CISOs must reinvent themselves to rebound from the COVID crisis
As the COVID crisis unfolds, the CISO is at a critical crossroads. With security budgets cut and budget constraints tightened, the CISO is under greater stress to perform his or her job and to ensure that the organization is secure. The situation is likely to worsen before it gets better. The CISO is also under increasing pressure to make technology investments that will ensure resilience during the next major disruption. Insufficient budgets, strained business relationships, and regulatory complexity are the most common challenges that CISOs face. However, a security by design approach to cybersecurity can help them rebound from the COVID crisis.
The COVID crisis has created a new set of business and leadership challenges that many companies are still figuring out. Some companies are pivoting hard to new operating models, delivery channels, and product offerings. While many CISOs are shooting from the hip, it is important that they take a holistic approach to security and privacy to safeguard the organization.
SD-WAN creates a smaller perimeter
The software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) model combines the benefits of both network and security capabilities. However, this approach presents challenges due to the different priorities of network and security teams. CISOs must find a balance between these two concerns to ensure a more secure environment.
SD-WAN appliances help companies manage security threats and reduce costs. They work with a wide range of transport methods, including the internet and MPLS. These appliances also help enterprises access enterprise applications that are located outside the enterprise, including cloud services. In addition, SD-WAN appliances provide improved security and ease of provisioning and management. The company also offers a number of deployment options, including virtual private networks, cloud connectivity, and fiber network.
With SD-WAN, IT teams can monitor all traffic across all ports, providing real-time network management and concurrent UTM threat detection. As a result, IT teams can reduce their corporate risk profile.
It simplifies cloud connectivity
SD-WAN solutions offer centralized management that can make managing firewalls, virtual private networks, and remote clients easier. These solutions also reduce costs and improve application performance by allowing administrators to prioritize traffic. For example, a videoconferencing sales call won’t be hindered by traffic from colleagues. In addition, SD-WAN enables organizations to reduce their overall attack surface and avoid security breaches by limiting bandwidth usage.
SD-WAN is typically managed via a centralized management interface, which allows for easy configuration and monitoring. It also enables administrators to prioritize paths based on application criticality. Additionally, IT teams are able to provision new sites and manage software upgrades from a single management portal. Furthermore, users can flex their bandwidth through a single interface. Overall, SD-WAN simplifies cloud connectivity for CISOs by reducing bandwidth costs.
As cloud-based services become more common, enterprises are gradually moving to the cloud to improve business agility and reduce costs. SD-WAN allows users to access the cloud from remote locations without burdening the core network. This can also help organizations save on office space, equipment, and rent, as SD-WAN can eliminate network traffic that isn’t business critical. SD-WAN also helps businesses reduce the need for IT expertise to manage cloud infrastructure and ensure business-critical applications receive the best possible performance.
It reduces complexity
With SD-WAN, CISOs are able to manage and prioritize real-time and business-critical traffic. This technology also allows businesses to scale up or scale down their bandwidth capacity to fit the needs of their users. In addition, it can be easily managed via a centralized management interface. The software that powers the SD-WAN platform can handle security, policy, and networking functions. The technology can also manage multiple connections, segment traffic, and flex bandwidth. The flexibility of this network architecture helps businesses save money.
SD-WAN solutions make managing virtual private networks, firewalls, and remote clients easier. Because all of these elements are managed centrally, this reduces complexity and minimizes labor costs. Additionally, it reduces equipment costs. In the past, businesses had to backhaul traffic from their servers to the data center. The traffic between these two points was often subject to a complex routing protocol. SD-WAN solutions eliminate this complexity and ensure that business critical traffic is prioritized.
Another benefit of SD-WAN is that it allows organizations to easily segment networks for better security. By implementing application-aware routing, organizations can limit the attack surface for sensitive data and systems. As a result, they can create risk domains and minimize the impact of successful attacks. Moreover, network segmentation also helps enterprises implement security policies that limit the impact of security incursions and prevent them from propagating beyond the segment boundaries.