The New Features and Functionality of Appgate SDP 6.2

In 2012, shortly after buying my first used 3 Series BMW sedan, a fellow enthusiast launched into BMW-speak with “Oh, I really like those pre-LCI e90s with the N54.” I thought I knew everything about cars but had no idea what he was talking about. Google revealed that e90 meant the car was a 3 Series, pre-LCI meant pre-lifecycle improvement and N54 referred to the engine. Post-LCI looked similar to pre-LCI models, but there were some important differences.

It’s the same when it comes to product version releases in a software world. So, let’s examine what’s different when it comes to Appgate SDP 6.2.

What’s inside Appgate 6.2?

Last June, we went big with Appgate SDP 6.0. Our UI/UX team completely re-imagined the admin console; we added risk scoring to control dynamic access; and laid the groundwork for Appgate SDP customers to leverage our new cloud-native, cloud-delivered Zero Trust platform. Then in December 2022, the 6.1 release introduced features that improved the end-user experience and enabled new risk data integrations with the likes of CrowdStrike Falcon Insight, CrowdStrike Falcon ZTA and Trellix MVISION.

Appgate SDP 6.2 takes an even bigger lifecycle improvement leap forward with two significant initiatives to benefit all our customers, particularly when it comes to large global enterprise pain points. We’ve created powerful ways for our customers to mitigate network failure scenarios and completed another admin console evolution that dramatically improves search functionality for long lists of data sets.

For a variety of reasons, it’s not unusual for applications to be hosted in different locations. But what happens if there’s a connectivity glitch at one of those locations? The new failover feature in 6.2 has your back. Let’s take a look at an example scenario.

You have applications housed in a data center and in AWS. The application environments are hidden from the internet and protected from unauthorized access thanks to Appgate SDP policy enforcement points (PEPs) known as Gateways. Access is only granted to those applications once identity and risk have been inspected by an Appgate policy decision point (PDP), known as the Controller. From your data center cage, there is back-end connectivity to AWS using a Megaport link. One morning a card dies in your internet-facing data center router and goes offline for users of that connection. But if you’re running Appgate SDP 6.2, users can fail over to the Gateway in AWS and reach data center applications via the backend connectivity of the Megaport link. This keeps your users securely connected to the applications and resources they need to continue working while your team restores the data center internet connection.

Now let’s talk about enhanced search functionality in the admin console. There are data sets that can get very long and cumbersome to comb through when looking for a specific policy, for instance. Some of the search experience improvements in Appgate SDP 6.2 include supporting multiple queries; a more advanced search dialog to simplify list filtering; and a redesigned, easier-to-understand search results page. Admins for large or sophisticated organizations, customers with a lot of policies and our MSP and MSSP partners will benefit greatly from this new search experience.

The work didn’t end there though. We added TLS 1.3 support to the TLS tunnel; three new remote appliance commands; new dashboard widgets that display things like Site health; interactivity for the Active Sessions map; custom connectors in our LogForwarder for CrowdStrike Falcon Logscale and Azure Monitor; the ability to forward metrics to a remote monitoring tool; and much more.

To ensure Appgate SDP’s position as the leading universal ZTNA solution on the market, we are committed to constantly innovating, re-imaging, simplifying and improving its comprehensive features and benefits. This ensures customers have the best security for application environments and their users have the best uninterrupted experience connecting to applications and resources ... not to mention that reducing hands-on admin time is always top of mind for our product management team.

Get more information by viewing detailed Appgate 6.2 resources here. 

Additional universal ZTNA resources
Analyst report: 2023 Nemertes Real Economic Value of Appgate SDP
Blog: Universal ZTNA Advances Enterprise Innovation, Reduces OpEx and Simplies Security
How Appgate SDP Works
Blog: The Operational and Business Benefits of Appgate’s Zero Trust Platform