Business Continuity SSL

Planning for Business Disruptions

Whether in the form of a natural disaster, technology outage, or simply bad weather, business disruptions can have a crippling effect if your company is not prepared with a proven business continuity plan. In the event of a business disruption, more than just your executives and sales team are going to need access. A critical piece of your business continuity plan must be access management: How all your employees - and potentially partners, suppliers, and customers - are going to be able to access critical information from your corporate network during a disaster. After all, when weather keeps your employees home, your payroll department needs access to the applications required to make sure pay day happens on time even if they can't safely make it in to the office.

MegaPath Business Continuity SSL service provides your entire workforce with secure remote access to their enterprise network and information systems in the event of a business disruption. When disaster strikes, MegaPath's Business Continuity SSL service instantly scales to deliver enough capacity to handle instantaneous peak usage the moment you need it.

Easy Access

There's no need to distribute company-issued laptops and no software to permanently install and maintain on a PC or other device. Users connect through the Internet from any Web browser and use their corporate username and password for full access to any resources on the corporate LAN.

Fully Managed for Peace of Mind

The MegaPath Business Continuity SSL service is fully managed so you don't incur any equipment charges or require additional IT resources. We proactively monitor the service 24x7x365 to ensure it is always ready and available, so there's never any delay or interruption in access when an event occurs. And our "as seen" pricing model means you only have to pay for those who use it.

The MegaPath Business Continuity SSL is available as a stand-alone product or as a complement to existing access services. It can be combined with our complete suite of managed security services to create a robust, reliable enterprise-wide solution.

Features and Benefits

Leveraging proven SSL VPN technology, MegaPath Business Continuity SSL delivers on-demand remote access via any Web browser to every employee, using just their corporate username and password. It is an instant, cost-effective, scalable, and secure way to ensure that you maintain core business functions during a business disruption.

• Instant: Once MegaPath Business Continuity SSL is initially deployed, it is instantly available for thousands of users. There is no need to pre-install software or distribute company laptops - employees can access the network from any Web browser on any device, anywhere in the world.
• Cost-Effective: MegaPath Business Continuity SSL does not require initial capital expenditures since there's no additional equipment or infrastructure to buy (and maybe never use). Simply pay a reasonable monthly fee to ensure instant access if and when needed.
• Scalable: The MegaPath Business Continuity SSL can be set up to support a company's standard remote workforce. In a disrupting event, it automatically scales to support a spike of users.
• Secure: Utilizing leading SSL VPN technology, MegaPath Business Continuity SSL provides granular access and policy control, and strong SSL-based encryption.

How It Works

Flexible and Scalable Connectivity

The MegaPath Business Continuity SSL is a flexible networking solution that scales to meet the connectivity needs of your workforce in case of disaster. This service can augment your existing MPLS Site-to-Site VPN, or act as a stand-alone solution, available only when you need it.

If you have an MPLS Site-to-Site VPN, you can choose to keep the SSL equipment in our MegaPath network center. This offers you a hosted solution that we manage and maintain, saving your IT department time and resources.

You can also host our service in your own data center, integrating it with your existing network equipment. In either case, we deploy adequate hardware and connections to scale to your user population the moment you need it.

Robust Access Control for Every User and Device

MegaPath works with you to define your access control policies for each group of users and the devices they're using to access the network. These policy zones are determined by the relative security risk of each specific device. Those that your IT department controls are more trusted than public devices. A user accessing the network through a company-issued laptop, for example, would have more applications and resources available to them than a user accessing the network from a kiosk at the airport.

These access control policies, combined with end point control, determine which policy zone a user is placed in each time they access the network. Policy zones can contain multiple user and device profiles, allowing a single zone to reflect multiple end point scenarios.

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Access is classified into three zones:

• Trusted: Devices that are issued and managed by your company would fall into this category. With a user name and password, a user can access all their applications on the network.
• Semi-trusted: Devices that are known and secure, like a home office or a partner site, but which aren't directly managed by your IT department.
• Non-trusted: Public devices like Internet kiosks in an airport or hotel business office.

The zone determines the access environment a user experiences. An employee who takes their laptop home with them and uses it to access the Corporate LAN may have access to a wide range of applications, for example a CRM system or database. If that same employee connects from their home computer which doesn't have a firewall, they may only have access to their email.