Businesses looking to adopt SD-WAN into their digital transformation IoT technology strategy need to make sure they have all their bases covered. But what exactly are those bases and how do you cover them? Watch the above webinar, moderated by IoT solutions provider, Steve Brumer, that features Yishay Yovel of Cato Networks, Brenden Rawle of Equinix, and Patrick Grillo of Fortinet. They discuss the key points of a successful SD network and how to drive your business towards an IoT platform digital transformation.
IoT Solutions How Is SD-WAN Different from SDN?
First of all, calling it SD can be confusing. WAN stands for wide area networking. However, the real question is how to make WAN better. Whether that’s in terms of application performance, reducing cost, or improved access to IoT platform cloud-based resources.
Telecomm and IoT vendors use a lot of abbreviations so it can get frustrating trying to keep it all straight. SDN is a generic term for the transformation that all of networking has gone through. SD-WAN is more applicable to the EDGE computing network, the way that traffic is managed and delivered in and out of a customer’s sight, as well as third party locations. The naming conventions are not always straightforward but when in doubt, assign it more to the access part of the network.
SDN is all about desegregation of software from the hardware. It’s supposed to give you more flexibility and a way to evolve faster. The capability of software evolves faster than hardware especially if it’s integrated. Softly defined, WAN is actually the decoupling of the overlay, meaning, the software that manages how traffic flows and the network from the underlay, which includes the access lines and physical infrastructure that manages to drive the traffic itself.
What’s the Connection Between Security and SD-WAN?
As the threat landscape became more sophisticated over the last 10-12 years, having things in layers was opening opportunities for hackers and cybercriminals to get into the network.
The IoT platform network layer and its security infrastructure should be fully integrated. They shouldn’t be laid on top of each other. There are two ways to do this: put security features in a networking device (which we know is not successful), or put networking into a security device. It takes skill and expertise but since you’re starting from a more difficult point of security, it’s a shorter path to success.
Three things that fit side-by-side are network transformation, access to cloud, and security control points. They’re so integrated, you can’t really treat them separately at all.
When you adopt SD-WAN, you want to leverage the internet to get more capacity and bandwidth for a lower cost. But when you put the packet on the internet, you need security. This means encryption, de-packet inspection, and threat prevention. When customers can choose to buy just SD-WAN or SD-WAN with security, 70% of them choose the combined option because it’s absolutely essential.
Watch the Rest of the IoT Solutions Conversation
Continue learning about SD-WAN and IoT solutions technologies by watching the rest of the webinar, above. To see how you can incorporate this technology with your IoT strategy, please contact BH IoT Group.