NSv Series and Microsoft Azure’s Government Cloud: Strengthening Cloud Security
The SonicWall NSv Series works with Microsoft Azure for better cloud security to shield government customers from sophisticated attacks while maintaining compliance.
While the benefits of cloud computing are widely recognized, Federal agencies have been among the last to enjoy these benefits due to the national security implications of the data they handle.
But with the recent directives for government to accelerate movement to secure cloud services — such as the U.S. White House’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity — and technology such as Microsoft Azure’s Government Cloud and SonicWall NSv Series virtual firewall, the benefits of the cloud are now within reach of Federal agencies.
What is Microsoft Azure’s Government Cloud?
Microsoft Azure’s Government Cloud is an isolated region that meets the regulatory and compliance requirements of the U.S. government agencies and customers. Azure Government Cloud (U.S.) consists of isolated regions designed to allow U.S. government agencies, their partners, and customers interested in cloud services that meet government security and compliance requirements to move sensitive workloads into the cloud. Its services provide world-class security and compliance and can accommodate data that is subject to various U.S. government regulations and requirements.
Azure Government Cloud delivers a dedicated cloud, enabling government agencies and their partners to transform mission-critical workloads. Only U.S. federal, state, local and tribal governments and their partners have access to each particular instance, with operations controlled by screened U.S. citizens. In this way, SonicWall is extending the protection of government workloads with virtual security products optimized for Microsoft Azure.
What is SonicWall NSv virtual firewall?
SonicWall’s NSv Series virtual firewalls provide all the security advantages of a physical firewall, plus all the operational and economic benefits of the cloud — including system scalability and agility, speed of system provisioning, simple management, and cost reduction. NSv delivers full-featured security tools including VPN, IPS, application control and URL filtering. These capabilities shield all critical components of the private/public cloud environments from resource misuse attacks, cross-virtual-machine attacks, side-channel attacks, and common network-based exploits and threats.
Users can login to their Azure Government Cloud console via U.S.-West and U.S.-East regions using BYOL (Bring Your Own Licenses) and deploy NSv on Microsoft Azure Government Cloud.
Summary
Most Federal customers are moving their datacenters away from traditional on-premises deployments and to the cloud. It is imperative that security teams provide the same level of security for government cloud server instances as they have been doing for on-premises physical servers. A next-generation firewall with advanced security services like Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI™), IPS and application control is the first step to securing cloud instances against cyber threats.
In addition to security features, it also important to choose a firewall that provides the right level of performance needed for a given cloud workload. SonicWall NSv series offers a variety of models with performance levels suited to any size of cloud deployment, with all the necessary security features enabled.
