News

'Privatize' the Public Cloud? FortyCloud Makes It Possible

FortyCloud helps organizations create overlay networks to lock down public cloud infrastructures.

• By Christa Ayer
• 06/18/2014

For organizations looking to move to the public cloud, security is a primary concern. Security-as-a-Service company FortyCloud hopes to allay those fears through a solution that isolates and interconnects cloud deployments using a distinct "overlay network." What this amounts to is essentially turning the organization's public cloud into a private cloud.

FortyCloud claims that its overlay network lets organizations build and control their own secure and scalable virtual private cloud networks over any, or over multiple, cloud infrastructure platforms (e.g., Amazon, Rackspace, Google, etc.), as well as data centers.

FortyCloud promises to help organizations fortify their security beyond what their cloud vendor provides, integrate identity with their cloud solutions, and reduce operating costs by simplifying and automating security configurations. The FortyCloud Solution provides AAA (authentication, authorization, and accounting), a policy-based network firewall, encryption of data-in-transit, logs, and audit trails. It also provides identity-based network access and control, which ensures stronger security and a unified behavior across an organization's on-premise and cloud deployments.

Organizations can deploy the infrastructure-independent FortyCloud solution on any IaaS platform. Its main components consist of gateways; thin agents that enforce security policies on the server, configure its firewall, and help establish secure connectivity with other agents and gateways; and a web admin console and APIs that configure, monitor, and troubleshoot security functions.