Increased reliance on cloud-based applications and remote work has caused the traditional network perimeter to vanish – and attack surfaces to exponentially expand. Nearly 40% of businesses experienced a data breach in their cloud environment last year,1 making it critical for cyber security strategies to evolve as networks expand beyond data centers.
Enter software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN). This technology provides the high-performance, reliable connectivity businesses need to access cloud applications and keep remote workers productive, which is likely why 47% of businesses have already migrated to SD-WAN.2 As more businesses embrace SD-WAN, integrated security solutions can help safeguard against the advanced threats targeting their increasingly dispersed networks.
In this blog, we’ll explore key considerations for securing SD-WAN deployments to help you leverage this technology effectively.
Why Do Businesses Need Secure SD-WAN Solutions?
Traditional WAN architectures and security approaches leave major gaps in protection for today’s cloud-enabled enterprises, including:
Lack of Device Authentication Controls
IT teams may fail to ensure the authenticity of network devices when adding to traditional WAN environments. Routers and switches can easily be added to branch networks without proper tracking, which makes it difficult to defend against rogue devices that can eavesdrop on traffic. SD-WAN offers centralized authentication and authorization of all edge devices to reduce the attack surface.
Separate Network and Security Hardware
Legacy WANs rely on complex manual configuration of encrypted tunnels and security measures to protect data traffic on each link. SD-WAN simplifies this by integrating security solutions such as intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and firewalls, eliminating the need to implement separate hardware for security.
Disjointed Security Protocols
Individual network protocols like BGP, OSPF, and SNMP have their own embedded security mechanisms, and managing security across these disjointed protocols is challenging. SD-WAN platforms unify and simplify security policy automation across all control plane protocols.
Conflicts Between Availability and Security
Legacy network designs focus on availability over security, allowing undesirable traffic to travel across backup paths unchecked. SD-WAN solutions can deliver both high availability and integrated security across all paths simultaneously.
What Are the Biggest Challenges of Securing SD-WAN?
Deploying SD-WAN introduces both opportunities and challenges from a security perspective. Some common challenges businesses face when securing their SD-WAN infrastructure include:
Limited Network Visibility
SD-WAN enables dynamic traffic routing through the best available path, which may bypass your existing monitoring tools and reduce visibility into security threats, data flows, and network usage.
Inadequate Security at Branch Locations
With SD-WAN, centralized security controls deployed at the corporate data center can no longer protect branch locations. Every site will need to deploy its own advanced security services against internet-based threats.
Customized Security for Each Site
Since different branch locations have diverse needs and capabilities when it comes to security, SD-WAN platforms must be tailored to deliver customized stacks for each location’s unique requirements.
Scaling Distributed Management
Managing security across hundreds or thousands of distributed edges and devices is difficult to scale, so automation and orchestration capabilities are essential for successful enterprise-wide SD-WAN security.
Separating NOC/SOC Duties
Many organizations run separate network operations center (NOC) and security operations center (SOC) teams. SD-WAN converges network and security capabilities, making it hard to separate duties between NetOps and SecOps roles.
Fundamentals of Securing SD-WAN
To ensure your organization has reliable, secure connectivity, choose an SD-WAN platform that provides these fundamental capabilities:
Fabric Security
SD-WAN solutions should provide built-in device authentication using certificates or other credentials to validate all components within the fabric, which refers to the complete ecosystem of devices, connectivity, policies, and orchestration that together deliver flexible, software-defined wide area networking. Strong mutual authentication ensures network access is only granted to trusted devices.
Platforms should also enable automated traffic encryption between all devices without the need for manual tunnel configuration. Encryption provides confidentiality and integrity for data in transit throughout the SD-WAN fabric. Advanced encryption standards like AES-256 provide strong endpoint security to protect against eavesdropping or man-in-the-middle attacks.
Centralized key management is critical for deploying encryption capabilities at scale. The SD-WAN controller should handle key distribution and rotation across all edges to simplify operations while ensuring keys are protected and managed according to enterprise security policy.
Integrated Security
Integrating services like a next-generation firewall, IPS, anti-malware, and sandboxing with SD-WAN eliminates the need for multiple standalone security functions and reduces network sprawl at branch offices.
