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MSSPs adopting SD-WAN security approaches
MSSPs adopting SD-WAN security approaches

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SD-WAN Market:

SD-WAN has become one of the most extensively adopted technologies of the last few decades. The adoption of SD-WAN increased from 35% to 54% between 2017 and 2019, according to IDG Research Services' 2020 report. According to a recent survey from IDG, 95% of respondents plan to implement SD-WAN in the next two years.

As a result of ongoing efforts to drive digital innovation, organizations continue to support a greater number of remote workers, and not just because of COVID, which acted as a catalyst, but because they plan to continue supporting remote workers and expanding branch offices for many years to come.

Differentiate SD-WAN offerings with holistic services for MSPs and SPs

This trend comes with two challenges.

SD-WAN can be beneficial to organizations in several ways. Many organizations do not have the resources available to deploy, manage, and improve their quality of service with SD-WAN.

Secondly, there is a lot of competition among vendors, which makes choosing the best solution difficult.

SD-WAN with a security-driven networking approach

It can be especially challenging to integrate security into SD-WAN. Only a few SD-WAN vendors offer enterprise-grade security as part of their solution. However, most offer extremely basic (and largely unvalidated) security or worse, let the consumer handle it. Only a minority offer a security solution that works seamlessly with SD-WAN connectivity to ensure that dynamic environments don't leave security tools struggling to keep up - creating security gaps that can be taken advantage of.

The issue is growing more urgent as security threats like ransomware continue to escalate, just as traditional network perimeters-and the full stack of security they provide-begin to disappear. Consequently, organizations that are looking to improve their cybersecurity posture while also adopting SD-WAN are turning to MSSPs to fill in the gaps. The MSSP, however, must offer the best services, as well as protect their customers, to remain competitive and meet customer expectations. To do this, they must find SD-WAN service providers who will enable them to provide robust management.

To create a holistic services package, MSSPs need to find vendors who can offer SD-WAN solutions designed not only to enable and secure their clients today but also into the future. MSSPs that want to deliver a unique offering should offer highly margined solutions that can rapidly scale and serve a large customer base, maximizing return on investment. Providing advanced protection as part of that solution is highly beneficial, but they need a partner who can help them with more than just connectivity and security. Thus, they need a partner with a business model that allows them to provide advanced services while also improving their business agility.

Factors to consider when selecting an SD-WAN vendor

The following factors should be carefully considered by MSSPs when choosing an SD-WAN solution for their customers:

Performance is essential

Users expect the best user experience from today's remote workforce, so they require hardware and software designed to ensure consistency and efficiency. In the end, this requires an SD-WAN solution that is responsive to latency issues and allows for granular application access from branch offices and home networks, including advanced cloud on-ramps and application steering to optimize application performance and user experience. An ideal SD-WAN solution takes an application-aware approach to manage and monitor traffic to ensure the best user experience, regardless of whether it is hosted on-premise or in the cloud.

Convergence of speed and security

The battle is not won by performance alone. To ensure consistent protection even when connections are constantly optimized, security and networking must function as an integrated solution. However, that security is not sufficient by itself. As well as working seamlessly with other protections in the distributed network, it must ensure that policies and enforcement are applied to data, applications, and transactions continuously.

Cloud-based applications, for example, store, transmit, and process sensitive information, making them prime targets for threat actors. For malware prevention, the security deployed in the cloud to protect applications and cloud infrastructures must share and correlate threat information with the security embedded in SD-WAN. It helps to avoid bottlenecks of security that interfere with the performance by seamlessly handing over security policies and protocols across different network environments.

As MSSPs compete in the market, they must integrate security directly into their networking solutions to guarantee seamless visibility, control, and responsiveness along the entire data path. Known as security-driven networking, this approach merges networking and security functions into a single solution. This enables MSSPs to converge their customers' networking and security needs rather than treating them separately to ensure a single strategy for maintaining performance and security across distributed and highly dynamic environments.

Consistent security across WAN, Cloud, and Thin Edges is a competitive differentiator

MSSPs can ensure consistent security across any SD-WAN deployment, including WANs and thin edges to the cloud, enabling their clients' network flexibility to be extended and expanded.   

More use cases can be addressed and the customer environment can easily be scaled and adapted. The integration of security into their networking strategy allows their clients to maintain a consistent security posture across all edges, enabling them to confidently build the solutions they need without compromising on performance, flexibility, or security.

 


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