NetMotion Software

Company Products/Solutions

Introducing the new NetMotion platform

By: | July 9, 2020

Several years in the making, we’re proud to finally unveil our all new security platform. Here’s an overview of what this launch has to offer.

Today marks the launch of something special. Specifications for the new NetMotion platform began way back in 2017. Since then, at least 70 engineers, product managers, QA specialists, architects and more have been laser focused on bringing that vision to life. The platform includes a long list of improvements and enhancements of well-loved features found in existing NetMotion products. It also includes a variety of powerful new functionality never seen before.

A software-defined perimeter (or ZTNA)

Perhaps the most exciting part of the launch is that customers can now begin their journey from traditional remote access, to a more modern zero-trust approach that includes software-defined perimeter (SDP) capabilities.

In short, an SDP, also known as zero trust network access (ZTNA), is a more intelligent way of managing secure remote access than legacy VPNs can offer. Research shows that as a direct result of the 2020 lockdown, 4 in 5 organizations are now more likely to evaluate SDP as a means to solving their remote access requirements.

NetMotion SDP

So what does NetMotion SDP do? At the most fundamental level, it creates a 1-1 connection between users and the resources they require for their jobs. It applies the tenets of zero trust at its core. This is the idea that by default, users are denied access until they can prove they are a legitimate user for that resource. It also embraces the concept of ‘least privilege.’ This means users only get access to the application they requested, and nothing more – preventing any kind of lateral movement – because connections are to the resource and not the whole network. Any intruders to a company’s resources are simply unable to reach the application. This is true even when they have obtained compromised credentials, as the applications are made completely dark to unapproved users. In other words, on-premise, cloud and public-facing resources are all effectively invisible.

The other core functionality of NetMotion SDP is that it goes far beyond just user credentials to determine access. The NetMotion client installed on the endpoint acts as a controller, gathering data on the application, time of day, the network it is connected to and dozens of other conditions. It then uses this real-time data to build a risk profile of each request, determining whether the user can access the resource based on the context of the moment. It’s an elegant, conditional way of ensuring users get what they need, while reducing the attack surface of an organization.

The compelling driver for adoption is that it allows organizations to treat all of their resources equally, even for those resources hosted in the public cloud. With 84% of organizations migrating to the cloud, NetMotion SDP offers an innovative way of providing secure remote access in an increasingly cloud – and remote – workspace.

“NetMotion gives businesses a software-defined perimeter solution that can grow with them as they evolve toward zero trust situations,”

Phil Hochmuth, Program Vice President at IDC

Visibility and control without the tunnel

Many organizations are tunneling all of their remote worker traffic to the corporate backbone. This can cause all kinds of issues for networking teams, which have been amplified by the widespread move to remote working as a result of COVID-19. Research shows that 98% of organizations maintain at least one on-premise application, with three quarters having at least four.

For almost every company, tunneling traffic is a necessity. Tunneling 100% of traffic, however, is not. Some organizations choose to have everything tunneled, even when users are accessing resources directly on the web. Backhauling all this traffic to the corporate network, only to then send it straight back out to a web or cloud resource like Microsoft Teams, is often inefficient. Crucially though, IT leaders are reluctant to allow this traffic to go straight to the internet. This is because without the VPN, they lose all the visibility, security and control of that activity.

The new NetMotion platform grants IT teams full visibility of remote devices without the need to tunnel. That includes everything from network performance and diagnostics, to online behavior and web threats. It’s not just visibility, either. NetMotion now allows admins to apply policy controls enforced at the endpoint. This way, access can be blocked or escalated locally on the device. If a user attempts to access content that is considered non-compliant with policy, they will be unable to reach it – on any network at any time. Policy can be created to automatically detect and block access to risky URLs, too, generated by malware and phishing attacks. This is essential given that recent research shows that the average remote worker is exposed to around 59 risky URLs a week.

The NetMotion platform keeps workers compliant, productive and secure no matter where they work, and organizations no longer need to choose between tunneling everything and sacrificing visibility and control.

Converged everything – simple and streamlined

If you’re already a NetMotion customer, you’ll likely be familiar with the products we’ve had available for the past few years. Those include Mobility, the high-performance VPN with patented technologies designed to improve the user experience; Diagnostics, the troubleshooting and root cause analysis engine; and MobileIQ, the operational intelligence insights product for understanding more about your mobile and remote workers. You may also be aware of legacy modules, such as NAC, Policy and Analytics, as well as the need for multiple clients and servers to get the entire functionality of the suite. Combined, the products, add-ons and various pricing structures meant that there were well over 100 different ways to purchase NetMotion.

Well, not anymore. The new NetMotion platform operates on a single client, with a unified analytics interface, universal alerting and a significantly reduced level of complexity at the server level, too. It’s a single platform, available in two different subscription options. The Complete subscription grants customers access to the entire range of functionality, encompassing everything that was present in legacy products and modules. It also includes all the new features described in this post and beyond – for VPN, SDP (ZTNA) and experience monitoring use-cases. The Core subscription is for deployments with reduced requirements, specifically for VPN. Both options offer customers a much simpler, more flexible way to provide security, management and remote access to their remote workers.

If you are an existing customer, please speak with your account manager today to get more information on how to migrate to the new platform.

A single consolidated platform makes life so much simpler. It’s great to see the addition of features that benefit customers, and pricing that makes it a lot easier for us to scale when we need it”

Walter Wilson, Sr Central Network Administrator at City of Houston

What else is new?

The new platform also includes a long list of improvements upon previous products. It includes over 50 new or enhanced dashboards, better filtering and timezone options, automated backup, comprehensive IPv6 support, more flexible DNS routing, improved user management and functional parity with MacOS. There are also faster bandwidth tests, more accurate measurements and enhanced automatic problem diagnosis.

For a full list of specifications on the new platform, ask your account manager for more information and documentation. You can also check out the press release, here.

How do I get my hands on this?

If you are not currently a NetMotion customer, you can speak with one of our experts by completing the form on our demo page here. If you already use NetMotion products, please contact your account manager to get more information on migrating to the new NetMotion platform.

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