FINAL WORD
Cybersecurity threats emerge from various sources including insecure network connections , and a lack of compliance measures .
As governments begin lifting restrictions , the COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on organisations . Many organisations have run out of business , some have survived , while others have thrived . This last category was perhaps the best prepared because they had already digitised a large part of their operations , if not their key business functions . As organisations emerge from the crisis , they now must reinvent themselves , be more resilient and increase their ability to cope with business change . In this article , we ’ ll take a closer look at the key trends in SD-WAN that organisations need to follow to rebound from the crisis and get ready for the post-covid era .
1 . Digitisation and cloud migration are now a given
The crisis has accelerated Digital Transformation and the move of applications to the cloud . As a result , the role of the data centre is shrinking , and it has become less relevant to backhaul the traffic to the data centre . Organisations now need flexible Wide Area Networking connections that allow them to securely steer the cloudhosted application traffic directly to the cloud . Continuing to backhaul cloud traffic using costly , rigid MPLS lines prevents them from optimising and modernising their network based on business needs .
An SD-WAN allows IT departments to modernise the network to embrace Digital Transformation and increase the alignment of IT systems with business objectives .
SD-WAN connections can indeed leverage cheaper and flexible Internet and 5G / LTE connections and deliver end-user quality of experience at the same level – and even better – than the previous WAN model based on backhaul . Advanced SD- WANs intelligently steer the traffic to the Internet and also use SaaS optimisation techniques , leveraging Machine Learning to automatically select the best path to reach applications . Organisations can also seek greater flexibility by implementing a network-As-a-Service model with SD-WAN as a foundational building block .
2 . The move to hybrid or multicloud is accelerating
The migration to hybrid cloud ( a composition of a public cloud and a private environment ) and multi-cloud is not new but it continues to accelerate . This means there is an increasing need to simplify the process of orchestrating network traffic not only from the data centre to the cloud , but also from one cloud provider to another . Additionally , organisations are developing cloud-native applications based on microservices , APIs and a multi-cloud approach . These applications use a scalable architecture that helps support a greater business adaptability .
With this shift , organisations need enhanced connectivity to cloud providers to run applications hosted in multiple clouds .
Advanced SD-WAN solutions can be seamlessly deployed to cloud service providers providing secure end-to-end connectivity to the cloud . With these solutions , organisations can easily move workloads from one cloud provider to another , for example from AWS to Azure .
3 . Cybersecurity risks are everywhere
In the recent years the number of cyberattacks has increased significantly , leaving more damage than ever . Cybersecurity threats emerge from various sources including insecure network connections , and a lack of compliance measures . Most of us remember the SolarWinds attacks in December 2020 that spread from software updates , allowing attackers to access Microsoft 365 emails . More recently , the Log4j attack exploited a vulnerability in Log4j , a popular Java logging framework , that allowed attackers to execute arbitrary Java code on a server .
In 2019 , Gartner coined the term secure access service edge , or SASE , that combines SD-WAN capabilities with network security features hosted in the cloud . In the post-COVID era , more traffic is heading to the cloud than to the data centre , users are consuming more SaaS applications than data centre applications , and more sensitive data is located outside the enterprise network . With this in mind , SD-WAN coupled with SSE ( Security Service Edge ) capabilities such as SWG ( Secure Web Gateway ), CASB ( Cloud Access Security Broker ) and ZTNA ( Zero-Trust Network Access ) enable organisations to mitigate security risks related to the growing adoption of the cloud .
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS 67