The Record - Issue 18: Autumn 2020

86 www. t e c h n o l o g y r e c o r d . c om V I EWPO I NT B arracuda’s CloudGen Firewall is tightly integrated with Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN, Azure Active Directory, Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel. Integrated into Azure, Barracuda’s networking and secu- rity capabilities give customers the ability to conduct secure infrastructure migrations and use public cloud for additional security solu- tions such as scalable remote access. As the current crisis progresses, people in many areas around the world continue to stay at home due to lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders, while some countries and states are starting to gradually relax restrictions to get at least some businesses and operations reopened. These are unprecedented times and a lot of uncertainty remains. Will most people go back to commuting and working mostly from their offices? Or will the world substantially shift to working from home? Digital transformation is fundamentally changing today’s enterprises, making digital assets key to doing business. As more value shifts from physical to digital assets, businesses increasingly compete based on how quickly they can ramp up and manage their digital assets; in effect, they are becoming digital businesses. DevOps processes, agile methodologies and the move to cloud help enterprises to develop and update their digital assets faster. By their nature, digital assets need to be net- worked and available to generate value. These assets need to be protected from threats that are continuously evolving and becoming more challenging. Hackers are getting more sophis- ticated and malware is constantly getting more advanced. So, security is a critical requirement for successful digital transformation. In speaking with customers and partners, we at Barracuda are hearing one consistent theme: it appears that the crisis and the resulting changes in work patterns are accelerating digi- tal transformation. For example, in parts of the world where working from home has not been common and the infrastructure was not built to support it, IT professionals are evaluating how to enable it. In places where electronic signa- tures have not yet gone mainstream, there is a strong push for wider acceptance. Industries and geographies relying on bricks-and-mortar stores are quickly moving operations online. Public cloud adoption and cloud connectiv- ity are key long-term trends that are getting an additional boost from the latest crisis. As lockdowns and restrictions went into effect, we at Barracuda got a major increase in customer requests for scaling up remote access function- ality. IT departments were asked to ramp up remote access capabilities quickly. Removing security barriers Moving to the cloud can allow businesses to become faster and more agile when adapting to a crisis M I K E GOL DGOF : BAR RACUDA NE TWOR K S “Digital transformation is fundamentally changing today’s enterprises, making digital assets key to doing business”