A10 Networks Orion 5G security lineup delivers business transformation for service providers

A10 Networks announced its Orion 5G Security Suite that enables mobile carriers and service providers to be ready for the business transformation 5G and NFV brings. The suite allows customers to meet the requirements needed today and helps them future proof their networks for tomorrow by delivering security, scalability, agility and analytics, while integrating with a partner ecosystem. A10 brings unique expertise from working with many of the production 5G networks that are now operational around the world.

A10 Networks has been at the forefront of initial 5G rollouts with tier-one carriers worldwide and is working with many others to plan for their future 5G initiatives. 

With the announcement of the 5G Orion Security Suite, service providers have a proven comprehensive suite of secure applications services that have been engineered for cloud-native architecture to aid in making their 5G and NFV strategies successful. 

The Orion 5G Security Suite enables advanced security and reliability functions as individual services by modularizing and offering them as a service layer with a set of connected technologies that employ automated intelligence, machine learning and centralized visibility and control.

Partnering with tier-one operators, A10 has honed its solutions to meet the critical 5G requirements for improved security, reliability and performance learned from 5G network rollouts over the last year. A10 provides an interconnected suite – virtual or physical – resulting in lower latency, larger scale, higher reliability and lower TCO—all of which have been required for the emerging 5G use cases customers are enabling.

In the last year to 18 months, first movers have deployed the first wave of 5G networks and demonstrated improved customer satisfaction and increased average revenue per user (ARPU), despite an increase in network demands, including higher data usage and download rates.

The Orion 5G Security Suite addresses existing and emerging mobile network architecture requirements for agility, consolidated services, greater scale, and lower latency communications across the Gi-LAN, virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC), and multi-access edge computing (MEC) environments. 

The Orion 5G Security Suite’s disaggregated, cloud-native security services provide agility while maintaining scale and performance by leveraging cutting-edge technologies. It also goes beyond just protecting the data plane through a GiFW by adding protection for the control plane and signaling plane with full visibility.

The Orion 5G Security Suite represents a major evolution of the company’s 5G strategy outlined in late 2018 by providing a comprehensive solution for mobile operators and other service providers to successfully deploy 5G non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) solutions at hyperscale for 5G devices and new NFVi requirements.

A10 supports existing 4G and 3G network architectures and use cases for the Gi-LAN and EPC, while catering to demanding requirements for 5G architectures, including the cloud-native agility needed for MEC. These solutions can be deployed in infrastructure but are future proofed for 5G deployments. This includes functional consolidation for application visibility and control, subscriber-aware intelligent traffic steering, Gi/SGi firewall with carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT), GTP/SCTP firewall, integrated DDoS for frequently attacked services, intelligent traffic steering and more.

5G demands are inherently different than 4G, with smaller packet sizes, more throughput, and higher concurrent session counts. A10 solutions can scale concurrent sessions to multi-billion levels and throughput to multi-terabit levels in a scale-out cluster. 5G deployments can benefit from compact and efficient options, for example, 385 Gbps in compact physical network functions (PNFs), or high-performance 180 Gbps virtual network functions (VNFs) and cloud-native network functions (CNFs). 

Support for Kubernetes and Docker containers are available now. The compact PNF form factors and very high-performance software offerings (including containerized) are especially beneficial in emerging MEC use cases where space and power are at a premium.

With new user-plane and control-plane security requirements coupled with the increased attack surface and scale brought by 5G and IoT device proliferation, more advanced, scalable and automated approaches are needed. To guarantee uptime and ensure control- and user-plane security, components include edge firewall, GTP firewall, Gi/SGi firewall, control- and user-plane policy enforcement, DNS protection, RAN security gateways (SeGW), and more. 

Additionally, A10’s advanced DDoS protection solution includes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities with its Zero-day Attack Protection (ZAP), continuous base lining, and One-DDoS for distributed intelligence. This provides full visibility into all packets versus traditional sample-based-only solutions. Network-wide ML-powered DDoS detection and mitigation for in-house protection can also be offered as a customer scrubbing service.

A10’s solutions can be delivered in a variety of form factors to meet the demands of the emerging NFVi architecture including, VNFs, CNFs, bare metal and PNFs. These solutions are integrated with leading NFVi architectures and interoperate with multiple MANO environments for faster network roll-out and optimized performance and agility. A10 also provides flexible software licensing and consumption with FlexPool subscription-based capacity pooling licensing.

