How to Manage Your Migration to Secure Web Gateway (SWG) 2.0

The internet has come a long way since January 1, 1983, its official birthday. Over the years, fueled by digital transformation, the internet has become the corporate network of organizations big and small. Having said that, it has also become an increasingly dangerous place for organizations and their employees as cybercriminals constantly develop new ways to exploit vulnerabilities and steal data. 

Traditional security measures are no longer enough to protect businesses from threats. For instance, many organizations are still using legacy secure web gateway (SWG) solutions that cannot protect from evolving threats. In this blog post, we will discuss the challenges of legacy hardware-based and virtualized SWG solutions and the benefits of migrating to a cloud native SWG—which we’ll call SWG 2.0. We will also provide a comprehensive overview of the migration process, from pre-migration considerations to testing and validation. By following these steps, you can ensure a smooth and successful migration to an internet security solution fit for the modern enterprise. 

Challenges of legacy SWG

Legacy SWG solutions can present several challenges for organizations, hindering their ability to effectively protect against cyberthreats. One of the primary challenges is their complexity. Legacy SWG solutions often require complex configurations and management, which can be time-consuming and resource-intensive for IT teams. This complexity can also lead to errors and misconfigurations, increasing the risk of security breaches.

Performance and scalability woes are other major concerns. Legacy security models require hardware that sits in a central data center, to which traffic needs to be backhauled. This can lead to high latency and lost productivity for remote users trying to access the internet or SaaS applications. What’s more, if you need to scale, buying additional virtual or physical hardware is another headache, taking considerable time and resources to configure the new additions to match existing appliance configurations. Additionally, legacy SWG solutions may not offer granular control over web access, making it difficult to enforce security policies and protect sensitive data.

Worryingly, legacy SWG solutions struggle to keep up with the evolving threat landscape. 95% of all internet traffic is now encrypted, and inspecting it is crucial. Legacy SWGs are often blind to encrypted traffic and unable to inspect it for malicious content. This can leave organizations vulnerable.

SWG 2.0: The path forward

A fully cloud-native SWG provides significant advantages over legacy solutions. The foundation of SWG 2.0 is a zero trust architecture, combined with real-time threat intelligence, advanced threat protection, secure web browsing, data loss prevention, and AI/ML-based protection. Cloud-native SWGs are also more scalable and flexible, making them easier to manage as they adapt to your changing needs. Here are some of the benefits of migrating to a cloud-native SWG solution:

• Improved security: Cloud-native SWGs offer layered advanced security features that can help you to protect your organization from the latest cyberthreats. They can identify and block the latest threats, including zero-day attacks and advanced persistent threats (APTs). They do this with real-time threat intelligence, sandboxing, ML, inline traffic inspection, and other security features.
• Scalability: Cloud-native SWGs can be easily scaled up (or down) to meet your changing needs across multiple locations. This makes it an ideal solution for organizations of all sizes.
• Improved performance: A cloud-native SWG is highly efficient, able to handle large volumes of traffic without compromising performance. Importantly, they don't require backhauling, delivering services at the edge, minimizing the number of hops and ensuring consistent user experience. They can also provide real-time protection to safeguard businesses against sophisticated threats.

The perfect migration formula

Identify your SWG migration goals

The first step in any migration project is to identify your goals. This will help you to focus your efforts and ensure that the migration is successful.

Here are some key things to consider when identifying your SWG migration goals:

• What are your current SWG-related security, compliance, and performance challenges?
• What do you hope to achieve by migrating to a cloud-native SWG?
• What are your organization’s unique requirements and constraints?
• What are the risks and challenges that you may face during the migration?

Once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can begin to develop a SWG migration plan that outlines the steps and activities that need to be taken to achieve your desired outcomes.

When setting your migration goals, it's important to be realistic and achievable. Consider your organization's resources, budget, and timeline, and prioritize the goals that will have the greatest impact on your web security posture.

It's also important to communicate your migration goals to all relevant stakeholders, including IT staff, security personnel, and business leaders. This will help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same objectives.

Regularly review your migration goals and adjust them as needed to ensure that they remain aligned with your organization's changing needs and priorities. By following these steps, you can increase the likelihood of a successful migration and enhance your overall web security posture.

Assess your current web security posture

• Examine your security posture: Before you begin migrating to a cloud-native SWG, it’s crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of your current security posture. This involves meticulously reviewing your existing SWG logs to identify any potential vulnerabilities or recurring security incidents. By analyzing these logs, you can pinpoint specific areas that require immediate attention and prioritize them accordingly.
• Examine network traffic patterns: In addition to log analysis, conduct a thorough examination of your network traffic patterns. This will help you determine the types of web traffic that your organization generates and the level of security required for each category. This analysis will serve as a foundation for designing an effective and targeted migration strategy that addresses your specific security needs.
• Conduct a comprehensive security audit: It is essential to perform a comprehensive security audit of your current SWG configuration. This audit should encompass all aspects of your SWG, including its policies, rules, and settings. By identifying any gaps or inconsistencies in your current configuration, you can strengthen your security posture and ensure a smooth transition to SWG 2.0.
• Understand compliance requirements: Don’t overlook the significance of compliance requirements in your migration process. Familiarize yourself with the relevant industry regulations and standards that your organization must adhere to. This knowledge will guide your migration strategy and help you configure your SWG solution accordingly, ensuring compliance from the outset.
• Assess IT team capabilities: Lastly, assess the skills and resources of your IT team. Consider whether they possess the necessary expertise and bandwidth to effectively manage and maintain an SWG 2.0 solution. If gaps exist, consider providing additional training or seeking external support to ensure a successful migration.

