News

SD-WAN Report: It's All About Security

• By David Ramel
• 10/25/2018

Organizations rolling out software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) solutions report increased network security is the main achievement of such deployments, according to survey results just published by Barracuda Networks.

Security was front and center throughout the report, titled "The Challenges and Opportunities of SD-WAN" and based on a survey conducted on behalf of Barracuda by Vanson Bourne, which polled more than 900 global IT leaders and networking and security professionals. Barracuda describes itself as "a cloud-enabled security and data protection solutions provider."

In the survey, 92 percent of respondents agreed (strongly or slightly) with the statement: "Security should be the number one priority when considering an SD-WAN solution."

However, other achievements beyond security were realized by organizations that deployed SD-WAN solutions. While increased network security was reported by 57 of respondents, that "main achievement" was closely followed by improved overall connectivity (56 percent), increased network flexibility and agility (53 percent), improved application performance (53 percent) and reduced overall cost (48 percent).

Other highlights from the report included:

• Managing the complex network was the No. 1 WAN networking challenge facing organizations, reported by 48 percent of respondents, which just edged out "performance to the cloud" and "performance between locations."
• 33 percent of respondents reported they have SD-WAN deployed and in use at the majority of their sites. Another third reported they were in the process of deploying SD-WAN.
• When it came to understanding SD-WAN technology, 43 percent of respondents said they have some understanding of it, but with gaps in their knwoledge, while 41 percent said they totally understand it. Minimal understanding was reported by 13 percent, and no understanding was reported by 3 percent.
• The biggest perceived threat to SD-WAN deployments was general malware, reported by 28 percent of respondents, followed by malicious insider threats (26 percent), ransomware (22 percent) and accidental insider threats (21 percent).

"Organizations across the globe are turning to SD-WAN to help upgrade their networks for the digital age," concluded Barracuda. "In so doing, they can become smarter about how they manage traffic, while cutting costs compared to MPLS and reducing the operational burden on stretched networking teams."