A10 Harmony Controller provides actionable intelligence to manage subscriber services, meet law enforcement agency mandates and compliance, and deliver per-subscriber analytics. Harmony Controller provides visibility, management, orchestration and automation. Coordination of distributed One-DDoS data from all the Orion 5G Security Suite solutions is seamlessly orchestrated from the integrated aGalaxy TPS system.

A10’s products integrate with multiple third-party solutions and vendors, ranging from DevOps tools, such as Ansible, to providers of 5G solutions such as Ericsson, Red Hat, NEC, Tech Mahindra and Lenovo.

A10 Networks extends carrier-class firewall product lineup with a container offering, new 5G network ready features

A10 Networks announced Wednesday that it is extending the capabilities of the Thunder Convergent Firewall (CFW), part of the A10 Orion 5G Security Suite, to support the coming cloud-native 5G requirements. The container-based carrier-class firewall delivers up to 180 Gbps throughput, one of the fastest in the industry. 

A10 is also releasing a new version of its Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) 5.1, which includes multiple 5G-ready updates. Thunder CFW running ACOS 5.1 brings functionality, performance and scale of the existing physical and virtual appliances to the container firewall, helping to prepare service provider customers in their transition to cloud-native 5G infrastructures.

The Thunder containerized firewall was recently demonstrated as part of the Linux Foundation’s end-to-end cloud-native 5G network proof of concept at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. This first of its kind proof-of-concept (PoC) was a fully containerized, end-to-end 5G non-stand-alone (NSA) distributed cloud network, which paves the way for commercial deployments in mobile operator networks globally.

The Thunder CFW includes functionality that helps ensure the security, reliability and availability of 5G networks as they transition from physical network functions to be completely cloud native. It can be broadly deployed in mobile networks at the SGi, roaming and radio access network (RAN) interfaces. 

The A10 vThunder virtual network function (VNF) package has been integrated and validated with leading NFV-MANO solutions, including Ericsson Cloud Manager, NEC Netcracker HOM, Red Hat OpenStack, and tested in recent ETSI NFV Plugtests for end-to-end VNF lifecycle operation capabilities.

“The Thunder CFW release is an integral foundational element to our comprehensive A10 Orion 5G Security Suite. With the ACOS 5.1 release, A10 has integrated comprehensive feedback from multiple proven deployments in tier-one mobile operators over the last year. These production networks have required hyperscale, lower latency, automation, and advanced security,” said Yasir Liaqatullah, vice president, product management at A10 Networks. “As 5G adoption increasingly requires multi-terabit performance on the Gi-LAN, we continue to provide industry-leading scale in virtual network functions (VNFs), cloud-native network functions (CNFs) and physical network functions (PNFs), including scale-out agile deployments with containerized solutions for virtual mobile edge compute requirements.”

In addition to the release of the high-performance containerized firewall CNF, A10 Networks also released new PNFs with its 7600 series models, delivering up to 385 Gbps throughput in a compact RU physical appliance.

The A10 Orion 5G Security Suite is available now. Thunder CFW with ACOS 5.1 and the new CNF and PNF form factors will be available later this month.

Richweb boosts rural broadband with hyperscale carrier-grade network address translation from A10 Networks

A10 Networks announced that Richweb, a Virginia-based managed service provider, has adopted the company’s bare metal carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) solution. Richweb is helping to bring digital equity to rural communities across Virginia. 

As part of its infrastructure services portfolio expansion, Richweb aspired to provide CGNAT services to help its electric co-op customers bring high-speed broadband to more Virginia residents. It chose A10 Thunder Carrier-grade Networking (CGN) Bare Metal to extend its customers’ IPv4 address pools and ensure that critical network services are always available and reliable.

A10 Networks’ Thunder CGN solution provides high-performance, highly transparent network address and protocol translation, allowing service providers and enterprises to extend IPv4 network connectivity while simultaneously transitioning to the IPv6 protocol. In addition to hyperscale and rich application-level address translation features, the Thunder CGN solution also provides increased security to protect the services and infrastructure.

A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal leverages the same high-performance architecture and features of the A10 Thunder CGN appliances. Bare-metal software deployments benefit from greater performance by not using a hypervisor, since they have direct access to the underlying hardware. A single instance of A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal offers up to 40 Gbps of throughput.

“The performance of A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal doesn’t waver,” says Jon Larsen, CIO and co-founder of Richweb, noting that open-source NAT products can experience unpredictable performance, impacting the subscriber experience.