By diligently assessing your current security posture, you’ll gain valuable insights that will empower you to make informed decisions throughout your migration journey to SWG 2.0. This comprehensive approach will lay the groundwork for a secure and seamless transition, enabling you to leverage the full potential of cloud-native internet security and enhance your overall cybersecurity posture.

Plan for user adoption and training

Planning for user adoption and training is crucial to ensure a smooth and successful migration to SWG 2.0. Effective communication is key in gaining user buy-in. Clearly communicate the benefits of the migration, emphasizing how it will enhance security, improve performance, and streamline user experience. Provide comprehensive training on the new SWG features, ensuring that users understand the changes and are equipped to leverage the new capabilities. Develop user guides, tutorials, and FAQs to serve as ongoing reference materials. Establish a dedicated support system to address user queries and concerns during and after the migration. Actively monitor usage patterns and gather feedback to identify areas for improvement and ensure user satisfaction. By investing in user adoption and training, organizations can foster a positive user experience and maximize the benefits of their SWG migration.

Test and validate your migration plan

Testing and validating your migration plan is a critical step to ensure a smooth and successful transition to SWG 2.0. This involves thoroughly testing the new SWG environment to identify and resolve any potential issues before the migration is fully implemented.

Begin by creating a comprehensive test plan that outlines the specific scenarios and configurations that will be tested. This should include testing for functionality, performance, security, and compliance. Utilize automated testing tools and manual testing to ensure a comprehensive evaluation of the new environment.

During testing, pay close attention to the following key areas:

• Functionality: Verify that all features and functionalities of the new SWG are working as expected. This includes testing access control, content filtering, threat protection, and reporting capabilities.
• Performance: Assess the performance of your SWG under various load conditions to ensure that it can handle the expected traffic volume and user demands without compromising performance.
• Security: Conduct rigorous security testing to identify any vulnerabilities or gaps in the SWG environment. This includes testing for common attack vectors such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and buffer overflows.
• Compliance: Ensure that your SWG meets all relevant compliance requirements. This may involve conducting a compliance audit and obtaining necessary certifications.

In addition to testing the technical aspects of your SWG, it is also important to involve end users in the testing process to gather their feedback and ensure that the new system meets their needs and expectations.

Once testing is complete and any issues have been resolved, perform a final validation of the SWG environment to confirm that it is ready for production. This should include a thorough review of all test results, user feedback, and any remaining risks or concerns.

By following a rigorous testing and validation process, you can minimize the risks associated with migrating to SWG 2.0 and ensure that the new environment is reliable, secure, and compliant.

SWG 2.0 is Zscaler Internet Access

Part of the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™, our cloud-native SWG – known as Zscaler Internet Access – provides comprehensive security services applied inline between your users, the web, and SaaS apps. By terminating every connection inline, inspecting all internet traffic, and applying a user-centric security and access policy, you can eliminate the attack surface, prevent compromise, stop lateral movement, and halt sensitive data loss. This is the future of internet and SaaS security.

Our AI-powered SWG provides innovative features that legacy technical approaches can’t match:

• AI-powered proactive defense capabilities:
  • Phishing detection: Detect and block patient zero phishing pages inline with advanced AI-based detection.
  • Command-and-control (C2) detection: identify and stop attacks from never-before-seen botnets inline, including advanced evasion techniques.
  • Browser isolation: Robust, proprietary AI models and one-click configurations automatically identify and isolate risky, suspicious, or malicious websites.
  • Dynamic risk scoring: assigns a dynamic risk score for individual users and keeps it updated periodically based on the users' latest behavior trends
  • Ransomware protection: Stop threats and reduce business risk with a proactive zero trust security architecture
• Full TLS/SSL traffic inspection: Regardless of the network protocols used for the underlying data transport, Zscaler can fully inspect traffic at scale while supporting protocols including IPv4 as well as the newer IPv6 and HTTP/2.
• Dynamic, risk-based access policies: Future-proof your defenses and stop active attacks with risk-based dynamic policies that continuously analyze content, domains/URLs, users, devices, and applications.
• Correlated threat insights: Drastically improve response times with contextualized, correlated alerts that provide insight into threat scores, affected assets, severity, and more.
• Cyber risk assessment: Automatically identify your organization’s risk based on configuration with integrated best practice recommendations to improve security posture.
• HTTP/2 inspection: Gain end-to-end performance improvements and maintain granular policy enforcement for all HTTP/2 traffic at scale.

Conclusion

Migrating to SWG 2.0 is a strategic move that can significantly enhance your organization's cybersecurity posture. The migration process, while demanding careful planning and execution, is a worthwhile investment in safeguarding your digital assets against the increasingly sophisticated threats of the online world. 

By following the outlined steps—from identifying goals to thorough testing and validation—you can ensure a smooth transition that maximizes security benefits. Embrace a cloud-native SWG and empower your business with robust, forward-thinking web security that keeps pace with the evolving cyber landscape. If you would like to understand more about how Zscaler customers can take advantage of our AI-powered SWG, take a look at Zscaler Internet Access™.