SD-WAN: The Future of Secure Home Working?
The pandemic accelerated home office adoption, and we expect many organisations to make remote or hybrid work a permanent feature. Organisations have long relied on virtual private networks (VPNs) to connect remote workers with company resources but, given today’s remote work trends, we’re seeing many leaders shift from VPN to software-defined wide-area networks (SD-WAN) to enable connections with data centres and cloud services. SD-WAN is a logical choice given its myriad benefits, like enhanced security, reduced costs, and greater reliability and connectivity.
What may be a bit surprising is that SD-WAN is also emerging as a more-than-viable option for certain employees working from home. Is it right for you and your team? Let’s find out.
VPN versus SD-WAN
Let’s first take a trip back, before the start of the pandemic (wouldn’t that be nice), when more people worked from dedicated business offices and facilities. These offices traditionally had strong firewalls and security measures in place to protect the network perimeter, often from an on-site data centre. When an employee did work from home or an alternative location, he probably dialled into the corporate network via a VPN. The VPN created a tunnel to the resources and data she needed to do her job, within that firewall. VPN, as you know, is a session-based tool in which our fictional remote employee would initiate a connection, access what he needs, and then disconnect when he’s through. For a long time, this strategy worked fine for business travellers and some remote employees.
Fast forward to now, when we have more remote and hybrid workers than ever before. With a shift to cloud-computing and SD-WAN, the previous security perimeter is shifting the network edge from the data centre to the branch locations or the cloud. The majority of WAN traffic now originates or ends outside of physical business walls. At the same time, our employee still needs to access large, sensitive, or critical files to do his job.
Enter SD-WAN. The solution offers businesses of all sizes a better way to fully push the network edge right where our employee needs it, be it the home, a co-working space, or whilst travelling. SD-WAN provides the business with more control in how it securely connects users and devices, no matter where the employee works from.
SD-WAN is the Key to Secure Home Working
SD-WAN provides flexible security to organisations and workers. As devastating cyber crimes continue to rise, security is paramount to stay connected and productive. There’s also a business resiliency benefit: SD-WAN can route cloud traffic (for example, copious yet critical Microsoft 365 traffic) directly to cloud services instead of backhauling the data through the data centre, resulting in faster and more reliable access.
Let’s think back to our fictional remote worker. A VPN treats him and his actions the same as any other remote co-worker, no matter if he’s accessing the main office infrastructure or he’s accessing Facebook or YouTube. This creates a lot of traffic and a lot of strain. The brilliance of SD-WAN is that it sends just some traffic to the main office, while some traffic may go directly to cloud services under the company’s control and parameters, and a final block of traffic (like those going to the social media sites) is routed externally so that it doesn’t strain the company’s bandwidth and infrastructure. Yet, everyone has access to everything they need, as quickly as they need it.
The logical next question may be: If SD-WAN delivers all of this, why aren’t more businesses and remote workers using it? Historically, the typical SD-WAN appliance wasn’t cost-effective for individual users who only occasionally worked from home. However, these previous constraints have been flipped upside down. Now, with larger numbers of remote workers, the economics and benefits of SD-WAN for a home office—instead of VPN—is not only feasible, but increasingly necessary.
Shifting to SD-WAN for Home Offices
There’s another common constraint for organisations that elect to deploy their own SD-WAN solution: It can require a significant upfront investment of time and resources that can strain already-strapped IT teams. Managed SD-WAN offers a welcome alternative for businesses, with cloud-based functionality for management, security, and other functions. Offloading the deployment and operational overhead of managing SD-WAN can keep IT staff focused on other strategic business goals and growth. Managed SD-WAN can also speed deployments, as available IT staff attention is no longer a limiting factor.
At Optec, we’re pleased to offer a complete managed SD-WAN solution to help your organisation—and its people—grow, no matter where they work from.
Ready to shift to SD-WAN for home offices? Learn more about how Optec can help you transform productivity and security with our secure SD-WAN solutions.
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