One of the biggest innovations going on now outside of the Blockchain is SD-WAN. To maintain a non-technical understanding of SD-WAN think of two football teams. One there is a management structure a coach a quarterback and the players. Certain players can handle the ball and other players have other tasks such as tackling and blocking etc. Now playing this team is a sandlot football team, here you have different people making decisions, trading positions, deciding who should handle the ball and it is argued on each down. Quarterbacks change position, and no one is in charge. There is no unifying strategy or decision making.
Which team do you think is going to win? Many corporate networks today loosely resemble the sandlot team. SD-WAN gives your team structure, order, stability, predictability. Everyone has a job and knows what is going to happen on each and every rehearsed play.
SD-WAN Brings Organization
Why do you need organization? Several reasons. Organization means stability, predictability, order. And in the arena of expensive computing power and networking this means saving money. Or more importantly helping a company achieve its goals which usually include making money.
Just like the football team this leads to winning. Many corporate networks out there are giving away millions of dollars each year trying to upgrade, reorganize relearn and retrain and optimize their networks. SD-WAN does this with a giant leap forward.
SD-WAN and Cybersecurity
In cybersecurity you have very similar goals. If you want a structure to be secure it needs to be organized, clean, and understandable. Look at the sand lot football team again. How hard would it be to pierce the cybersecurity protections of an organization that does not know what is going to happen next?
In fact, if you are a cybercrime organization you look for this disjointed and disorganized company where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. It is your opportunity to strike. When you see a company that has its stuff together you move on.
It is not the job of the chief executive of an organization to be dictating the selection of networking technology. But it should be an executive’s goal to ensure that his IT department is carrying out your strategy in the best and most efficient way possible. A simple question about SD-WAN and its pros and cons should be posed when discussing IT direction and strategy. It is a serious consideration for a secure future.