Embedded security services can be layered into SD-WAN solutions to provide advanced threat protection tailored to the unique needs of each site. Smaller office locations may rely on basic firewalling in the edge device, while large-scale environments could add IPS, URL filtering, malware protection, and more.
Consolidating security solutions into the SD-WAN platform also provides tighter coordination between networking and security. Integrated edges enable deeper visibility into network traffic and security events for enhanced context and threat detection.
Cloud Security
Secure SD-WAN platforms need flexible integration with leading cloud-delivered security services, such as cloud access security brokers (CASBs), secure web gateways (SWGs), and other cloud-based controls. This enables a hybrid security approach combining the best of on-premises and cloud protections.
For example, integrating your SD-WAN with a cloud-based secure web gateway enables consistent security policies and malicious website filtering across all branch locations. Cloud sandboxing can also detect threats targeting the public cloud, while CASB integration secures SaaS applications and improves visibility.
Top SD-WAN Security Features
As the SD-WAN market grows, finding the right solution to secure your entire network fabric – from edges to cloud – can be challenging. Here are some of the top security capabilities to look for when choosing an SD-WAN solution:
Comprehensive Threat Prevention
Look for a platform that combines multilayered security services like NGFWs, malware sandboxes, IPS, and web filtering powered by up-to-date threat intelligence for advanced protection against even zero-day attacks.
Seamless Integration
The right SD-WAN solution should offer tight integration between your platform’s capabilities and best-of-breed security to avoid tradeoffs between performance and protection across your business network.
Unified Visibility and Control
Your SD-WAN platform should provide centralized management for monitoring, analytics, and policy enforcement across all edges, traffic flows, and cloud applications. This simplifies managing security across a distributed fabric at scale.
Flexible Deployment Options
Choose an SD-WAN solution that allows you to meet the unique security needs of each branch location with physical or virtual appliances, cloud-based controls, and hybrid options.
Zero Trust Access
The zero-trust model, which verifies all users and devices before granting least-privilege access, is ideal for securing your SD-WAN infrastructure. Ensure your platform integrates with device and identity management tools to enable adaptive access policies.
Integrating SASE for Enhanced SD-WAN Security
While SD-WAN provides substantial improvements over traditional WAN solutions – especially in terms of performance and flexibility – the evolving threat landscape and increasing adoption of cloud services demand a more comprehensive security approach. That’s where Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) comes in, offering a unified framework that integrates network and security functions into a single, cloud-native service.
How Does SASE Complement SD-WAN?
SASE builds upon SD-WAN infrastructure to deliver integrated networking and security capabilities. By converging these functions under a cloud-native architecture, SASE aims to simplify management while providing comprehensive, adaptive security closer to the edge. Here are a few ways SASE complements SD-WAN solutions:
Unified Security and Network Management
SASE combines network security functions such as secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security brokers (CASB), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and firewalls as a service (FWaaS) with SD-WAN capabilities. This integration simplifies management and enhances security by providing a consistent policy across all locations and users within the organization.
Improved Security for Cloud Applications
As businesses increasingly rely on cloud applications, traditional security perimeters become less effective. SASE’s cloud-native architecture is designed to safeguard access to cloud services, providing enhanced security measures that are more scalable and agile than legacy solutions.
Enhanced Performance and User Experience
By delivering security from the cloud, SASE reduces latency and improves overall network performance. Users experience faster access to cloud applications, regardless of their location, which is crucial for supporting remote and hybrid work environments.
Adaptive and Scalable Security
SASE’s ability to dynamically adapt to the changing access patterns and security needs of modern enterprises makes it highly scalable, which is particularly beneficial for organizations with fluctuating traffic usage and evolving network architectures.
Secure Your SD-WAN Solutions With CommQuotes
As SD-WAN adoption continues to grow, implementing proper security is imperative for protecting your distributed business network. With the right solutions and best practices in place, you can confidently unlock the performance and productivity benefits of SD-WAN without compromising on security.
CommQuotes can help you navigate the crowded SD-WAN landscape to find a platform that meets your organization’s unique needs at the best possible pricing. We leverage our long-standing relationships with hundreds of providers to cut through the clutter and find right-fit solutions – at no cost to you.
Ready to find a secure SD-WAN solution that keeps your remote and hybrid workers online and protected? Reach out to CommQuotes today.
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