Wedge Networks
The ‘Immune System’ for Cloud Connected Devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) brings connectivity that was once limited to a growing, but finite set of computers and mobile devices. Today, nearly everything, physical or virtual is interconnected, feasibly to a smartphone or cloud service. “From an industrial perspective, the IoT is convenient and appealing, but at the same time it also poses control threats and information leaks,” says Hongwen Zhang, Co-founder and CTO, Wedge Networks. “While humanity has no experience dealing with the explosion of IoT systems, we can take lesson from other processes, such as managed water supply mechanism or infectious disease control methods,” illustrates Zhang. According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), the death rate due to infectious diseases dropped more than 50 percent after centralized city water management systems were established. “With the immunization provided through clinics, hospitals, and schools, this death rate is imperceptible today,” says Zhang. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Wedge Networks is transforming the way security is delivered to remove the potential threats associated with cloud, mobility, and IoT. This conviction allowed Wedge to develop their flagship solution—Cloud Network Defense (CND) to be an effective ‘immune’ system for today’s cloud connected world.

CND is designed from the ground up to address the new paradigm of providing security on a ‘per service flow basis’ in the cloud, and in real-time. It is built using open, multi-vendor solutions model of hardware, independent with orchestrated Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) controls to provide scalable high-performance solution. This approach is reinforced with Wedge’s patented, industry-leading deep scanning techniques, which combine Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and Deep Content Inspection (DCI) to yield accurate threat detection capability and orchestrated threat management solution. Wedge CND’s benefits are available to all enterprises irrespective of their size. “This is because CND can be deployed by individual enterprises using their own private or a public cloud infrastructure, or they can subscribe to CND in the form of Security-as-a-Service from a partner service provider,” says Zhang.

From an industrial perspective, the IoT is convenient and appealing, but at the same time it also poses control threats and information leaks

Wedge has enabled its clients to overcome business obstacles in the IoT landscape and attain desired outcomes with its array of innovative solutions. For instance, a major Japanese power facility company has been using Wedge’s systems over the years for security purposes. During the devastating Japanese earthquake of 2011, the Wedge security systems that were running throughout enabled the client to focus on repairing the damage caused by the earthquake and ensure power supply to millions of households and businesses. The Wedge solutions protected their devices against the endless cyber attacks during the revamping process.

For the future, Wedge aims for a ‘clean cloud connected’ world. This has attracted partners, internet service providers,and enterprise datacenter operators. Many of these organizations have deployed Wedge’s solutions to provide security coverage for their diversified customer base and computing devices. “Such deployments have allowed our partners to effectively implement security solutions with lower cost, enable better customer satisfactions, and generate incremental security services revenue,” extols Zhang. Based on the feedback from these partners, the company will develop products that are tailored to make large scale security management easier. Commenting on the plans for the days to come, Zhang says, “Rapid integration of regional security intelligence to protect critical infrastructures, data exfiltration, and machine learning for threat trends, orchestrated and service chaining of advanced security functions is on our IoT roadmap.”