Use Case

Securing cloud applications

Are your cloud applications fully secure?

The rapid migration of apps and services to the cloud has changed the usual ways of connecting, computing, and doing business. Many large enterprises are now turning to SD-WAN to improve network effectiveness and flexibility and reduce costs, especially those organizations with sites spread across the globe and currently relying on expensive MPLS connections.

Traditional security just won’t work.

Securing these new internet connections and accessing your cloud applications using traditional security solutions just isn’t possible – a new approach is needed and solutions specifically designed for the cloud are required.

Security for an organisation’s locations is usually implemented exactly as it occurs on hub-and-spoke WANs. Each branch requires a standard set of security-related services.

Before SD-WAN, security services such as access control, threat prevention and data protection were run on local appliances or servers, or as virtual instances spun up in hybrid or public cloud infrastructures. Traditional hub-and-spoke architectures and security technologies are not built for a cloud architecture or cloud apps for three main reasons:

1. Replicating the network security stack at every site is prohibitively expensive.

2. Scaling the use of legacy security adds significantly to the management overhead.

3. Trying to meld legacy security with SD-WAN increases complexity. At best, such an approach results in compromises, leaving users vulnerable to attacks.

There is a better way – in the cloud.

Today, there is a simpler and better approach for securing SD-WAN – one that Xalient has been successful in deploying in many of its global clients. Instead of your organisation having to manually build and maintain security at each location, you move security into the cloud and deploy it as a service.

This is a transformative step for SD-WAN, because using a cloud-based security service will globally secure every site with the entire security stack: proxy, firewall, advanced threat protection, and robust protection for corporate apps and data.

Faster, better, simpler, cheaper.

Other benefits of moving security to the cloud include:

  • Faster user experience - from direct-to-internet architecture
  • Reduced cost and complexity – by optimising backhaul costs and eliminating the need to buy and maintain security appliances
  • Simplified branch IT operations – with no virtual machines or security hardware to deploy and manage
  • Better security – via the entire security stack delivered as a cloud service; no compromises

To get further down the path of cloud transformation, there are two things to remember: SD-WAN makes local internet breakouts easy and a cloud security solution makes them secure. Xalient can help you do both.

Contact Xalient’s SD-WAN experts to find out how we’re helping other large enterprises tackle this challenge.

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