Pulse Secure, a company that specializes in secure access solutions, this week unveiled a new software defined perimeter (SDP) product designed to provide organizations direct secure access to their resources and applications.
Pulse Secure, whose solutions were part of Juniper Networks until 2014, offers a platform that includes VPN, mobile device management (MDM), single sign-on (SSO), device visibility, virtual application delivery controller (ADC), and network access control (NAC) capabilities.
The company’s solutions rely on a “zero trust” architecture, which helps protect organizations against both inside and outside threats by maintaining strict access controls and not trusting anyone by default.
With the introduction of Pulse SDP, which is available as an add-on for the Pulse Secure Access platform, these zero trust capabilities are enhanced as all users will be authenticated before being given access to applications.
Pulse SDP includes controller, client, and gateway components that are enabled within the company’s software, hardware and cloud solutions. The new product can be activated by existing customers with a simple software upgrade.
According to Pulse Secure, the new product can be used by organizations for direct secure access to specific applications and resources without the need for a VPN or access to the enterprise network. The new product is designed to continuously verify users, devices and applications before and during transactions.
SDP can also be used to isolate critical applications so that they cannot be accessed by unauthorized users, and it can help organizations securely migrate apps to the cloud, Pulse Secure says.
Administrators can use SDP to temporarily provide users secure access to specific applications regardless of their location, and they are provided deep user authentication and authorization mechanisms that can restrict access based on the type of device and level of authentication.
Pulse SDP is expected to become available in April 2019 as a component of the Advanced and Enterprise editions of the Pulse Secure Access Suite. As for pricing, several options are available. For instance, the Advanced edition with SDP can be acquired with an annual subscription of $66 per user for 1,000 users.
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Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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