The advantages of SD-WAN are clear. They improve agility, resilience, and bandwidth efficiency. But before we get into the details of SD-WAN systems, let us briefly discuss why they are necessary. In addition to enabling better security, SD-WAN helps improve agility, resilience, and bandwidth efficiency. And, of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN improves agility, resilience, and bandwidth efficiency.
For IT departments, cloud-delivered SD-WAN (SD-WAN) offers significant benefits, including path control, automatic configuration, and application optimization. These benefits can help organizations reduce infrastructure investment, improve security, and maximize user experience. Further, cloud-delivered SD-WAN can be deployed in just a few clicks, reducing the time and effort required. With zero-touch deployment, IT teams can reduce deployment time and the overall cost of ownership.
Despite its promise, traditional WAN is often prone to complexity, requiring IT teams to invest in expensive hardware and inflexible software. Fortunately, the capabilities of SD-WAN extend well beyond bandwidth and security. Organizations can reduce costs by 90 percent and improve agility, resilience, and bandwidth efficiency without tearing down existing networks. While a complex hardware infrastructure limits traditional WANs, Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN is a highly flexible solution that works with existing networks, regardless of age, type, or size.
Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN allows you to delegate network management to the cloud, which frees up in-house IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives. Cloud-delivered SD-WAN also will enable you to layer mission-critical applications over the network for greater visibility, performance, and analysis. As a result, SD-WAN improves agility, resilience, and bandwidth efficiency while facilitating business objectives.
Segmentation is an essential component of SD-WAN security.
SD-WAN provides the flexibility to segment networks and implements application-aware routing. Network segmentation helps to limit the attack surface of sensitive data and systems and allows organizations to create risk domains. Network segmentation also reduces the impact of successful security incursions by preventing them from propagating beyond the boundaries of the network segments. However, it is essential to remember that network segmentation is not a solution in and of itself.
Network engineers must consider the resources within each segment when designing security policies. They then need to configure network devices based on the policies they create. Implementing this process is time-consuming and error-prone and can be impossible in some complex networks. The problem with network segmentation is that it assumes that all devices on the web are trustworthy, which limits the visibility of security policies and makes it difficult to implement consistent security policies.
With the increase in enterprise network connections, the threat surface is increasing. By using network segmentation, networks can be divided into subnetworks to limit access to sensitive corporate data. Segmentation is essential for regulatory compliance and helps contain attacks within the most defined area. However, extending network segmentation across the WAN has traditionally been a challenge. In contrast, SD-WAN includes innate segmentation capabilities and can enforce security policies across multiple sites.
Benefits of SD-WAN systems
The implementation of SD-WAN is a lot simpler than traditional routers and gateways. Once a network engineer has designed a node on the central management console, he can ship the appliance to a branch office. That person can plug it in and connect to the central SD-WAN controller. Once connected, zero-touch provisioning is enabled, making adding new equipment easy without needing to call in an expert.
The main benefits of SD-WAN include the ability to route traffic according to source and destination and application optimization. In addition, SD-WAN gateways can monitor the WAN link health and rapidly reroute traffic if a link fails or becomes congested. These features increase application availability and improve performance. And the best part is that these features can be used selectively, depending on the needs of the business. So it’s a win-win situation for businesses of all sizes.
One of the most significant benefits of SD-WAN is that they allow network administrators to program parameters for WAN performance. As a result, SD-WAN software delivers flexible steering and intelligent path control. It’s possible to configure network parameters for each service in real-time, and SD-WAN software will automatically route traffic based on those requirements. This means that administrators won’t spend hours or days monitoring and troubleshooting the network.
