Fortinet drives adoption of Secure SD-WAN for distributed enterprise
More and more distributed enterprise branches are transitioning to a digital business model, which has a significant impact on their WAN.
Traditional security architectures are proving futile, leaving many organisations struggling to protect themselves from the advanced cybersecurity threats that are introduced with new technologies.
A lack of skills and resources to combat these threats leave organisations in the same predicament. As a result, the way organisations operate and deliver value to customers is compromised.
Fortunately, next-generation security strategies are available to combat this.
SD-WAN as critical capability
The benefits of software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) architectures are catching the attention of companies around the world and have fast become critical to curb the effects of digital transformation in today’s distributed enterprises.
SD-WAN offers application-awareness combined with increased performance, flexibility, and simplicity when compared to more expensive legacy WAN technologies.
SD-WAN is also more agile and cost-effective than traditional networking solutions, but there are challenges – especially when it comes to security.
Top SD-WAN security challenges and concerns
Integrating the solution into a third-party security product is one of the top security concerns regarding SD-WAN today. As businesses roll out the solution, the integration needs to be done themselves.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) requires that multiple products be combined, which means development teams will have to open API development to ensure that the information flowing between the different systems works as a common collaboration tool.
With this, data orchestration is needed, and this adds to the concerns. “Overall, the entire process can become a costly exercise in combining that solution,” said Paul Williams, Fortinet Country Manager.
With this in mind, Fortinet has taken an architectural approach that fits into Fortinet’s Security Fabric.
The Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution
Corporate networks are stretched thin by cloud services, SaaS applications, and mobility. This means organisations require better connections to branch offices to deliver higher-quality network services.
Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution – based on FortiGate – provides next-generation security and networking capabilities to improve WAN efficiency without compromising on security.
With Fortinet’s new dynamic cloud application list, customers can also easily migrate to SaaS applications and get the most optimised and secured path.
Multiple security features commonly applied include; high IPSEC VPN, IPS, Web-Filtering, and industry’s highest SSL inspection performance, based on Fortinet’s purpose-built security processors.
These features are managed via Fortinet’s centralised manager, which enables zero touch deployment and simplified administration.
There is greater agility from a single vendor product like Fortinet, so any large-scale upgrades to the network and any major changes to the back-end are eliminated, while at the same time still providing a secure SD-WAN architecture.
“Fortinet’s technology, called Secure SD-WAN, allows Fortinet to take their technology inside their software without changing any hardware and can enable the SD-WAN feature inside the technology,” said Williams.
Fortinet secure SD-WAN vs other SD-WAN solutions
A lot of SD-WAN providers today have to build on a second or third-party device to provide security to the network. “Fortinet customers, however, can have a secured SD-WAN technology built into their platform,” said Williams. “It not only protects the perimeter firewall or data centre firewall, but it also protects all the other devices that the SD-WAN is communicating with.”
Fortinet allows full SD-WAN control from “a single pane of glass”, where Fortinet can see the SD-WAN functionality.
“We also do a rollout with SD-WAN through the product called FortiDeploy. So, if users have multiple sites, we can deploy the solution there with a FortiDeploy licence, which is bought from Fortinet when buying multiple devices,” he said.
This minimises rollout as well as configuration at the box, as everything is pre-configured at the factory by Fortinet. Fortinet also goes to great efforts to reduce the amount of man hours that user teams have to endure by configuring the entire environment themselves.
“Customers can switch it on if they’re running the right version of software and can also complement the same SD-WAN technology with other Fortinet technologies like Wireless LAN, Fortinet’s management solution, and even the Fortinet switching platform too,” said Williams.
Fortinet Security Fabric
Fortinet’s offerings are enhanced from a security perspective thanks to the Fortinet Security Fabric – developed to ease the integration as part of the SDN.
The Fortinet Security Fabric delivers broad protection and visibility to every network segment, device, and appliance, whether virtual, in the cloud, or on-premise.
It allows customers to automatically synchronise security resources to enforce policies, coordinate automated responses to threats detected anywhere in the network, and easily manage the different security solutions and products through a single console.
The Fortinet Security Fabric segments the entire network – from the Internet of Things (IoT) to the cloud – to provide superior protection against sophisticated threats.
“We’re trying to take the headache away from the customers and the partners, by integrating the SD-WAN solution and the security product from the start,” said Williams.
With Fortinet’s transport-agnostic solution, enterprises can utilise the entire available bandwidth by using the connections in active mode. FortiGate SD-WAN includes best-of-breed security and SD-WAN functionality in a single appliance.
The traditional WAN is no longer an effective solution for today’s distributed enterprise. By moving to Secure SD-WAN, organisations can overcome significant security and network issues.
FortiGate SD-WAN integrates enhanced SD-WAN features with proven security capabilities, delivering next-generation protection and networking capabilities that improve network efficiency without compromising security.
Download Fortinet’s FortiGate SD-WAN whitepaper here. For more information about Fortinet’s SD-WAN solutions, visit the Fortinet website.
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