The COVID-19 pandemic and the massive shift to remote work across many industries have increased demand for these solutions and the secure delivery of desktops and web apps. While that creates an opportunity for Service Providers, it can also lead to challenges including the increased operational overhead that comes with additional IT infrastructure and expanded attack surfaces that require enhanced security to protect against malicious actors.

The cloud-based, NetScaler Application Delivery Management (ADM) service can help you to manage, monitor, analyze, and troubleshoot your global hybrid app delivery infrastructure of NetScaler ADC. NetScaler ADM is the centralized control plane that pushes the configuration to NetScaler ADCs. Further, NetScaler ADCs send application telemetry to NetScaler ADM service, which leverages the data to provide analytics.

In this blog post, we’ll look at six ways NetScaler ADM service can help NetScaler Service Providers reduce their operational overhead and enhance security around their deployments.

Reduce Operational Overhead Associated with Managing ADC Instances

With NetScaler ADM service, Service Providers can easily identify NetScaler ADC instances with known vulnerabilities in their infrastructure, learn more about the issues at hand, and quickly take action to remediate concerns. The Security Advisory dashboard, shown below, makes identifying and remediating vulnerabilities in your application delivery infrastructure easier than ever.

NetScaler ADM service’s Infrastructure Analytics dashboard, shown below, gives admins a bird’s eye view of their complete deployment — including all the NetScaler ADC’s managed by the service — and helps them to identify instances that need attention and why (for example, configuration issues, SSL cert issues, network issues, capacity issues, and more).

Greater Visibility with HDX and Gateway Insight

NetScaler ADM services give admins complete visibility into the end-user experience. HDX Insight helps you to identify problems like WAN latency, DC latency, host delay, app launch delay, and more.

Gateway Insight gives administrators the information they need to identify users facing access-related issues and to determine the root cause of the issues so the Service Provider admin or the customer admin can remediate the issue and ensure a great end-user experience.

Rich, Role-Based Access Control

Different stakeholders have different needs, and NetScaler ADM service enables Service Providers to provide granular access to end users. For example, a Service Provider admin can provide access only to HDX/Gateway Insight to customers and block other features. This provides end-end visibility into the user experience and enables faster identification of the root cause of issues by the Service Provider’s customer, reducing IT’s operational overhead and at the same time preventing any accidental changes to ADC configurations.

Scalable and Automated License Management

With demand for CSP services becoming more unpredictable, Service Providers have to provision more NetScaler ADCs, move NetScaler ADCs, and reallocate licenses based on new customer needs. NetScaler ADM’s Check-In/Check-Out feature enables scalable and automated license management. For example, you can check out a license when a NetScaler ADC VPX is provisioned and check in the license when it’s deprovisioned. APIs can automate license allocation, making life simpler for Service Providers. The image below shows how many licenses are available and how they’re allocated.

Protection Against Top 10 OWASP Threats

With security features powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, NetScaler ADM service can help Service Providers to protect their customers against OWASP Top 10 threats like account takeover attacks. The shift to remote work has increased the attack surface, putting organizations at increased risk. NetScaler ADM service was built to protect against these attacks and offers protection against account takeover attacks and malicious bots. The dashboard below shows details of bot attacks, helping admins understand threats and protect their networks.

Enhanced Security for Login Pages

One target of attackers is login pages that enable remote access for employees working away from the office. Admins can enable Web App Firewall on NetScaler ADC to help to protect remote access login pages from brute force attacks, credential stuffing, and more.

NetScaler ADM service’s security analytics provide visibility into these attacks, giving admins information on attack type, geo-location, and more so Service Providers can take action to protect their customers.

NetScaler ADM service helps to empower Service Providers with seamless management of NetScaler ADC instances, increased visibility into the end-user experience, and an enhanced security posture.

Find out how Citrix IT has leveraged NetScaler ADM service to manage NetScaler ADCs and saved more than 10,000 hours. Learn more about NetScaler ADM service and how you can get started with it today.