What is Secure SD-WAN?
As the use of business-critical, cloud-based applications and tools continue to increase, distributed organizations with multiple remote offices are switching from performance-inhibited wide-area networks (WANs) to SD-WAN. SD-WAN is a software-defined wide-area network architecture to enable digital innovations. SD-WAN solutions transform an organization’s capabilities by leveraging the corporate WAN as well as multi-cloud connectivity to deliver high-speed application performance at the WAN Edge of branch sites. SD-WAN provides a dynamic path selection between—MPLS, 4G/5G, or broadband—ensuring organizations can quickly and easily access business-critical cloud applications. But SD-WAN solutions don’t provide in-built security which is critical for direct internet access. Secure SD-WAN enables organizations to enable NGFW with SD-WAN in simplified offering.
Fortinet Secure SD-WAN Solutions
- World’s only ASIC Accelerated Secure SD-WAN
- 5,000+ application identification with SSL Inspection
- Self-Healing capabilities for better user experience
- Cloud-On-Ramp for efficient SaaS adoption
- Simplified Operations with SD-WAN Orchestrator
Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) Security
The FortiGate NGFW delivers integrated SD-WAN networking and security capabilities in a single device.
Enhance Multi-Cloud Application Performance
Application identification, multi-path control, and application steering ensure that organizations can access all critical applications in the cloud.
Orchestration and Analytics
Fortinet’s SD-WAN Orchestrator simplifies WAN operations with zero touch provisioning, intuitive work-flow and granular application analytics across the network.
Low TCO
FortiGate Secure SD-WAN is less expensive and delivers both networking and security in the same solution for as much as 50% better TCO versus architectures with separate security and networking devices.
Evolving beyond the traditional WAN architecture with SD-WAN enables organizations to move past archaic MPLS services and open their networks to direct internet access. SD-WAN solutions not only allow organizations to reap the rewards of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications, applications in public clouds, and unified communications, but it ultimately delivers a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
How SD-WAN Works
An SD-WAN solution connects users to any application wherever it resides from data center to the cloud. SD-WAN intelligently determines which path best meets the ideal performance needs for a specific application. It then routes the traffic through to the ideal WAN path, whereas traditional WAN architectures only have the ability to route all applications through MPLS. Below are a few characteristics that define how an SD-WAN solution works and has evolved from a WAN infrastructure:
Application Awareness
With traditional WAN solutions, organizations suffer a less than ideal quality of experience and have a hard time delivering high-performance bandwidth for critical applications. Since legacy WAN architectures rely on packet routing, they lack in-depth application visibility. SD-WAN solutions, however, intelligently identify applications on the very first packet of data traffic. Network teams gain the visibility they need about which applications are used most widely across the organization, which helps them make smarter, more well-informed decisions and policies.
Dynamic Path Selection
SD-WAN solutions enable dynamic path selection for traffic to flow through: an MPLS connection, a broadband connection, and LTE. The SD-WAN solution can intelligently identify applications and determine the best path it should take to maximize functionality. Moreover, with self-healing capabilities automatically routes traffic to the next best available link in the event of an outage of the primary link. Not only does this automated capability reduce complexity within the network, but it delivers an improved user experience and improves performance of applications.
Zero-Touch Deployment
SD-WAN solutions provide control and data plane separation to ensure centralized management and orchestration. SD-WAN enables faster deployments with zero-touch provisioning capabilities while doing it at scale. In addition, a unified management console for both network and security operations helps to simplify operations at WAN Edge.
| Secure SD-WAN | MPLS | |
|---|---|---|
| Security |
If security is not automatically built-in, teams need add-on options |
Internet traffic backhauled to the data center |
| Visibility |
Broad application visibility |
Packet routing limits visibility |
| Performance |
Enables MPLS, broadband, LTE for high-speed |
MPLS-only delivers slow performance |
| Scalability | Easily increase capacity as needed with broadband |
Lengthy process that often takes months |
| Cost | Consolidated services greatly reduce TCO |
Expensive to build and maintain |