Enterprise data protection is a game with a moving target, nay, targets. Even the model of protecting “the data center and the edge” is looking quaint these days. Which data center? Which edge? As data stores continue growing, splitting and migrating to numerous locations, how is a company supposed to protect it all without an expensive and impractical checkerboard of firewalls?

Kevin Barker, founder of Independent Technology Group, says that times have changed for enterprises and the vendors protecting their valuable data. In bygone years “we said our job was to protect you from the edge to the end point. And the reality is there is no longer an edge,” he told John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team during the Juniper NXTWORK 2016 event.

“The network now spans from your phone to your house to your desktop to your laptop to the data center and everything in between,” Barker said.

Gentrifying virtual sprawl

Barker said he works with customers on a brand agnostic basis, but he does have an ambassador relationship with Juniper and says they are attacking this sprawl more efficiently than many competitors.

“We’re moving to a virtualized environment, so Software as a Service is becoming more and more important — delivering network function virtualization. And Juniper is showing a leadership role, not only in virtualizing their software,” he said, “but also with tools like Juniper Contrail that provide the underpinnings for people to build these overlay networks.”

Meta version

Martin Brown, who works with a tier one service provider, also took part in the interview. He is no stranger to the new security risks. One thing he appreciates about Juniper is its strict certification standards for partners, which add a meta-layer of security in his view.

“If you’re implementing a change, you want to make sure that you’re doing it correctly — you’ve not suddenly left a gaping hole in your network that an attacker can come in and start taking control,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Juniper NXTWORK 2016 event.

Photo by SiliconANGLE