New WatchGuard Cloud Platform Capabilities Usher in the Era of Simplified Security Management for MSPs

WatchGuard further unifies security services and streamlines deployment capabilities for MSPs while simplifying zero-trust adoption

WatchGuard Technologies, a global leader in network security and intelligence, multi-factor authentication (MFA), advanced endpoint protection, and secure Wi-Fi,  announced a series of new capabilities that make WatchGuard Cloud the ideal security platform for managed service providers (MSPs). With a new single, centralized interface for delivering and managing network security, advanced threat detection, MFA, and more, MSPs will benefit from simplified client management while enabling rapid, efficient and profitable growth.

Building on WatchGuard Cloud’s industry-leading centralized security visibility, MSP-specific management interface and advanced executive reporting, the latest version incorporates WatchGuard’s ThreatSync features, advanced Firebox policy management capabilities and authentication policies that enable zero-trust. With WatchGuard Cloud, MSPs can create policy templates for easy, repeatable security deployments across many subscriber accounts. The platform makes it simple to manage and report on Firebox security environments and AuthPoint MFA deployments from a single pane of glass, while its intuitive interface helps MSPs minimize arduous administrative tasks and maximize productivity and profitability.

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“Our vision for WatchGuard Cloud has always been to build a powerful, cloud-hosted security platform that directly supports the way MSPs do business, and simplifies every aspect of security delivery for our partners,” said Andrew Young, senior vice president of product management at WatchGuard. “The latest edition brings new levels of simplicity, flexibility and scalability to security deployments, management and reporting. WatchGuard Cloud’s continued evolution is lowering the barrier to entry for MSPs to add security to their portfolios, and solidifying it as the management platform of choice for the security channel.”

Key WatchGuard Cloud Platform Enhancements:

• Advanced Network Security Policy Management – WatchGuard Cloud makes policy creation and management a breeze with one-click security service implementations and pre-configured policies to deploy content scanning, network inspection, content filtering, and other services at scale. WatchGuard Cloud policy templates can apply configurations to appliances across multiple tiers and tenants, enabling MSPs to quickly onboard new customers and scale deployments with group and company policies. Additionally, WatchGuard’s innovative new approach to policy creation reduces the number of rules MSPs must manage. This makes implementing rule changes and auditing configurations faster and easier, with less opportunity for mistakes.
• Risk-Based MFA for Simplified Zero-Trust Adoption – Enabling risk-based authentication is an essential step that organizations must take when adopting a zero-trust approach. The new AuthPoint risk framework policies in WatchGuard Cloud improve identity management capabilities by providing customizable and flexible rules to configure users and devices based on level of risk. With centralized management and repeatable, scalable policy implementation via WatchGuard Cloud, MSPs can easily manage zero-trust authentication policies across multiple customer deployments to prevent external threats and thwart potential data leaks from within, and more. Today the risk framework includes network location policies, and WatchGuard will be rapidly building additional risk policies such as geofencing and correlated time policies into the service in 2021 and beyond.
• Built-in End-to-End Threat Analysis – The platform leverages the ThreatSync service to unify threat intelligence, correlation and scoring across the WatchGuard security stack, from network to user. WatchGuard’s cloud-based telemetry alerts endpoints to attacks against the network and WatchGuard Firebox appliances to attacks against endpoints and specific users for automated remediation.

“Strong authentication has always been a fundamental component of security and today represents a core tenet of the growing zero-trust movement. Every organization needs MFA protection that’s not only powerful but intuitive and scalable to manage,” said Alex Cagnoni, director of authentication at WatchGuard. “This simplified approach to managing authentication within WatchGuard Cloud is the latest example of our continued investment in making MFA more secure, effective and easier to administer with AuthPoint.” 

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The WatchGuard Cloud Difference

WatchGuard Cloud offers fully integrated network security, MFA and threat intelligence in a single management platform. Unlike many alternative solutions, it is built from the ground up with simplicity and ease-of-use at its core. WatchGuard’s RapidDeploy cloud-based configuration tool gives users a streamlined, zero-touch method to easily set up new security environments. The platform also delivers true multi-tier, multi-tenant management capabilities, enabling MSPs to create and manage an unlimited number of customer accounts with ease. It helps MSPs demonstrate value to customer stakeholders with over 100 customizable dashboards and reports, and offers custom branding options users can leverage to white label WatchGuard services.

“We’re incredibly impressed with the WatchGuard Cloud platform and its new consolidated security and management capabilities WatchGuard has introduced. This simplistic and cloud-based approach can fundamentally transform how we deliver security to our end customers,” said Matt Lee, CISSP, director of technology and security at Iconic IT. “Comprehensive security deployment, management and reporting through a single pane of glass is a major differentiator in this market, which can help us better service and protect our existing clients, acquire new customers and grow our business.”

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