How SD-WAN can improve your security strategy

Data breaches and security threats are a top concern among IT leaders, yet it’s harder than ever to hire skilled security professionals. That has organizations looking for ways to more easily improve their security strategy. One option is to implement a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN).

I recently talked with Hamza Seqqat, director of solutions architecture at Apcela, to get his take on how SD-WAN affects security strategy. Seqqat helps enterprise organizations redefine their wide-area networks to accommodate the growing use of cloud-based applications and services. In our discussion, he outlined four areas where SD-WAN offers new security benefits.

Eliminate VPN concerns

One of the first areas in which SD-WAN impacts security is when a company uses the internet as a method of transport.

“Before SD-WAN came along and companies were using internet as a backup or even a primary transport method, they would build a VPN or a DMVPN to ensure secure transport of their traffic,” Seqqat said. “This introduces a couple of issues, the first of which is this proliferation of VPNs that has to be managed. The company must have firewalls sitting at their data center, along with a VPN device or firewall sitting in the remote locations to be able to do these VPNs. Every site is dependent on the effort to be up on the network.”

Failover is an issue with this VPN approach, he said. Companies can’t seamlessly failover from a fiber-based type of transport without having to strike some keys in between. It’s hard and expensive to do seamless failover.

Deploying SD-WAN eliminates these VPN concerns.