Richweb deployed A10 Thunder CGN Bare Metal on its preferred server platform, which lowered capital costs and simplified operations. Servers running the bare-metal software can be upgraded independently from the hardware, giving the engineering team greater flexibility as business expands. 

“I like the bare metal because we can throw more cores at it and we can scale on-demand,” says Larsen.

Richweb’s engineering and operations team was new to A10 Thunder CGN, but deployment was smooth. “I expected it to be more of a challenge to configure Thunder CGN Bare Metal,” says Larsen. “It was simple. Thunder CGN just worked.”

“A10 Thunder CGN allows Richweb to be at the center of rural broadband services. Richweb provides the infrastructure services, such as routing, network address translation and peering, that electric co-ops need to deliver broadband to rural communities,” said Mark Lea, CEO and co-founder, Richweb.

High-performance, scalable CGNAT is part of a sustainable growth strategy for any service provider or enterprise. With CGNAT services, Richweb can make the most of their IPv4 address allocations, enabling them to serve more subscribers and more connected devices, while being ready for IPv6.

A10 Networks multi-cloud outline offers automation of Polynimbus secure application services

A10 Networks has outlined its blueprint to enable enterprises and web giants to meet the demands for the security, reliability and agility of applications in a multi-cloud world. 

With applications increasingly distributed across multiple clouds, and users more mobile, managing and securing applications has become more complex than ever. This disparate infrastructure and the increased threat surface create challenges to digital transformation. 

A10’s Polynimbus application services blueprint offers a way forward for enterprises and web giants to bridge the gaps created by diverse application environments that need to be managed and secured. This blueprint can enable greater simplicity, agility, consistent manageability and security for organizations as they tackle the complexities of the multi-cloud world.

A10 addresses the new multi-cloud operational reality with the Polynimbus application services blueprint. It covers secure operations considerations, the most impactful current and emerging multi-cloud technologies, migration from on-premises hardware and software to the cloud, and the requirements to ensure a successful pivot of operations across a multi-cloud environment. It is no longer a case of a few cloud architects simply deploying a couple of applications to the cloud in silos. It is a shift to managing the new reality securely and efficiently as a core reliable IT operation.

“A10 understands the myriad of challenges enterprises and web giants are facing as they enter a new phase in shifting to multi-cloud strategies,” said Lee Chen, founder and CEO of A10 Networks. “Organizations need to move beyond the early siloed deployments of cloud platforms, to adopt intelligent automation to handle the operational challenges of these systems. In this phase, organizations need to adjust their strategy to ensure the business is protected and applications are always reliable.”

Borusan Holding adopts A10 Networks Thunder SSLi to protect network from hidden threats

A10 Networks announced that Borusan Holding has selected A10 Thunder SSL Insight to help protect its network from hidden threats that may come in with the growing amount of encrypted internet traffic. Thunder SSLi is a comprehensive SSL/TLS decryption solution that enables security devices to analyze enterprise internet traffic against potential threats.

The vast majority of web and application traffic is encrypted using SSL/TLS to ensure data integrity and privacy, not necessarily security. This creates real issues as security tools become blind to any nefarious activity happening in encrypted traffic - before the attack, during the attack, and even after the attack. Criminals take advantage of this and hide attacks in an enterprise’s encrypted traffic.

Guarding against such hidden threats is a top priority for Borusan. Volumes of encrypted web traffic were rising dramatically, driven by the adoption of Microsoft Office 365 and other cloud-based applications. Outbound SSL traffic was a growing blind spot.

Borusan evaluated the SSL inspection products and chose Thunder SSLi because of its interception technology, source-side NAT support, and integrated load balancing, which helps to distribute internet traffic between proxy appliances.

Thunder SSLi decrypts traffic across all ports, enabling third-party security devices to analyze all enterprise traffic without degrading performance. Thunder SSLi decrypts HTTPS traffic and forwards it in clear text to the firewall, proxy, IPS and deep-packet inspection solutions. Thunder SSLi then re-encrypts traffic and sends it off to its final destination.

“Today, encryption has become ubiquitous. And while encryption can ensure the privacy of the data, it can put enterprises at risk,” said Yasir Liaqatullah, vice president of product management at A10 Networks. "Cyber criminals are increasingly taking advantage of encrypted traffic to launch phishing and ransomware attacks, and to spread viruses and Trojans embedded into documents. Thunder SSLi is a high-performance, dedicated SSL inspection solution that allows enterprises to remove the blind spots while maintaining compliance with privacy standards.”