Acknowledging what SD-WAN or Software-defined wide-area networking brings to the table is merely the first step. Simplifying its operations lies at the heart of a successful implementation and expansion.

Organizations adopting SD-WAN, especially those deploying an overlay for compensating their solutions’ inadequate security features, often experience provisioning, meshed VPN, multiple-network-edges management challenges, and constant configuration adjustments as time-consuming IT burdens.

Such issues understandably result in infrastructure complexities, increased manageability difficulties, and the creation of defensive gaps at the network edge.

An Imperfect Solution? Centralized orchestration-automation + orchestration functions.

• Streamlines general SD-WAN deployment-management everyday operations.
• Efficient workflows with no human intervention.
• Removes complexities.
• Simplifies network operations.
• Minimizes risks.
• Lowers down the costs.

What One-sided Orchestration Solution Lacks?

• Does not combine SD-WAN networking and security functions’ management and orchestration.
• Only pays attention to the network side of SD-WAN deployment.
• Unable to cater to a variety of SD-WAN deployment security functions.
• Exposes organizations to avoidable risks.
• Not able to correlate configurations and policies among crucial networking and security functions.
• Fails to handle the security gaps arising from less-than-firmly synchronized networking and security.
• Leads to compliance obstacles.

The Recommended Approach: An orchestration tool that addresses SD-WAN deployment’s network side and also the security functions it needs.

• Consolidates and automates networking and security tools’ management.
• Eliminates disaggregated branch infrastructure complexities.
• Simplifies operations.
• Reduces the attack surface.
• Promotes digital innovations.

Benefits of an Effective Orchestration System for SD-WAN

1] Simplified Provisioning of SD-WAN: Provisioning can be costly; it can include overhead expenses and consume much time, more so when the security has to be deployed as an overlay solution.

• An effective orchestration system permits the SD-WAN to be pre-provisioned via a phone-home connection.
• Plugged-in at the branch; it instantly connects to the primary office through a broadband connection where it gets remotely configured by the orchestration system.
• Saves solution deployment time.
• Ensures networking/security configurations and policies are synchronized with each other.

2] Optimal Functioning of SD-WAN Connectivity in Larger Deployments: In place of siloed security-solutions at every branch, security must be integrated across all branches and remote office locations. It helps in preventing, detecting, and swiftly responding to threats in real-time.

• Automation ensures a consistent application and enforcement of security, particularly when bracketed with APIs, to achieve extensive interoperability across solutions.

3] Single-click Multi-cloud Connectivity for Improved Application Performance: Network/security engineers should have visibility across the whole attack surface from one location.

• Automation is indispensable for sufficiently protecting all connections considering the sophisticated modern-day threats.

4] Network Breach Detection: Undetected malware’s dwell times can stretch to months, if not years.

• Automation shortens the gaps separating network breaches/their detections and remediations.
• The central orchestration system coordinates policy-based automated response actions across a distributed environment and leverages intelligence automation and security workflows.
• It sees and correlates threat information collected from remote locations to reduce detection/remediation times substantially.

5] Weakened Meshed VPN Complexities: Meshed VPN, if not automated, can potentially get the better of your limited IT resources. The complexity drastically goes up when new branch offices are brought online and are interconnected.

• The centralized automated orchestration system manages VPN deployments.
• Ensures availability and gets rid of configuration errors.
• Realigns resources depending on traffic volumes and other benchmarks.

The sheer value or organizational advantages of merging the management-orchestration of SD-WAN’s networking and security functions cannot be overstated.

InfiNxt Secure SD-WAN is admired worldwide as the go-to solution for ensuring business agility, inherent economics, and optimized cloud architecture. It carries incomparable features ranging from Zero Touch Provisioning, Streaming Telemetry, enterprise-class security through an inbuilt next-generation firewall (NGFW) powered by Palo Alto Networks, Role-based management, and improved application performance, user experiences, to business productivity, and reduced costs.

Learn more about InfiNxt – The Next Generation SD-WAN.

Sources: Security Boulevard, Network Computing, Tech Observer, Security Intelligence, Security Brief, Infovista.com, Network World, Media.ciena.com, Lightreading.com, Infinxt.co.in, Infinitylabs.in, Wikipedia, YouTube, and other information channels.

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