SD-WAN allows enterprises to segment network systems based on criticality, reducing the impact of a successful attack on any specific domain. Security policies with segmentation also minimize the potential for malware and other threats to spread beyond an impacted site. SD-WAN solutions support flexible WAN connectivity, prioritizing traffic over low-latency, high bandwidth links for mission-critical applications and cheaper local internet for non-critical data. This improves application performance, data reliability and WAN efficiency.
Improved Security
SD-WAN reduces security management headaches by encrypting site-to-site traffic and making it route through a VPN. This way, it’s impossible for hackers to intercept important data. A key aspect of a secure SD-WAN solution is scalability. As you add users and new locations, the software-defined WAN automatically adjusts to accommodate network growth. This helps you avoid costly hardware expenses and enables efficient resource use. Using an SD-WAN with a security solution also improves the security of cloud connections. This is because it creates a private tunnel over the public Internet, ensuring that all applications are securely connected and that no sensitive information is exposed.
If your organization works with sensitive data such as financial account numbers or patient records, a VPN connection is required to protect the connection against eavesdropping and credential theft. With an SD-WAN, your business can securely access data across multiple offices and remote users. To help prevent cybersecurity breaches, your SD-WAN should be integrated with a next-generation firewall (NGFW). This technology will allow you to implement security functions at the edge of your internet connection to combat external threats, such as malware and phishing attacks. It will also be able to detect suspicious content and sandbox it for analysis, giving you better protection against cyber threats that could otherwise lead to data breaches.
Increased Flexibility
A secure network is essential to a business. If your organization isn’t fast, you risk becoming a cyberattack victim, which can cost thousands and negatively impact employee performance. To improve security and protect your data, you need a flexible solution to meet your business goals. SD WAN solutions provide a way to manage and deploy security policies at scale across multiple locations. It allows centralized traffic visibility to identify vulnerabilities, block suspicious activities, and secure connections with strong encryption. The solutions can also monitor active links and detect changes in the environment.
Additionally, they can provide a faster deployment alternative to traditional networking and are more resilient to environmental shifts. To prevent security gaps, look for solutions that include a firewall that offers advanced security capabilities and can be deployed at the edge to deal with external, direct threats. This includes stuff like NGFWs, DDoS protection, and firewall rules. In addition, ensure your solution can perform security inspection at business speeds by integrating with necessary cloud-security functions, such as Zero Trust Network Access and Secure Web Gateway.
A managed SD-WAN solution can reduce costs, increase connectivity between your business locations, and enable a better user experience without compromising security or productivity. It can help you use broadband and public internet services and eliminate expensive MPLS circuits.
Reduced Attack Surface
Many enterprises need help with the number of devices bringing data into their network from remote locations and users. Some try to solve this problem by adding point products that require specific technical skills to configure and manage. However, this only adds to the overall complexity of securing an organization’s networks, which can reduce security effectiveness. With SD-WAN, centralized management and orchestration can automate traffic steering in an application-driven manner based on business intent, improving security and simplifying the WAN architecture. This helps boost usable bandwidth for a resilient network, which is critical as IoT technology floods enterprise networks.
SD-WAN solutions with integrated security technologies enable secure local internet breakouts for branch offices, providing high-performance and reliable connectivity that minimizes risk. This is especially important for cloud applications since remote users are likelier to access them through untrusted internet connections such as cellular or public Wi-Fi. The best SD-WAN solutions integrate multiple security technologies to protect branches and remote users, including NGFW, ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and MDR. These technologies provide visibility, protection, and a unified user experience. This also ensures that data stays securely connected across the branch and WAN, even if one or more of these devices are compromised. This is the key to protecting the privacy of sensitive data and preventing costly breaches.
Reduced Costs
In addition to addressing security concerns, SD-WAN business solutions reduce costs by offering flexibility and efficiency. With a single platform, networking and security functions can be converged to support a unified zero-trust policy for remote users and branch offices. This eliminates the need for separate appliances and streamlines management to lower costs and complexity. SD-WAN also offers more flexible routing options. Instead of a point-to-point configuration that requires all internet traffic to be backhauled from branch offices to headquarters, SD-WAN enables businesses to use multiple transport services such as MPLS, direct internet, or LTE to connect to the enterprise network. This allows enterprises to route higher-priority applications over more expensive MPLS links while directing web and other low-priority traffic over cheaper broadband internet connections. Another cost-saving feature is self-healing capabilities that automatically bridge gaps in Internet reliability and performance to ensure exceptional application performance. This means that a sudden loss of connectivity won’t result in a lag in protection as security scrambles to reconfigure itself or in lost productivity as users cannot access applications.