Level 3 says it can help enterprises streamline the number of firewalls they are using in their network and cut costs. The company recently added more gateways to its Adaptive Network Security product expanding the reach into areas of Asia Pacific and Africa. The expansion will help enterprises with offices in those regions take advantage of the company’s security protections.

Chris Richter, SPV of global managed security solutions at Level 3, said the new gateways are in Singapore, Hong Kong, Sidney, and South Africa. Customers can connect to those gateways, which then serve as a secure link between their network and the Internet.  Level 3 acts as a next-gen firewall and provides extra protections such as anti-malware sandboxing, data loss protection, content filtering, and application awareness and control.

According to Richter, by connecting to its Adaptive Network Security, customers can forego the need to deploy numerous appliances throughout their network, and they can also use the gateways as an on-ramp for their MPLS networks. “The gateway can serve as an internal connectivity platform,” he said.

Level 3 designed the Adaptive Network Security platform to be compatible with software-defined wide area networks (SD-WAN) as long as companies use IP SEC, which is a standard network security protocol. Level 3 does offer a managed SD-WAN service using other vendor’s products.

The company is also in the process of being acquired by CenturyLink (as part of a $34 billion deal announced last year).  CenturyLink offers SD-WAN services provided by Versa Networks and also announced recently that it was adding Cisco’s Meraki to its SD-WAN portfolio for customers with less-demanding networks.

Richter said the company uses service chaining, and the gateways are based upon a redundant architecture. Companies can select what services they want from a menu of options and then layer on different security controls like filtering and firewalling.

Level 3 is planning to add more gateways in other regions of the globe, such as Latin America. And Richter said it will also be adding more features. “We want to eliminate dependency upon on-prem hardware,” he said. “It’s not a sustainable cost model or performance model.”