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April 24, 2024

Seamless Connectivity: Navigating the World of Hybrid Work

Business is back as usual post-pandemic, yet the remote workplace model is still in practice. With cloud migration and SaaS making deploying and migrating software in a hybrid workplace a breeze, enterprises prefer a hybrid work culture. Despite businesses embracing a hybrid workplace model, there are challenges when it comes to network connectivity, user experience, and security. Professional tools like SD-WAN are helping a great deal in combating this challenge. SD-WAN is not a new technology, it has been in existence for a long and organisations with a hybrid workforce can benefit from components like security, compliance, and cost-effectiveness.

SD-WAN and compliance
Industry-specific compliances must be noted when adopting technology. For instancethe , healthcare businesses need HIPAA, financial companies need FINRA licenses, the Department of Defense and related suppliers require NIST 800-171, etc. IT compliances are crucial while implementing and configuring technology. Encrypted tunnels are created between SD-WAN sites to protect from malicious attacks. If your industry does not mandate compliance requirements, then SD-WAN helps in meeting SOC 2 compliance, a voluntary compliance standard for service organisations.

SD-WAN and security
Securing your IT environment is the key to seamless growth. The rise in cybercrime and the cost to combat it is predicted to touch $10.5 trillion/year by 2025. Enterprises with remote and hybrid workforces are the most affected due to their vulnerability to an expansive attack surface. Given below are some of the strategies used by attackers to penetrate at the network level:

  • Unauthorised access: Weak passwords, compromised accounts, and lacking protection against social engineering can make your account vulnerable to attacks.
  • Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks: Here, botnets are used to direct fake traffic in huge volumes that can down your database. SYN/ACC packets can overwhelm your servers. A DDoS attack can lead to repeated SDL queries being run.
  • Man-in-the-middle attack: In this attack, malicious actors can intercept traffic between the network and an external site or even within the network. The hacker can steal your credentials while the data is in transit.
  • Privilege escalation: Here, the hackers can expand their attack as soon as they gain access to the network. The hacker can gain additional access to the same system or an additional system with a higher level of privileges.

SD-WAN plays a pivotal role in containing these attacks by giving you visibility into data encryption and network traffic. You can protect your network from malicious attacks and make it more resilient when you combine security inspection at the network edge. Year after year, we see an increase in cyberattacks and they are not going away anymore. Remote and hybrid workplaces are vulnerable to threats and a long-term strategy can help address security issues in the network. It is here that SD-WAN can pitch in with its flexible and cost-effective solutions.

SD-WAN and affordability
Strengthening your security at vulnerable points can protect you from breaches. You can do this without having to spend big money. The SD-WAN centralised policy management can help resolve issues faster and cost-effectively. SD-WAN improves bandwidth restrictions, latency, and bottlenecks, giving your business faster and secure expansion and increased productivity.

How to integrate security into SD-WAN?
The biggest hindrance to scaling SD-WAN is the integration of network and security features. Here are a few features to consider while transiting from WAN to SD-WAN:

  1. Coherent Protection: At any point in time, protection should not be compromised. Security features have to be built in and features like secure sockets layer (SSL) and transport layer security (TLS) encrypted traffic monitoring. SD-WAN solutions must ensure that no malware or other threats pass through the defence.
  2. Integrated security: Trusting standalone security solutions may be tempting, but they are not optimised for diverse environments, especially in the case of a hybrid workforce. The ideal solution is to integrate security into each SD-WAN device. It helps in seamless connectivity, networking, and security, even in a dynamic environment.
  3. Broad analytics: A real-time monitoring of networks and applications using a secure SD-WAN solution is a must to improve an organisation’s performance. SD-WAN technologies provide a single management console for security and networking. SD-WAN helps adjust cybersecurity systems to enrich the end-user experience and employee performance.

SD-WAN is critical for hybrid workplaces to solve the network puzzle and improve productivity and agility. Managed SD-WAN is suitable for remote and hybrid workforces to interconnect cloud workloads securely. It offers unparalleled scalability and 24/7 proactive monitoring and analytics. For more information, call us for a demo!