What is an IT Infrastructure Security & Management Solution?

The components of your organization’s IT infrastructure, including software, facilities and other network pieces, are more easily managed and secured with Perimeter 81.

IT Infrastructure Definition

In order to drive business functions and flows that contribute to the bottom line, IT – or information technology – is required in all departments. The IT team exists to support all this technology, which forms the underlying infrastructure spread across the organization: Hardware (PCs and servers, routers, firewalls etc.), software (SaaS platforms, locally installed licensed versions), data facilities and more.

IT infrastructure is how the IT team develops, tests, deploys, manages, and supports the services they bring to the organization itself. Critically, the resources that IT chooses for employees to use and for business flows to run on can be hosted locally, and supported locally by on-premises employees, or hosted in the cloud and supported by a third-party provider. Most organizations use a hybrid cloud approach whereby IT infrastructure spans both local solutions and on-demand, cloud-based ones.

Combined, this infrastructure exists in order for the enterprise to operate smoothly. That doesn’t always mean profit-seeking activities but also ideas that are integral to business success, such as security, data sharing, remote collaboration and communication, file storage, and more. It’s important to have an intelligent, forward-thinking strategy when planning IT infrastructure, and the consolidation of complementary, scalable tools is central to this idea.

How Does IT Infrastructure Work?

The OSI model of networks, or the Open Systems Interconnection model, is closely related to IT infrastructure. In fact, the first three layers of the OSI model are directly involved with infrastructural ideas – the Physical, Data Link, and Network layers. Physical hardware such as servers, office PCs, and even some (but not all) employee endpoint devices are part of IT infrastructure, and the two layers on top of it (Data and Network) are composed of the communication protocols that determine how traffic passes between hardware devices on Layer 1.

Setting all this up is IT’s job, but in most companies infrastructure is already built – based on its origins and how business processes evolved. If setting up IT infrastructure from scratch, however, it’s crucial to understand what your organization is trying to accomplish. Individual pieces of your IT infrastructure must contribute directly to organizational results. For example, a company that sells products will usually have a website, requiring a hosting server, and multiple supporting applications for customer relationship management, payments, support and more.

Purchasing and connecting the resources that make up your IT infrastructure is the easy part – it’s a matter of configuring tools to work together, granting access, and creating smart internal usage policies – but managing them in a scalable and secure manner is more difficult. Infrastructure isn’t unchanging. As the organisation expands and adds employees and new channels of growth, existing components must be able to flex outward (and sometimes inward) and also be resistant to infiltration from bad actors outside and inside the organization.

Benefits of IT Infrastructure Management

Reduce IT Work: IT teams spend a lot of time on the management and security of their infrastructure components. With a unified third-party IT infrastructure service, all applications and their settings are connected and stored in one place on the cloud, making it simple to onboard and configure a new user. Adding new resources to the network is also simpler, and accomplished with a single click.
Business Longevity & Continuity: Reliable, easily-managed IT infrastructure is one of the most vital pillars of business success. When infrastructure is stored in the cloud, resources are more available across various devices and even when the physical office isn’t accessible, ensuring that the business stays up and running should an unforeseen disaster occur.
Reduce IT Costs: For IT, time is money, and so is hardware. IT infrastructure that’s managed by a provider means IT teams don’t have to spend on hardware appliances like firewalls. IT Infrastructure management is a remote-friendly solution that doesn’t require any extra hardware to set up or run effectively either, freeing up valuable IT manpower to work on more productive endeavors.
Boost Employee Productivity: IT employees who have access to well-run, seamlessly integrated IT infrastructure are more productive, as they don’t need to deal with connection latency, gaps between resources that require extensive manual configuration or workarounds, or tiresome security precautions. The idea that employees can be efficient without the need to consider how they use their department’s tools is how it should be.
Enable Remote Access: When the right IT infrastructure security solution is a part of your company, accessing resources remotely is easy. A good provider of managed IT infrastructure makes remote access a default concern, so that tools are both centrally managed but also accessible in a widespread, decentralized manner. Remote access products like RDP and Cloud VPN are integral to IT infrastructure governance but should be accompanied by other solutions to ensure that access is secure in remote conditions.
Secure Your Data and Traffic: When consuming an IT infrastructure management service, threading components together with networking tools (for access, segmentation and more) is just one half of the equation. Security of these components, ideally also centralized and consumed with the single unified provider, is important as well, and ensures that traffic and data bouncing between your resources is protected from prying eyes.

Why Do Companies Need IT Infrastructure Management?

Organizations need to have a robust IT infrastructure framework so that their business flows – the processes that employees in all departments engage in to bring profits to the company – are as efficient as possible. On the other hand, maintaining and improving all the hardware and software that makes this possible is difficult – that’s a reason why we have IT teams – so companies often choose to organize and consolidate the orchestration of their tall IT stacks for the benefit of their IT employees.

Not only is setting up and connecting the various components of your IT infrastructure time intensive, it’s also important to do deliberately, so as to avoid issues with patching and configuration. Making mistakes during this process of connecting and configuring IT components isn’t just hard and time consuming, it’s also fraught with risks that stem from doing it incorrectly. Some of the most common exploits and attacks come from un-patched software or misaligned configurations, so going with a managed IT infrastructure service is recommended.

IT Infrastructure FAQs

How do I build an IT infrastructure?
To build a strong IT infrastructure, start with the basics, which depend on what your organization is trying to achieve. For example, if you’re a service provider you’ll need communications hardware for support staff. If you’re a retailer, then payment and a sales website and database. Start with hardware and work into software, and be sure to build things scalably and with the future in mind.

