is only logical to assume that there is bound to be a network intrusion. It is not a matter of if; it’s only a matter of when. And when the inevitable occurs, micro-segmentation along with IAM can severely restrict the lateral movement of the intruder, while monitoring all the activities in the network can alert you to any unusual activity. The Zero Trust Model, thus, provides a secure framework to defend against data breaches or any advanced cyber threats.

Interested in learning more about other security tips? Check out this primer on EDR or endpoint detection and response. And learn more about the Managed Security options available from VPLS.

Month: July 2020