Verizon is giving its enterprise customers another option to ensure cloud security by adding Check Point’s software to its growing Virtual Network Services suite.
Security has been an increasingly important element of Verizon’s virtual service line.
Check Point Software is the latest in a list of enterprise security companies to embed their security offering within Verizon Virtual Network Services, joining Palo Alto, Fortinet, Juniper and Cisco.
Adding Check Point is part of a broader effort by Verizon to create a software-defined technology ecosystem, easing the process for global enterprises to deploy and manage virtual networks that require flexible bandwidth and security.
Verizon Virtual Network Services - Security with Check Point extends threat prevention security across the virtual network and provides added visibility into virtual traffic to help protect against even the most sophisticated cyberattacks.
The service can protect traffic, assets, data and workloads hosted in corporate data centers, customer locations or virtually in the cloud, protecting traffic both inside and outside the enterprise perimeter. Additionally, companies help secure their physical network and cloud with the same policies, simplifying security management and accelerating the secure delivery of applications.
Shawn Hakl, VP of new products and innovation for Verizon, said that adding Check Point and other vendor offerings is about giving customers more control over how they oversee their networks.
"We add virtual network services to our portfolio to give our customers choice and flexibility to manage and secure their networks as they see fit," Hakl said in a release. "With Verizon Virtual Network Services, our customers can deploy network services as applications that traditionally are provided over multiple appliances, on demand, via a centralized orchestration engine complete with closed-loop service assurance."
Virtual Network Services operates on a utility based contracting and billing model, providing network functions in an "as-a-service" fashion, without the associated devices or vendor lock-ins.
The pact with Check Point is just one of several moves the service provider has made recently to bolster its growing virtual services portfolio. Verizon added Versa Networks to its SD-WAN solution set, aiming to extend managed services to a broader group of small and medium businesses that are implementing consumer-grade services into their network environments.
Verizon also announced Hosted Network Services, enabling customers to deploy multiple functions, such as SD-WAN, security and WAN acceleration via Verizon's software-defined global data centers.