Data security is the top of mind concern for a majority of businesses, organizations and governments. They’ve all seen an increase in the number of security attacks, which are becoming more sophisticated and difficult to trace.
Employees working remotely, movement of business applications away from Enterprise Data Centers, the proliferation of the internet of things (IoT) devices, mobility and the addition of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 to the mix are all driving networking and security to convergence. Now, network and security are no longer 2 distinct topics, but rather 1 single integrated one.
Applications are migrating from the data centre to the cloud, more employees are working from home than ever before and data is being accessed from a variety of devices. All of these variables make it difficult for network and security managers to keep track of who is accessing what apps and data, as well as how they are being used.
We are witnessing a need for more bandwidth for security and data protection; with organizations announcing permanent remote working, or flexible working option. In this article, we have listed down a few security architectures that have recently been adopted by organizations to improve and provide a better performance, especially during/post-pandemic work from home scenarios.
Zero Trust Architecture
Zero Trust Architecture is a security paradigm that addresses the fundamental flaw in traditional security techniques that exclusively safeguard data outside of an entity. This new paradigm involves a continual analysis and evaluation of the risks posed by internal IT assets and business operations, as well as the development of mitigation solutions. The ZTA model controls access by granting it only to those who are in need at any given moment, depending on whether each access request is successfully authenticated. This uses a positive security enforcement paradigm to help reduce unwanted access to data and services.
It works best when it’s integrated across an organization’s complete digital IT infrastructure. To analyse risk and make educated access control decisions, the objective is to be flexible, dynamic, and in continuous verification mode. However, businesses must strike a balance between providing a positive online experience for their customers and reducing their vulnerability to cyberthreats.
SD-WAN solutions
SD-WAN systems provide near real-time performance monitoring of transport networks, allowing administrators to make application-aware, policy-based network choices and direct traffic to the fastest available link. It enables remote working with better performance by combining internet and wireless broadband services. Furthermore, It optimizes the available bandwidth by throttling less critical application traffic using traffic-handling methods. Implying that your conference call will not be interrupted by bad connectivity, even if your children are in virtual classes or streaming online videos.
Sine an SD-WAN uses the public internet in addition to MPLS connections, a VPN or IPsec tunnel is necessary to guarantee that communication between the sender and receiver is not interfered.The amount of insight into the network that SD-WANs give is a key advantage of SD-WANs over traditional WANs. Network managers may control and organise the network from a central location, while also keeping an eye on traffic for irregularities. Network administrators may use this feature to check that applications are working as expected, troubleshoot network issues, and ensure that security components and rules are functioning properly.
Secure Access Service Edge
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a security architecture for converting security and network connection technologies into a single cloud-delivered platform to allow secure and rapid cloud transition. According to Gartner, “Security and Risk Management leaders need a converged cloud-delivered secure access service edge (SASE) to address this shift. This model has emerged as a comprehensive framework for allowing safe and quick cloud transformations based on a set of dynamic edge security and connectivity capabilities supplied as a cloud service when needed.
Today, businesses needs to provide all employees with a quick, consistent, and secure digital workplace experience irrespective of location the employees are based at, or working from. Simultaneously, IT teams must become more flexible in order to concentrate on delivering new digital services rather than spending the majority of their time maintaining complicated networking and security stacks. The SASE framework ensures that networking and security evolve and are agile, unified, consistent, swift, secured and capabilities to overcome the unpredictable local internet breakouts.
Why are they important?
Organizations are having trouble controlling and securing apps and data that use the network due to the convergence of networking and security. Make sure to check if the solution provider has a track record of delivering integrated business solutions that include managed services.
As IT teams understand and acknowledge the challenges of maintaining and securing more complex networks and links, digital transformation on the other hand is pushing the convergence of networking and security. Furthermore, with today’s highly dispersed workforce, networking and security requirements are evolving, as more employees use the network from a variety of places and devices and continue to do so.