In today’s evolving digital landscape, businesses are finding a reliable ally in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to safeguard their networks and endpoints. Imagine it as a musical conductor, skillfully bringing together different players in a complex orchestra of networking and security.
Just as you rely on business-critical applications every day in the workplace, those same applications rely on a network that is available, scalable, and secure. But if an enterprise’s network architecture falls on the traditional side, this can complicate matters with the utilization of middleboxes like firewalls, load balancers, and tunnels for packet forwarding. This complexity comes with a high cost, hindering the deployment of new applications and creating challenges for intensive workloads like supporting video or connecting a widespread mobile workforce.
The era of digital transformation has completely changed the way we work, with remote work and cloud-based applications becoming the new normal. No longer are users and applications confined to physical data centers in office spaces. This traditional setup has given way to a new landscape of hybrid workforces, home offices, and geographically-dispersed headquarters. While these changes have improved digital flexibility, they have also brought new and obvious challenges to network security.
Our review of 2021 IT trends reported that Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) was not only a common feature for enterprise IT teams, but that it will be sticking around for the near future, too. Much of this is attributed to shifting remote work architectures, which have made traditional perimeter security architectures essentially outdated. As organizations move away from a full-on remote workforce and into more of a hybrid model, ZTNA features remain just as important.
As enterprises look into the future of a post-pandemic environment, many CIOs recognize the need for a better strategy that supports a remote and hybrid workforce. While many switched to a work-from-home model as a response to the pandemic, more than 50% of employees want to continue working from home permanently.
As another year has concluded, we have reached that time to review the IT trends of 2021. Most IT professionals could use an extra minute to catch their breath as last year continued to push many IT departments due to the pandemic's outbreak in 2020. To gain some perspective on our year-long journey, we sat down with two senior executives at WEI, David Fafel, and Greg Labrie, to get their perspectives on the relevant IT trends that came about in 2021. We also pulled data from a commissioned study we did in partnership with IDG concerning the state of digital transformation in 2021. The study involved an audience of IT decision makers (ITDMs) across multiple industries that provided insightful and surprising information concerning their IT initiatives in 2021.
In 2020, new IT Technologies emerged to drive change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As many enterprises shifted to a remote workforce, they were compelled to adapt to a new IT environment while still ensuring the security of their organization. As a result, three security technologies - SASE, ZTNA, and XDR - rose to the top in this new era of off-campus work.
As global industry evolves, digital innovation that features a hybrid, “from anywhere” business environment has become critical to modern workforces. New formats, like zero-trust access (ZTA), allow employees and external partners to utilize digital resources, no matter when or where they choose to work.
Over the last year, the need to support employees from alternative working locations has risen dramatically. However, even as employees return to the office, when given the choice, many are choosing to continue working from home. For IT, this means finding a longer-term solution that can provide the same network security and user experience at these alternative work locations that employees would have in the office.
