How Citrix Networking Solutions Keep Your Business Safer Than Ever Before

Traditionally, apps worked on a “connect first and authenticate later” policy. However, as apps move to the cloud, this model raises huge security concerns by leaving the system vulnerable to virus, malware and ransomware attacks. Citrix networking solutions such as Citrix ADC, Netscaler, Web app Firewall, and SD-WAN play a key role in ensuring performance and security in this multi-cloud world. While the secure web gateway components protect the network and app infrastructure, they also provide contextual access by authenticating users, web application firewalls and ADCs.

Identity and Access

Citrix recognizes the importance of preventing unauthorized access to data, networks, and applications. It manages user access calls to balance convenience and enhanced security. Given how passwords can be easily hacked, Citrix Netscaler uses 2-factor authentication for access to desktops and applications. This reduces the risk of an account being hacked if the password is compromised. Netscaler also supports SAML for the federation of identities. In simple terms, this means that if a user leaves the organization, his access to all third-party services can be removed as easily as in-house resources. Citrix Netscaler also uses a single sign-on across different devices to improve user experience.

Network Security

As modern enterprises become more mobile, remote access has become a must-have. While it boosts convenience levels, it also makes it easier for hackers to gain unauthorized access to the organizational network. Such a breach could have devastating consequences. Rather than using different remote access solutions for each application, Citrix offers a single, consolidated solution to deliver all apps across all devices. The Citrix Netscaler Unified Gateway is a comprehensive SSL VPN solution for secure workspace access. It centralizes visibility and access control to manage all contextual authorization based on the antivirus status, client device OS, etc. Citrix takes segmentation measures such as authenticating client connections in the DMZ to block malicious requests and malformed packets, optimizes backend connections to protect resources and segments traffic into isolated network environments. To benefit from this, all you need is to ensure that your team has the Citrix Certification.

Application Security

Today the line between personal and business use of a device is blurred. Many people use the same smartphone for work as well as personal use. Apps on mobile devices face risks of insecure data transmission, storage and leaks. The vulnerability of applications can be attributed to incomplete patch management, poor security configurations, coding language issues, etc. Citrix boosts application security by taking a containerization-based approach for centralizing security configurations and enabling filters on the network level. It integrates encryption into every component of communication including SSL/TLS and multi-layer ICA.

The Citrix Web App Firewall goes a step further to deliver application-layer security for web services and apps. It defends your data and infrastructure from known threats as well as evolving ones through hybrid security with a positive and negative model. The positive model offers protection from SQL injections, cross-site scripting and App logic attacks while the negative model protects the system from all known threats. The simple configuration controls and pooled licensing minimizes risks further and allows the system to be scaled to meet demands.

Data Security

For any organization, data is one of the most important assets. If this were to fall into the wrong hands, the company would risk a bad reputation, lose customer trust and the customer’s personal details themselves could be compromised. Citrix networking solutions minimize the risk of data loss and leakage through encryption and containerization. It stores data in such a way that data for each app resides cannot be accessed by other apps.

It also secures iOS data by using open-in management to control the flow of data between managed and unmanaged apps.  For example, email attachments can be opened only in company approved apps. To enable secure file sharing for team collaboration Citrix offers multiple two-factor and two-step authentication methods, audits all user activity and gives discretionary access to files. It also encrypts all files with a unique key. The encryption key is not stored on the same server to ensure that physical access to a storage server does not compromise data security.

Monitoring and Response

Even in the most secure environment, hackers will find a way to attack your system and data. Thus monitoring security features and an early response is critical. Citrix offers the tools needed for end-to-end monitoring of infrastructure, performance, events, services and availability. Citrix SD-WAN integrates control and visibility over all aspects of the network and gives users a choice of deployment options that connect automatically to the cloud. It allows easy authorized access to apps, provides secure cloud connections and a qualitative end-user experience without making the process unnecessarily complex.

At the same time, the Citrix Netscaler Unified Gateway offers a single pane for end-to-end visibility of all apps on all devices, a centralized solution to manage and enforce security and makes it easy for end-users to access applications wherever they want without compromising on data security.

In Conclusion

Citrix offers the modern workspace comprehensive security to protect data, apps and organizational networks. Whether you’re working on Azure, AWS or the Google Cloud Platform, Citrix reduces the cost of ownership and allows you to offer a better customer experience. It offers a quality-driven, secure user experience for traditional, web and cloud-native applications irrespective of where they are hosted.