Overview

Proofpoint Meta is building the fabric that delivers user-centric computing to enterprises. It is a global overlay network that is worldwide and multi-tenant. But it functions as a private enterprise-wide area network for each customer organization. All the infrastructure of this network is provided by Proofpoint Meta in the cloud, so there is no hardware for you to deploy. Proofpoint Meta has a dense network of POPs all around the world. Your end-users, legacy data centers, branch offices, and clouds all connect to Meta via the nearest local POP.

There are two ways for users to connect. One is an always-on VPN-based connection, which is recommended for managed corporate devices. The other is browser-based secure remote access, which is most appropriate for personal devices and non-employees such as contractors, partners, and consultants. All user traffic—WAN, LAN, and internet—flows through this network, where it is secured and audited. Internet traffic breaks out at the local POP.

From a technology perspective, this network is like a very big distributed identity-based router that Proofpoint Meta deploys in the cloud. Policies abstract physical topology and deal with users and resources. Proofpoint Meta has a zero-trust architecture where each user is bound by a software-defined perimeter. Each of your users has a unique, fixed identity no matter from where they connect to this network. The SDP security framework allows one-to-one network connections that are dynamically created on-demand between the user and the specific resources he needs to access. Everything else is invisible to the user. No access is possible unless it is explicitly granted, and it’s continuously verified at the packet level. This model effectively provides you with dynamically provisioned secure network segmentation.