How do I secure an IT infrastructure?
Securing an IT infrastructure is important, and it begins with understanding where data is potentially exposed. Wherever sensitive data appears or is stored – email, local and cloud applications, proprietary servers, and the internet – it should also be protected. Find a series of (or better yet, a single unified) solutions that integrate with these resources and install a multi-layered defense on top of them, including 2FA, traffic encryption, Wi-Fi security, DNS filtering, and other crucial tools for blocking data thieves.

What are some IT infrastructure best practices?
The best tip for building IT infrastructure is to keep it simple. Overly complicated IT infrastructure management solutions are difficult to operate, and increase risks. Second to this advice is to build it scalably – use tools that allow you to expand or shrink your network’s bandwidth or users easily. Finally, there is good reason to build your IT infrastructure intuitively – this means easily fixed. Know that issues will pop up, and so it’s smart to ensure they’re easy to retrace and fix when this occurs.

IT infrastructure vs architecture?
IT infrastructure and IT architecture are essentially the same thing: a collection of hardware and software that allows digital business processes to happen.

How do I manage IT infrastructure?
IT infrastructure isn’t “set and forget”. It must be managed over time, and this means ensuring that the processes that the infrastructure supports are working smoothly as the organization grows and transforms. Patching and maintenance are always necessary in IT infrastructure management, as are the occasional audits to test how airtight data protections are across the system. Be sure to get visibility of data running through the infrastructure as well, so that it’s possible to always be aware of who and how access occurs.

IT infrastructure vs application development?
Application development and IT infrastructure are not the same thing, but it is possible to relate them by developing applications that are used in IT infrastructure. Developers could need a custom solution that is only developed in-house, but most infrastructure is composed of multiple existing or third-party solutions stitched together by IT.

What are the seven typical domains of IT infrastructure?
The seven domains of IT infrastructure are User Domain, Workstation Domain, LAN Domain, LAN-to-WAN Domain, Remote Access Domain, WAN Domain, and System or Application Domain. It’s recommended to get an IT infrastructure monitoring solution to keep track of all layers.

What are some different types of IT infrastructure?
Different components of IT infrastructure include hardware (PCs, servers, LAN routers, modems etc.), software (locally licensed, consumed as a Service or SaaS), networking components, operating systems, data storage, and more.

Why is IT infrastructure necessary for an organization?
There’s no way a modern business can get anything done without IT infrastructure. These are the physical and digital structures that allow employees to input information and engage in business flows using this information – customer relationships, sales, finance, marketing – all departments use countless tools that are each an individual part of a company’s IT infrastructure.

Secure and Unify Your IT Infrastructure

Perimeter 81’s cloud-friendly IT infrastructure solution is encapsulated in one Network as a Service product: A unified networking and security powerhouse enabling IT to quickly set up, segment, and secure any modern network for remote employees.

Multi-layered Security

Access IT infrastructure and resources with built-in VPN encryption from IPSec, SSL, and WireGuard. Add DNS filtering, multi-factor authentication, and automatic Wi-Fi security on top for a network with countless layers of defense to make your attack surface nearly nonexistent.

Suited to Remote

Employees who choose to work from home are able to securely and quickly access the pieces of IT infrastructure they need: local and cloud applications. They can browse the web safely from any device, share data, and talk with their team while expecting on-premises levels of security.

Custom Access

All components of your IT infrastructure integrate seamlessly together with our NaaS. With the power of SDP, allow employees to access only the network resources required for their individual roles and devices, reducing the impact of their security practices – or lack thereof.

What Companies Achieve with Our IT Infrastructure Solution

Better visibility over traffic on the network
Integration with the cloud and local resources remote employees need
Secure, comprehensive, and low-latency remote network access
Network setup and user onboarding within just 15 minutes
Scale and secure resources as your company grows, with little effort

Capabilities of IT Infrastructure as a Service

Unified Management A single cloud-based platform to connect and secure all local and cloud IT infrastructure on your network. Includes access management, monitoring, security and more.

Low Latency Access Design your network for global users and put resources close to them. Our data backbone is made up of 40+ data centers providing access close to workers, for low latency.

Multi-layered Security
Enable 2FA, single sign-on, and automatic Wi-Fi protection across mobile devices using iOS and Android, PC and Mac desktops and the web when connected.

Zero Trust Access
Reduce the attack surface and make your network a miniscule target, by implementing least-privilege access policies based on role, devices, location and other qualifiers.

Benefits of NaaS and IT Infrastructure Management

Security on All Devices: BYOD policies multiply the number and variety of devices connecting to your IT infrastructure. Ensure only authorized devices connect to your resources with NaaS endpoint security.
Cloud Agnostic Integration: The ease with which our solution integrates into your infrastructure, whether local or cloud-based, enables organizations to protect all their resources in unified fashion.
Superior Quality Assurance: Connecting to your infrastructure through a diverse global server array helps the QA and marketing teams determine how best to target different markets, and how successful current efforts are.
Safe Remote Access: Automatic Wi-Fi security lets remote workers connect to sensitive resources from the public internet without fear of exposure, while encrypted tunnels shield data sharing from prying eyes.
Precise User Segmentation: Beyond the functions of traditional security tools, granular policy-based permissioning helps organizations exercise more control over those entering their virtual infrastructure.
IP Whitelisting: Explicitly define the IP addresses that are allowed to access the network, granting IT teams a stronger grip on security and also the ability to assign static IPs to automatically trusted sources of traffic.

The Perimeter 81 NaaS / IT Infrastructure Solution Includes:

One-click network deployment
User-friendly virtual desktop for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS
Manage cloud resources in a unified platform
24/7 knowledgeable customer support
Unlimited bandwidth and data availability
IT infrastructure monitoring software capabilities
DNS Filtering
Multiple global private and public VPN gateways