Glossary

Active Directory (AD) is an enterprise identity service from Microsoft, which provides login authentication, single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, lightweight directory services (LDAP), certificate and rights management.

Advanced Threat Protection is the collection of network security and related defenses deployed to address current and emerging threats.

Backup as a Service (BaaS) is a managed service model for the delivery of backup and recovery services via an online service provider, rather than traditional on-site backups.

Fiber channel (FC) is a networking protocol, typically used in Storage Area Networks (SAN Storage). Fiber channel is used to transfer data at high speeds to a resource pool of servers with low latency.

Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) is a new type of a next-generation firewall. It doesn’t merely hide physical firewall appliances behind a “cloud duct tape”, but truly eliminates the appliance form factor, making network security (URL Filtering, IPS, AM, NG-AM, Analytics, MDR) available everywhere.

Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) appliance has been the cornerstone of network security for the past two decades. It applies deep packet inspection (DPI) and multiple security engines to inspect both inbound and outbound traffic and enforce a company’s security policy. The main characteristic of a NGFW is application awareness: the ability to detect and enforce policies on applications usage based on packet content rather than packet headers (source and destination IP addresses, ports, and protocols).

SD-WAN as a Service extends the core capabilities of traditional SD-WAN. It converges the WAN edge, a global backbone and a full network security stack into a unified cloud-native platform.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a new enterprise networking technology category introduced by Gartner in 2019. SASE converges the functions of network and security point solutions into a unified, global cloud-native service. It is an architectural transformation of enterprise networking and security that enables IT to provide a holistic, agile and adaptable service to the digital business.

A Secure Web Gateway applies various security engines to the traffic including IPS, anti-malware, URL filtering and more. The ability to run these engines in parallel is subject to the appliance capacity. Smaller appliances, such as UTMs, are especially limited in their scalability, extensibility and inspection capabilities.

Software-defined perimeter (SDP), also known as Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), is a new approach for securing remote access to business applications both on-premises and in the cloud. SDP is an integral part of Gartner’s Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework.

Storage as a service (STaaS) is a managed service model for purchasing data storage based on consumption, where a company only pays for what they use, typically on a per-GB per-month basis.

Unified Communications (UC) and UC as a Service (UCaaS) enhance team collaboration with a mix of real-time communication and messaging tools, namely voice, video conferencing, and screen-sharing.

Wide Area Network (WAN) is a communications network that spans a wide geographic area, connecting multiple Local Area Networks (LANs) from headquarters to branch offices, data centers and the cloud.