The Connectivity Cloud offers a solution

When talking to customers, it is important to analyze what they want to say between the lines. When IT professionals and security managers talk about loss of control, they are actually looking for a better solution. In summary, a link between IT and security that reduces complexity by working with everything in the digital environment is available everywhere and can handle all network, security and development functions.

Another recent survey of IT and security managers found that 72% place great value on a secure, any-to-any cloud platform. Additionally, respondents said they would invest an average of 16% of their total IT and security budget in such a platform. To address this growing latent need for greater control over the entire digital environment, Cloudflare developed and launched the Connectivity Cloud.

A connectivity cloud is a new approach to providing the services businesses need to secure and connect their digital environments. It is an intelligently integrated platform of programmable cloud-native services that enables all connectivity between all networks (on-premise and Internet), cloud environments, applications and users. Consisting of a huge range of security, performance and development services, not intended to replace everything everywhere, but rather to provide the ability to deploy them where they are needed and consolidate many important services onto one platform.

Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud is based on four core principles:

1. Deep integration – Companies rely on the Internet to connect various elements of their digital environment with employees, partners and customers. A connectivity cloud is natively integrated into the Internet and enterprise networks, providing secure, infinitely scalable, low latency connectivity between every user, every application and every infrastructure. It’s as fast and easy as the best internet, without risk or uncertainty.
2. Programmability – Each digital business environment has its own infrastructure, multiple clouds, unique compliance requirements and other specific tools, processes and configurations. A connectivity cloud architecture provides unlimited interoperability and adaptable networks, allowing it to adapt to these unique needs while providing consistent user experiences and efficient management.
3. Platform Intelligence – Businesses need a wide range of services to connect and secure everything in their digital environment. But integrating everything is difficult, and trying to manage everything leads to inefficiencies and security vulnerabilities. A well-designed connectivity cloud has a wide range of services integrated at a fundamental level and analyzes extremely large volumes and variants of network traffic to automatically update intelligent models.
4. Simplicity – Too many IT and security services lead to too many dashboards, leading to inefficiency, poor visibility and alertness. While 100% consolidation on a single platform is not a solution, a connectivity cloud significantly reduces tool proliferation and dashboard overload by managing much of the IT environment through a single management console.

With these features, Connectivity Cloud allows you to add new services to your digital environment without losing even more control, while also helping you take back control of what you already have.

Cloudflare connectivity cloud

We admit that we tend to attach particular importance to these four basic principles. Our services are built from the start on the foundation of deep integration, programmability, platform intelligence and simplicity. Now our overall offering is comprehensive enough to help customers leverage these benefits to address a wide range of IT and security needs. That’s why we’re proud to say that Cloudflare is the world’s first connectivity cloud.

But don’t just take our word for it. Read the following examples from customers who have used Cloudflare to solve their own audit crises:

Conrad Electronic: Secure access for a globally distributed workforce

The programmability, deep network integration, and built-in intelligence of a connectivity cloud make it ideal for providing secure access to enterprise resources.

Electronics retailer Conrad Electronic told us: “The very fact that people are staying online has created a number of administrative bottlenecks.” Almost half of its 2,300 employees require remote access to business applications. Enabling this access was difficult: you had to deploy and configure VPN clients for each user.

Conrad Electronic now uses Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud to provide secure remote access to hundreds of business applications. Admin workload has been significantly reduced and the team tells us they now have much more time per month to focus on improving all web operations. In addition, their security position is stronger: “With one click of the mouse, we can restrict access to certain people or secure sensitive areas.” By not having to maintain 1,000 VPN profiles, we improve our security and save time and money.”

Carrefour: Delivering and managing trusted customer-centric applications

The security data, network integration, and unified interface of a connectivity cloud also make it ideal for closing security gaps and enabling secure application delivery on a global scale.

Multinational retail and wholesale company Carrefour has a rapidly growing e-commerce business. However, as cyberattacks increased, simply expanding the security stack didn’t help. Their security team told us: “The networking of multiple tools made it difficult to coordinate and control the architecture. Additionally, the lack of integration between tools made investigating and resolving security and performance issues a complex and time-consuming effort.”

As part of its broader security transformation, Carrefour launched Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud to prevent web exploits, zero-day threats and malicious bot attacks. This allowed them to replace five security tools from different vendors. Since then, they have also reduced incident resolution time by 75%.

This is a post from Tony van den Berge, VP European Regional Markets at Cloudflare. You can find more information about their solutions here.