Digital transformation is a critical driving force in the fight for business survival and is crucial in allowing organisations to adopt a flexible approach to how they interact with employees and customers – something which the last twelve months have proven to be paramount to business success.

SD-WAN has helped our customers respond to the challenges, enabling them to orchestrate network traffic more efficiently and power employee productivity – even with everyone working from home. But, the network transformation enabled by SD-WAN is exposing the business to a much wider attack surface.

With security incidents at an all-time high, many cyber-criminals have taken advantage of the initial chaos and confusion brought on by the pandemic, targeting weak spots in network security as businesses rush to enable remote access via unsecure wi-fi and home broadband networks.

It’s no surprise to me that 96% of IT decision makers said security was an essential aspect of their decision-making when choosing their SD-WAN solution¹.

The big question that needs answering is: how do you transform your network to meet customer and employee demands while safeguarding against unknown threats?

The ideal approach is one of ‘protect first then connect’. By combining software-defined networking with integrated security controls you can protect every edge in a single, effective, and secure solution from the start. But why is that so important?

As your network expands, so does your perimeter. Your network edge, which only a year ago was likely to be your branch site, is now your employee’s home office.

In the past, the internal business conversations may have been focussed on connectivity or security. Network operations and security teams are now having to work more closely together, building secure, agile and available architectures to support a new, much more flexible working environment that’s here to stay.

Taking a security-led approach to network transformation, with integrated security features embedded in your SD-WAN solution, you can deliver the performance and availability your users demand to stay productive. Together with end-to-end security and data protection, your business needs to reduce risk and meet regulatory compliance.

This ‘protect first then connect’ approach will save you time, and money, and get you the right level of security you need. But, it’s important not to forget that technology is only an enabler for change, not the change itself.

To make sure you get the right outcomes as you securely transform your network and manage your risk, you need to be able to access the right skills, expertise, and processes.

With Fortinet’s (PDF) industry-leading next-generation firewall, including an SD-WAN overlay, you get data protection by design, not as an afterthought. 

Working with BT as your managed security service provider enables you to reap the benefits of secure SD-WAN, lowering your risk of exposure and reducing operational cost and time savings, as well as avoiding skills shortages and difficulties in staffing your teams. 

Our partnership with BT taps into years of experience in networking and security that have been refined during a decade of working together. It’s one of the reasons why they made us a Critical Partner this year. As a customer, you get the peace of mind that comes with working with two trusted global security providers that are recognised by IT analysts² as leaders.

Find out how you can take a security-led approach to your network transformation.

1. SD-WAN Adoption Drivers, Challenges and Maturity in the Age of Covid-19 – CCS Insight October 2020

2. Fortinet are a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Network Firewalls (11 times) and WAN Edge Infrastructure (SD-WAN)