According to Gartner® by 2026, 70% of enterprises will have implemented SD-WAN [1] with adoption growing at a CAGR of 26% [2].

The move to cloud-based services and cloud-based infrastructure is leading organizations to rethink their networking infrastructure.

Biggest WAN Limitations

Here are some current limitations you may be experiencing in light of the shift to online and cloud services:

1. Latency Issues

Latency is the time it takes a data packet to travel from its source to its destination, and it can significantly impact the user experience and overall productivity. Traditional WAN infrastructure often leads to extremely high latency as all traffic, including internet-bound traffic is routed through headquarters or the datacenter for security inspection. This can lead to sluggish application performance, slow file transfers, and reduced responsiveness. All of these can hold your business back from being as efficient as possible.

2. High MPLS Costs

While MPLS offers security and reliability, it comes with a hefty price tag. These costs can become a significant financial burden for organizations, especially those with multiple branches or remote locations. Nowadays there are much more efficient alternatives to MPLS such as broadband and 5G wireless Internet connections.

3. Addition of New Branches

Traditional WAN architectures often lack the flexibility and speed to keep up with the expansion of new branches, requiring the physical laying out of new private lines by the service provider from one site to another. On top of that, the process of integrating new sites into the existing WAN infrastructure can be time-consuming and complex, which makes it difficult to accommodate expanded global operations and executing on mergers and acquisitions. Typically with WAN, adding new branches requires specialized hardware and manual configuration at each branch, adding additional overhead to overburdened administration teams.

4. WANs can be your Single Point of Failure

Traditional WANs can easily become your single point of failure. If your ISP goes down for any reason that means your branch, office or remote site lose internet connectivity and cannot support your customers, employees or automated operations. By being able to fail over to a secondary or even tertiary link connecting to different service providers, you can make sure your business stays resilient no matter what. Different links can connect your site or office to different local internet service providers for broadband connections or mobile network operators for cellular connections, as well as any combination of the two.

Leveraging your current security investment for WAN Resilience

To address these core challenges, some firewall solutions, aka security gateways, enable you to implement SD-WAN easily through a simple software update, rather than sourcing yet another point product. That way, there’s no need to ‘rip and replace’ your current investment, saving you time, money, and potential disruptions. For example, see Check Point’s SD-WAN security solutions.

Here are five things to consider when evaluating your current security gateways for improved WAN resilience:

1. Preventing vs. Detecting Advanced Threats

Ensure your network is protected against the latest cyber threats, including zero-days, ransomware and DNS attacks. Check your solution’s catch rate to assess how well it can protect your business from known and unknown attacks, ideally using AI and Machine Learning technology.

2. Shortening the Learning Curve

Transitioning to new technology can be intimidating. By utilizing a familiar user interface, IT teams can quickly adapt to the new infrastructure, requiring fewer staff hours to learn and operate the network. Not to mention, with an all-in-one solution, your team doesn’t have to operate and maintain a separate SD-WAN appliance.

3. Support for Different Types of Connections

Shifting from traditional MPLS to broadband internet and 5G cellular connections can significantly reduce costs without compromising network performance. Check which types of links your organization would need to keep connected, such as 5G wireless for rural, remote and even maritime sites, and embedded Wi-Fi if you’re looking for an all-in-one branch solution.

4. Fast Failover to Alternate Links

To ensure uninterrupted connections for latency-sensitive activities such as web conferencing and remote help desk support, it is important for your solution to support fast link swapping between multiple Internet Connections and MPLS lines. This level of agility ensures smooth productivity and minimizes disruptions caused by network outages.

5. Ability to Secure IoT devices

Securing your office IoT devices essentially stops them from serving as an entry point into your network for potential threat actors. By protecting cameras, routers, badge readers, air-conditioning and other smart devices from the same gateway platform, you can reduce your attack surface even further without yet another appliance, admin console or vendor to worry about.

Meet Quantum SD-WAN – Unifying Industry-Best Security with Optimized Connectivity

If you’re worried about sacrificing security for speed, then it’s time to meet Quantum SD-WAN. Supporting a broad range of gateways, from branch office, through industrial ruggedized appliances to enterprise and datacenters, Quantum SD-WAN unifies Check Point’s industry leading threat prevention with optimized internet and network connectivity. Here are some resources to get you started:

[1] Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Services, Global, February 2023, by Danellie Young, Karen Brown and Gaspar Valdivia

[2] Gartner Forecast Analysis: Secure Access Service Edge, Worldwide, October 2022, by Joe Skorupa and Nat Smith

You may also like