BlackRidge Technology Transport Access Control vs InstaSafe Zero Trust Application Access comparison

BlackRidge products include hardware and software gateways and software endpoints that implement BlackRidge Transport Access Control (TAC) with First Packet Authentication™. BlackRidge gateways and endpoints perform identity insertion, identity resolution and policy enforcement on network sessions. Identity insertion is the process that associates a network connection request with a user or device identity and inserts identity tokens into TCP sessions. Identity resolution is the reverse process by which a BlackRidge gateway or endpoint associates and authenticates an identity token with a user or device identity. Policy enforcement implements the provisioned security policy — forward, redirect, or discard — for the connection request to a protected resource.

InstaSafe® Secure Access solution provides an identity based granular access control solution based on the principles of Software Defined Perimeter (SDP). SDP concepts have been derived from the military, especially the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), where every device is pre-attested before it can ‘connect’ to the network followed by verification of the identity of the user using MFA leading to knowing exactly what device was being used and by whom to access the application.

With the device & user’s knowledge, ISA is able to ensure that the device and the user are able to only ‘see’ and ‘access’ the data, that they have ‘prior approval’ to see or access – the ‘need-to-know’ access model.