The Security Benefits of SD-WAN – Protecting Your Network From Cyber Threats
In today’s digital enterprise, workers across multiple locations must access cloud applications in real-time. These employees can directly connect to cloud services using SD-WAN without routing traffic through the data center.
With this approach, enterprises can also protect themselves from cyber threats. They can secure their networks from malicious attacks and unauthorized users by deploying firewalls, VPNs, and IPSec tunnels.
Enhanced Visibility
When protecting your network from cyber threats, SD-WAN provides several valuable benefits. The first is enhanced visibility. This can help organizations identify and address issues before they impact business operations.
For example, if an application is experiencing latency or packet loss issues, an SD-WAN can dynamically route that traffic over a more reliable network path. This can save money on bandwidth costs while still providing a high-quality user experience.
Similarly, detecting anomalies can help detect potential data breaches or security incidents before they occur. This can allow IT staff to take preventative measures before malicious users or malware can attack the network.
This is essential in today’s increasingly interconnected world. It helps businesses protect their customers and employees and prevent financial losses.
Security features, as SD-WAN explained, include VPN encryption, next-generation firewalls, and intrusion detection and prevention systems. These security solutions can protect your network from cyber-attacks and data theft.
SD-WAN technology uses a virtual overlay that abstracts private and public WAN connections like Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), broadband, fiber or wireless, or Long-Term Evolution (LTE). It centralizes network control and enables agile, real-time application traffic management over these links. It can also leverage cloud services to optimize network performance and security.
Enhanced Security
When protecting a network from cyber threats, SD-WAN is an essential piece of the puzzle. It helps connect branch offices and corporate devices to the Internet, connecting them to remote applications or resources worldwide.
However, the SD-WAN solution must include integrated security capabilities to ensure these connections are secure and do not become an attack vector. This is particularly true for sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or personal health records.
Encryption — the ability to secure data at every step along the network path — is an integral component of an SD-WAN security strategy. It must be complemented by advanced inspection and filtering defenses to detect and block malware, botnets, and other web threats that can infiltrate the network and cause a data breach.
Secure Application Optimization — the ability to optimize high-priority, latency-sensitive applications for better performance — is another essential feature that ensures smooth online experiences across an organization’s network. This is especially beneficial for employees on the go, enabling them to work from home or remotely and still have access to the organization’s applications.
As network and security continue to converge to best support hybrid workforces, the migration to the cloud, and increased security threats, it is essential that enterprises consider the integral role that SD-WAN plays in enterprise network security approaches. This includes using a unified monitoring, management, and policy enforcement approach across all SD-WAN locations.
Enhanced Compliance
Cyber attacks, threats, and vandalism are becoming more prevalent in modern business, and companies must take the necessary measures to protect their network. This requires using cybersecurity tools such as antivirus, anti-malware, and intrusion prevention systems to prevent hackers from accessing sensitive data and applications.
Similarly, SD-WAN offers security benefits by using software intelligence to detect and react to malicious activity at the network’s edge. It also allows IT managers to manage and orchestrate a range of network security technologies, including Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), Secure Web Gateways (SWG), Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB).
An SD-WAN solution directs traffic intelligently down a range of WAN paths based on its application intent. A failover is automatically activated if one way fails to ensure the application remains online and uninterrupted.
In addition to enabling better security, SD-WAN also improves the performance of applications and networks. This is possible because it uses multiple WAN channels simultaneously to send traffic over the fastest route. Dynamic bandwidth allocation gives IT more control over how much network bandwidth is used.
Additionally, advanced SD-WAN solutions can monitor and manage various underlay transport services, such as packet loss, latency, and jitter. This allows them to deliver high application performance levels and quality of experience (QoEx) despite a lack of underlay WAN transport service availability.
Enhanced Availability
Cyber threats are one of the biggest security concerns for modern businesses. With so much data traveling between networks and cloud services, keeping it all secure is essential. SD-WAN helps to protect against this by ensuring that your data is encrypted at each point in the network.
In addition, security technologies like IPS, NGFW, and other network intrusion prevention systems help protect your enterprise against hackers. They also help detect phishing attacks, malware, and other malicious traffic, as well as provide alerts for other threats that may be present on your network.
SD-WAN also uses segmentation to isolate network traffic and prevent unauthorized devices from accessing it. It can also assign network policies prioritizing specific traffic, such as high-priority emails or applications that must travel across a particular link.
Another security feature of SD-WAN is encapsulation, which adds a sequence number to every packet to ensure that it has been sent in the correct order. This helps prevent hackers from retransmitting the same data repeatedly, which can cause your data to become compromised.
In addition to security, SD-WAN helps improve connectivity and performance for all offices, remote locations, and satellite sites. It also allows for a dual-connectivity strategy with public and private network services, which can help to use WAN capacity better, reduce costs and improve resilience.
