Leveraging Citrix ADC for Secure Access to Applications

The Covid pandemic has put the spotlight on remote access technologies once again. These technologies have existed for long but there is a renewed interest as enterprises make a scramble to facilitate remote and secure access to achieve business continuity. As things pan out, work from home is likely to be the new normal even after employees safely return to the workplace. This gives businesses an opportunity to promote flexible workspace while putting in place systems and processes to enhance productivity in a secure manner.

The challenge however is to ensure secure remote access while enabling easy and consistent user experience. Citrix ADC is a comprehensive networking solution to improve application performance, security, and resiliency while maximizing end-user experience. Security is one of its key functions and this is achieved by consolidating remote access solutions via a single sign-on. Using a layered approach at L3 to L7, it employs positive and negative security models—the positive model blocks all traffic allowing only recognized traffic to pass through, while the negative security model allows all traffic to pass and blocks only that traffic explicitly defined by rules.

The layers are equipped with advanced security capabilities including powerful proxies, discrete tunneling options, adaptive user and app-centric controls with granular access.

Enabling Secure Customer Service

As a Platinum Plus partner of Citrix, Umbrella has extensive experience deploying ADC to secure the enterprise for a variety of use cases. Below we highlight security deployment for two customers at multiple layers and how it enabled business operations.

We used Citrix ADC to secure applications for one of India’s leading healthcare and financial services provider wherein employee access was enabled via secure SLL VPN tunnel, multi-factor authentication and data encryption to securely transfer sensitive information. We protected application at L7 with policy-based access wherein specific devices access specific functions. Endpoint analysis of traffic to monitor devices and automatically divert devices to remediation zone.

In another deployment for one of India’s largest financial services companies with a large base of customers across locations we facilitated employee to access hundreds of applications. With customers filing claims 24×7, employees needed to access applications at all times for which we implemented Citrix ADC based SSL VPN tunnel with single sign on, nfactor authentication and enabled group-based authorization for different stakeholders such as employees and partners.

At the application layer we deployed WAF for known threats with signature-based protection and unknown threats by whitelisting data. Gateway and security insight monitor and manage WAF policies, conduct audits and forensics.

Advantage Experience

Traditional security architectures are clearly inadequate as organizations’ imperative to cater to an increasingly distributed workforce increase and many more applications are delivered via the Cloud. Tools and processes to secure access and threat protection strategies must be calibrated with a smooth user experience. Citrix ADC delivers on both the fronts—facilitating high performance application delivery with load balancing and low latency while strengthening the security posture with a comprehensive, layered approach.

Umbrella’s vast experience with Citrix solutions and in-depth understanding of use cases is a leverage which businesses can lean on to reduce the learning curve and deployment cycle. If you want to know more about our capabilities with Citrix solutions, reach out to us.