A firewall is a critical component of any network. It protects sensitive data, improves productivity, and provides peace of mind for businesses of all sizes.
However, one size only fits some when choosing the proper firewall SD-WAN solution. Considering the specific needs and goals of your business is essential.
Cost
SD-WAN can improve day-to-day user experience by allowing mission-critical applications like video conferencing to perform well, no matter where the data is stored or how it is transmitted. This is due to its ability to prioritize and direct traffic flow based on business needs, ensuring essential data receives the bandwidth required for optimal performance.
Additionally, SD-WAN enables businesses to save money by reducing their dependency on expensive MPLS lines. Managed SD-WAN solutions are designed for rapid deployment and simplified maintenance, eliminating the need for distinctive appliances. This translates to reduced hardware, management, and operations costs for organizations.
Enterprises seeking to enhance network security and optimize performance often turn to advanced solutions; integrating a firewall SD WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) combines robust security measures with efficient traffic management to ensure a resilient and protected network infrastructure.
It is also essential to look for an SD-WAN vendor that offers a comprehensive portfolio of network services such as security, path optimization, and zero-touch provisioning to help reduce costs and complexity. Choosing an integrated solution with next-generation firewall capabilities is especially attractive as it can minimize the number of different hardware appliances required. It is also essential to ensure that the chosen solution can scale to support digital transformation and incorporate a single-pane-of-glass console for monitoring connectivity status and quality, along with AIOps functionality to simplify troubleshooting.
Scalability
When evaluating an SD-WAN solution, it’s essential to consider its scalability. A scalable network will provide the flexibility to grow and adapt as your business grows while providing a better experience for employees working from home or on the go.
Unlike traditional networking approaches, SD-WAN eliminates the need to backhaul traffic from remote locations to a central data center. This can help improve application performance and security while removing costs.
SD-WAN can also reduce the need for costly MPLS circuits by routing traffic over more cost-effective broadband connections. In addition, it can provide better reliability by lowering latency and packet loss.
Choosing an SD-WAN solution with integrated security capabilities, like a next-generation firewall (NGFW) and a cloud access security broker (CASB), will streamline your network management tasks. It’s also essential to look for a solution that offers zero-touch deployment with the ability to configure and deploy virtualized customer premises equipment (vCPE) or universal customer premises equipment (uCPE) devices automatically. This will help to save time and money while reducing hardware maintenance costs.
Performance
A centralized management console makes it easy for IT to update firewalls and routers and remotely connect to remote users. It also provides a simple way to establish and manage backup internet links from different carriers, which prevents downtime during a primary link failure. The solution also includes WAN optimization that reduces latency, packet loss, and bandwidth consumption, making it easier for distributed employees to work without interruptions.
The best SD-WAN solutions offer built-in network security capabilities that enable a secure and seamless direct-to-cloud connection. They support the SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) architecture and Zero Trust security initiatives. They should provide a complete and unified security stack that includes next-generation firewalls (NGFW), a security web gateway, and advanced threat protection.
Traditional WANs backhaul traffic to central data centers for security inspection, which leads to increased network latency and poor user experiences. The best firewall SD-WAN solutions allow business data to travel directly to cloud data services without backhauling, which minimizes the impact on performance and costs. They also include application optimization that enables employees to work more efficiently by prioritizing critical applications over lower-priority ones, which helps improve employee productivity.
Remote Access
A solution with robust remote access features can provide secure, easy-to-use connectivity for employees at branches and remote locations. Ideally, it can integrate with existing firewalls and deliver zero trust network segmentation using identity-based policies, so users and IoT devices can only connect to zones consistent with their role in the organization.
Choosing the right SD-WAN solution is crucial to ensure that digital transformation initiatives are successful and the business achieves its objectives. It must scale to any environment or workload and be easily manageable from a single interface, with integrated security capabilities such as NGFW, web filtering, IPS, and sandboxing.
Finally, a centralized monitoring dashboard should be available that offers a detailed view of applications, links,, and performance for your entire distributed network infrastructure. This can help you identify performance issues before they become major problems and improve network stability, agility, and efficiency. It also allows you to prioritize WAN links based on their criticality and latency needs, ensuring that high-priority apps get the necessary bandwidth. In contrast, other less critical apps use alternative paths.
Management
Firewalls provide basic built-in security features that improve network visibility and compliance. However, IT teams face challenges deploying secure access for remote locations and ensuring performance across the vast area network (WAN). An integrated SD-WAN with next-generation firewall capabilities addresses these issues by automating the deployment of devices in branch offices, improving bandwidth use, and eliminating security gaps.
Moreover, a solution that integrates WAN optimization with firewall capabilities can reduce costs by reducing the need for expensive leased lines and optimizing data transmission across WAN connections. It also improves performance by reducing network latency and providing high-quality application experiences. The centralized management console offered by managed SD-WAN solutions enables efficient scalability and simplifies the maintenance of network security policies.
The proper firewall SD-WAN solution should also be able to identify and prioritize traffic flows based on business-critical applications. This should be achieved through deep packet inspection and application-based routing. It should also support link bundling and session load sharing for more streamlined bandwidth use. Additionally, it should be able to detect channel quality degradations and offload traffic to the best-performing available Internet channels to avoid downtime and data loss.
