How managed SD-WAN provides intrinsic network security

SD-WAN can not only provide an inherently secure, encrypted enterprise network but enables significant cyber security upgrades without straining in-house resources. Adopting a network that is encrypted at its core makes a huge difference to globally distributed businesses. This article will dive deep into the security value that SD-WAN can bring to globally distributed, cloud-centric enterprises.

Traditionally, all of an enterprise’s traffic could be routed through data centres with robust firewalls and security protocols to protect everything on the local area network (LAN). But the demands of today’s enterprises - with huge amounts of data being generated by endpoints, edge devices and remote workers all over the world - put a much higher security burden on these data centres which makes them an easy target for cyber attacks.³

In today’s cloud-centric landscape, there are myriad remote endpoints and cloud-based connections that raise the attack surface of your enterprise by a huge degree.⁴ As a result, endpoint security should only ever be a last line of defence as it cannot intercept malicious traffic before it breaches your network, and bolt-on network security is simply not enough to protect against constantly evolving cyber security threats.⁵ Even when adopting a multi-vendor approach to build a secure boundary around your network, if the network itself is not secured then malicious actors can still find their way in.

Using a single network-based solution improves the efficiency of your network communications and incurs significantly less costs than a multi-vendor approach. Combining different security solutions to effectively ‘surround’ your network might seem like a robust security strategy. But in a constantly evolving cyber security landscape, only a fully integrated network security solution built into the foundation of your network can protect your data right from the source.

This is where an SD-WAN can provide truly reliable security for the cloud-based digital enterprise without compromising the efficiency of your network. Whereas additional network security can only form a protective barrier around your enterprise network, the entire architecture of an SD-WAN is built using IPSec-encrypted ‘tunnels’ to protect your data as soon as a device is plugged into the network.

Because traffic is encrypted by the SD-WAN controller as soon as it is created, rather than being sent between individual encrypted networks, businesses can monitor endpoint traffic centrally as part of a single service. Site-to-site traffic is inherently encrypted within an SD-WAN, so only traffic moving outside of the corporate network needs to be monitored by these additional security functions.

And because SD-WANs are cloud-based, they can easily be upgraded and combined with network-centric Security Service Edge (SSE) services such as zero-trust network access and secure cloud gateways. Gartner predicts that by 2024, 80% of SD-WAN deployments will incorporate security service edge (SSE) requirements, up from less than 25% in 2022.⁶ This combination of SD-WAN and SSE creates the next generation of secure networking (SASE, Secure Access Service Edge), which can only be supported by the inherent security of SD-WAN itself.

This inherently secure nature of SD-WAN removes a huge resource burden from internal IT teams, who no longer have to implement, manage, and upgrade security at every site. With a majority (62%) of organisations reporting that they are understaffed and underequipped to tackle emerging threats, adding to the security burden of overstretched IT teams is a recipe for disaster.

When using a multi-vendor approach consisting of multiple VPNs and endpoint security solutions, IT teams must constantly monitor and troubleshoot issues in each solution to keep the network secure. In contrast, SD-WAN offers centralised management and network visibility, a simplified security architecture to eliminate application sprawl, and ensures that an organisation’s security posture is constantly updated to address emerging threats.

Adopting an SD-WAN solution from a managed service provider (MSP) further removes the security burden from an enterprise. Securing your network from the ground up with a managed SD-WAN solution ensures that all network traffic is monitored proactively and continuously, without enterprises having to lift a finger to protect their network.

As connected enterprises become more cloud-centric and cyber security threats become ever more sophisticated, the decentralised, site-to-site, and multicloud security that SD-WAN offers as part of its foundation is quickly becoming a necessity.

When adopting any advanced technology, an experienced managed service provider can mean the difference between a perfectly optimised solution and an unmanageable burden for in-house teams. SD-WAN is no different, and with the safety of your enterprise at stake, putting your trust in the hands of a dedicated team of cloud experts can future-proof your network security against and protect against even the most insidious network-based threats.

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