Nonprofit

Cybersecurity Defense & Intelligence Center (CDIC)

IndustryUse cases

Cybersecurity Nonprofit (501c3)

Remote access

VPN replacement

Background

Cybersecurity Defense & Intelligence Center (CDIC) is a non-profit that provides training in cyber forensics, security, response, and intelligence through its CDIC Academy. CDIC has a team of over 125 members globally and require secure remote access to their internal networks and applications. The members are comprised of cybersecurity and intelligence professionals from entry-level to veteran leaders.

Challenges & requirements

As a cybersecurity nonprofit with a distributed team, CDIC requires the most secure remote access to their company networks and applications that is cost-efficient, specifically to Jira, their SIEM, and their servers.

To accomplish this, CDIC started with ZeroTier as a VPN. However, VPNs have many known vulnerabilities and are not designed to support a large and growing distributed workforce.

CDIC's challenges included:

  • The understanding that VPNs have widely known vulnerabilities, and desired a Zero Trust alternative

  • VPNs do not allow for segmented access

  • Performance speeds were slow, especially for teams in particular geographies

  • VPNs are censored for teams in certain geographies

  • Adding and removing teammates securely was complicated and needed someone with network engineering expertise to configure

  • Upgrading to enterprise-grade Zero Trust solutions is expensive and full of extra, unneeded features

Solution

CDIC partnered with NVIS AI to provide best-in-class alternative to VPNs they need, including:

  • Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): Enabled by NVIS AI's Software Defined Perimeter (SDP), nodes are peer-to-peer and encrypted at Layer 2, eliminating the public attack surface

  • Fast performance: Nodes are connected peer-to-peer in any geography

  • Connect anywhere: As an SDP, NVIS AI is unaffected by VPN blockers

  • Easy management: With AI Provisioning, even entry-level teammates are able to administer the network in minutes without needing much skill or risking misconfiguration

  • Economical pricing: NVIS AI provides no-frills best-in-class secure remote access that can be setup without any changes to the network or workflows

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