Safeguard Your Network and Information Assets
MegaPath Managed Security protects your network with turn-key, fully managed, 24x7 network security, monitoring, and support. Built on our network of carrier-class gateways, our managed security services work as a complete solution or as a compliment to your existing premise-based solution.
We help businesses safeguard their network and information assets with a unified approach that stops malicious traffic before it consumes the bandwidth of your last mile circuit, a job that cant be done with a premise-based solution alone. And, these managed services simplify and unify security management by reducing network complexity and providing easy and secure access to an increasingly mobile workforce.
Components
MegaPath Managed Security provides a comprehensive multi-layer security approach that works together to minimize down-time from individual threats, reduces risks with blended threats, and coordinates security alerting, logging, and reporting.
Features & Benefits
- Turn-key deployment means no additional equipment to buy or employees
to hire
- Reduces network complexity by eliminating multiple point solutions
- Lowers total cost of ownership
- Protects your business continuity, company assets and brand reputation
- Helps maintain compliance with government regulations
- Improves network uptime and performance via 24x7x365 proactive monitoring
and management
- Continually updated signature lists and databases to provide the most aggressive threat identification and elimination.
- Reduce threat gap via rapid threat solution discovery, development and
automatic updates
- Comprehensive reporting aids in developing best practices and security
policies
Service Activation
The Managed Security Service is an optional component available on the MegaPath MPLS, DSL, T1 or Bonded T1 service.
There is no need to buy, install or maintain a firewall or other security equipment, or incur the costs of procuring separate Internet access. We use top-of-the-line carrier-grade hardware in secure data centers nationwide, offering a far more robust and resilient solution than most IT departments have access to.
When ordered as part of a new circuit, MegaPath will automatically provision MSS at the time of circuit delivery.
We offer two MSS implementation methods. The MSS Gateway is based on the MegaPath MPLS network, using a security device as the Internet egress point (See figure 1, below). MegaPath configures the network to filter and scan the inbound and outbound Internet traffic. However, site-to-site traffic within the MPLS network is not scanned.
Figure 1 - MSS Gateway Implementation
The MSS Access solution is based on the MegaPath on-net DSL, T1 or Bonded T1 service. During the provisioning process, MegaPath maps the customer's MSS order to the pre-defined module.
Customer then receives a welcome letter with information and credentials to access the customer portal.
For MSS Gateway, customer may log onto the portal to view regular reports.
For MSS Access, customer would log onto the portal to activate the service and manage its profiles for firewall rules and white list / black list.
If Customer adds MSS to an existing access service, MegaPath will provision MSS and send a provisioning completion letter to the Customer. Customer would then follow the same process described above to utilize the service.
Once defined, MegaPath would monitor and manage the service 24x7. It's that easy.
Furthermore, Customer may return to the portal any time to update profiles or generate on-demand reports. The report would be sent to the designed email address for view and storage.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the benefit of Premium T1 over T1?
The MegaPath Premium T1 offers higher speed, up to 6 Mb. It also includes proactive monitoring, dedicated telephone number & PIN for network operations center access, and all backed by a stringent Service Level Agreement (SLA). For organizations running point of sale systems, business-critical applications like supply chain management, accounting, FTP, or project collaboration – even small business e-commerce, the higher speed and 5 9’s of bandwidth reliability provided by the MegaPath Premium T1 may be their best performance-for-price choice.
What is Malware?
Malware is a word derived from the words ‘malicious’ and ‘software’. It refers to software designed to compromise or damage your computer. Common forms of malware include viruses, worms, and spyware. Malware threats are an ever-changing reality for any and every organization. Because it is nearly impossible to stop malware, and the varieties of it proliferate on the internet, there is constant risk to your computers, data, and critical applications.
Why would a company consider relying on MegaPath for managing its security services?
For small businesses that do not have a dedicated IT staff member, MSS provides a critically important security stop-gap to ensure access and integrity of even the smallest networks. In 2009 CDW’s Year-In-Review revealed 33% of Small business identified ‘information security’ as their top IT priority, while that figure increased to 48% amongst midsize companies, and 50% in large companies.
Steve Hilton, VP Enterprise Research, Yankee Group notes how IT time is in short supply, and staff is stretched too thin, even where IT staff does exist. Companies with fewer than 50 employees often don’t have a dedicated IT person, while the average 100 employee company has two IT staffers. In midmarket companies with 500-999 employees, they may have up to five people on IT staff. But a separate, recent study on IT security reveals 92% of companies with 50-999 employees have no security specialists on staff. 60% of those companies spend less than 1 hour per week on managing security. Unfortunately that fact runs counter-intuitive to the increasing number of potential security threats, plus the need to meet the always-on service expectations that are true in even the smallest organizations.
