One of the natural traits of people is to long for the “good old days.” It is that magical era we tend to memorialize as a time when things were simpler and uncomplicated. That is certainly true of network security. Remember when all you had to do was simply protect your network perimeter? Can you even define what your network perimeter is anymore? It’s not so easy to answer that question today.
The transition by enterprises to cloud-based services is changing, at a fundamental level, the way branch wide area networks (WAN) are being architected. As end-users, IoT and BYOD devices are accessing internet-based applications, companies are seeking better ways to improve end-user experience and IT operations.
Digital transformation is becoming an increasingly popular course of action for enterprises trying to keep pace with emerging market trends, fluctuating customer demands, and increased competition. But traditional network architectures weren’t built to handle the types of workloads, and complexities, that arise as a result. Even worse, in an attempt to take on the work these architectures – post-digital transformation – can actually compromise business-critical services and network performance.
Keeping up with IT innovation is a never-ending race, with the finish line constantly being pushed further and further ahead. The majority of recent exciting technologies have centered on transforming the data center into a flexible environment to provide limitless agility to the enterprise. While many focus on a data center-centric approach to digital transformation, optimizing the wide area network (WAN) may be the better method.
As enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure to meet evolving business demands the conversation of security is always top of mind. More and more companies are now managing a distributed enterprise, with remote offices and branches that are forcing them to move away from a highly centralized IT model to one that extends to the edge. How will your security strategy have to evolve to meet these new security demands as you’re now securing more than just the perimeter? As one of the emerging leaders in SD-WAN technology, we looked at some tips from Fortinet on this topic. Check out these key requirements for distributed enterprise firewall security.
SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) is about recognizing the importance of the entire forest that is your network. It is about ensuring that all of your sites enjoy the same level of performance, automation, load optimization, and security that your central operations office does. This is the pretext for SD-WAN. SD-WAN is about applying software defined technology to your WAN connections regardless of distance and complexity. The goal is to optimize the experience of all of your users, regardless of enterprise location. This blog outlines four of the leading SD-WAN solutions in the market today.
With the rise of digital transformation in today’s modern workplace, traditional Wide Area Network solutions are unable to keep up with enterprise demands. A growing number of organizations are moving their data and applications to a cloud environment, which means they are increasing their bandwidth use - resulting in network congestion and rising costs, as well as growing security concerns. It is for these reasons SD-WAN (software defined wide area network) is a compelling and attainable alternative; however, most SD-WAN solutions are not as secure as enterprises need them to be, with add-on security offerings that pose a risk by creating a fragmented solution.