What are some key benefits of MegaPath Managed Security Services (MSS)?
There are multiple cost-effective and time-saving benefits a company can realize from relying on MegaPath to protect its computer and network resources. MegaPath MSS is a smart investment in cost and risk avoidance. For example, mitigating a virus infection or outbreak requires 2.7 hours of IT staff time per security-related event. In a non-hosted environment, that same security event takes 14 % more time. Compiling security event reports for analysis requires an average of 1.85 hrs per event, or 164% more time in a non-hosted environment.
- Eliminates the need for investing in security expertise or dedicated IT staff
- Protects all devices on the network, not just computers
- Saves money by not requiring hardware to perform each security service selected
- Protects network and computer resources from being compromised (products: Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, Anti-Virus)
- Increases productivity by blocking
- Spam
- Non-productive web surfing (products: Content Filtering and Whitelist/Blacklist)
- Eliminates worries about upgrading firewall firmware or Anti-Virus/Intrusion Prevention subscription renewals
- Reduces wasted time and resources by blocking unwanted traffic before it enters the access circuit by blocking:
- Spam (product: Spam Tracker)
- Network-based attacks (products: Firewall and Intrusion Prevention Service)
- Bandwidth-consuming traffic from attacks, worms, spam and non-productive web surfing (products: Firewall, Intrusion Prevention Service, Content Filtering, Whitelist/Blacklist, Spam-Tracker)
- Provides comprehensive, on-demand reporting capabilities to ensure your staff has access to the security information they need; when they need it
How does MegaPath Intrusion Prevention Service (IPS) protect me from Zero-Day Attacks?
The IPS service of MegaPath MSS uses anomaly-based attack diction, in addition to signature-based detection. Anomaly detection identifies network traffic that does not fit known or preset traffic patterns.
MegaPath MSS IPS identifies the four statistical anomaly types for the TCP, UDP, and ICMP protocols.
| Flooding |
If the number of sessions targeting a single destination in one second is over a specified threshold, the destination is experiencing flooding. |
| Scan |
If the number of sessions from a single source in one second is over a specified threshold, the source is scanning. |
| Source session limit |
If the number of concurrent sessions from a single source is over a specified threshold, the source session limit is reached. |
| Destination session limit |
If the number of concurrent sessions to a single destination is over a specified threshold, the destination session limit is reached. |
If I already have a firewall (hardware), what would I gain from MegaPath MSS Managed Firewall?
- MSS Managed Firewall provides an extra layer of security to provider better protection from malicious traffic.
- The MegaPath Firewall service blocks unwanted traffic before it goes through the access-line. This protects attacks against the customer’s router and prevents the access line from becoming congested with unwanted traffic and bandwidth-consuming attacks (such as Denial of Service attacks).
- Managed Firewall service offloads the processing and blocking onto MegaPath’s devices instead of customer premise equipment (CPE).
What if I already have an Anti-Virus client?
- An extra layer of security provides better protection from malicious traffic.
- The MegaPath Anti-Virus service blocks viruses before they go through the access-line. This improves protection for your computers by preventing the virus from being downloaded in the first place. Anti-Virus clients look at the virus only after it is downloaded to your machine. Your first line of defense against viruses is to prevent them from being downloaded. Mitigating risk at this level is an important safeguard of your computer assets and critical data.
- Blocks adware and spyware
- Protects all computers that connect to your network (i.e., if a visitor such as a business partner or vendor connects to your network with a laptop)
How does Anti-Spam work?
MegaPath Anti-Spam service reads the email headers and messages, and looks for known spam senders and known spam email servers, as well as URLs within the emails of known spam sites. These lists are constantly being updated.
When an email is determined to be spam, the firewall prepends [SPAM] to the email’s subject line. The user can then configure rules in the email client to automatically move all emails with [SPAM] in the subject to a special folder. Once the rule is in place, the user can focus on business-related emails and be more productive.
Why would I need Content Filtering and Whitelist / Blacklist for the same location?
Whitelist/Blacklist is an excellent addition to Content Filtering if you want to limit web browsing by general category, and also limit access to specific sites within allowed categories. For example, a customer who is in the restaurant business could use Content Filtering to allow access to the “Restaurant and Dining” category of social media sites, and then use Whitelist/Blacklist to deny access to specific sites, such as competitors’ sites.
