92% of UK business leaders state that cost savings are their biggest worry [Oct 2022], cyber security fears come a close second, a well-founded concern with 74% of UK companies being attacked at some point in the last 12 months, and supply chain concerns come in third.
As many of our readers will already know – there is no SASE without an SD-WAN network for the SASE framework to sit upon, so in this blog we will explain just how these two powerful components together have been solving the big issues that have been affecting business in 2022 and will continue to do so in 2023.
The Cost-Saving Benefits of SD-WAN and SASE
The recently published ‘CIO 2022 SASE Market Trends Study’ found that 33% of the study’s respondents (mainly CIOs) anticipated cost savings, but that SASE in fact outstripped this expectation by 12%, with 45% of respondents who had deployed SASE experiencing cost savings.
Now, it’s obvious that if you can cut out 100% of cyber-attacks with SASE, which indeed you can, that there will be cost savings, but these are not what these respondents are referring to. SASE relies on an intelligent network – and SD-WAN technology provides just such a network and so there are other factors driving these costs savings such as increased productivity, zero down time and optimised application access.
One of the key findings from the ‘CIO 2022 SASE Market Trends Study’ was that SD-WAN came in as THE most important core capability. We are highly gratified by this finding hoping it puts to bed forever the misplaced belief that SASE is in some way ‘replacing’ SD-WAN and that businesses should ‘choose’ one or the other, as that is not at all the case.
The Obvious Elephant in Every Board Room – the terrifying rise in cyber attacks
The first and most obvious need for a SASE framework (and it is just that – a framework, not a ready-made product ready to plug and play) is that cyber crime has increased to gargantuan proportions. We’re just going to touch on this lightly now as our next blog on network technology and security trends for 2023 will go into this factor in more detail, but overall cyber attacks have risen 3000% in two years, there is an attack on the Net every 11 seconds, 300 new pieces of malware are launched daily and a 657% rise in phishing emails has been almost solely responsible for 86% of businesses seeking the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) that SASE delivers, amongst many other things.
Read more about how SASE will help your business https://www.sdwan-solutions.global/solutions/security/
There are two types of companies – those which have been hacked and those that will be hacked. The average cost of just one cyber-attack for big business is just over £4 million GBP and for SME’s it can be fatal, with 60% simply not recovering and shutting up shop entirely after an attack, and those that continue to operate often see their business targeted again. But there is a way to stop these cyber-attacks and make your network impregnable – and that is SASE.
Remote Work Connectivity and Security
Now consider the rise in remote and WFH over often unsecured consumer networks (or deploying VPN’s en masse and the hours of management time they bring to IT teams) and it’s evident how some of these staggering rises in cyber-attacks may have been realised and how cost savings in the manner of increased productivity may have materialised. A staggering 98% of business leaders believe that their corporate and working from home networks need the same level of protection – we agree and that’s precisely why we have created SASE remote solutions that work for on-the-move sales teams as well as hybrid and WFH teams. Again, the recent CIO study found that while 38% of CIOs thought SASE would bring benefits to their WFH and remote teams, in actual fact 59% received benefits.
Read about our secure remote and WFH solutions here https://www.sdwan-solutions.global/solutions/sase-remote/
Supply Chains Under Attack
Most articles you read about supply chain issues are talking about the global supply chain crisis, and certainly SD-WAN can help with this by providing an uber-fast network, which coupled with RTV (real time visibility, which can be optimised via SD-WAN) will enable businesses to see where their supplies are at any given moment. But frankly, tell us something we don’t know! What is often not really being considered on the same level, is that cyber criminals are targeting supply chains. This worryingly is being referred to as ‘weaponisation’ when it comes to food and medical supplies. Again, SASE can stop this insidious type of attacks, stone cold in their tracks.
Some other worrying findings are that 40% of cyber threats now occur indirectly through supply chains. Businesses leaders expect cyber-attacks on their business to be comprised of 60% via supply chains, 60% to be DDoS attacks, 59% to account for cyber espionage and APT 57%, with ransomware and data thefts coming in at 66%.
19% of all global losses stem from a supply chain breach, with average costs at GBP 4.03 million. Supply chain breaches can take 26 days longer to detect and control than any other type of attack – consider that essentials to the nation and almost every other business sector rely on supply chains, and it becomes immediately evident that prevention is by far better than cure – and that is exactly what SASE (coupled with the essential SD-WAN network it sits upon) will do.
We’re inviting IT and Finance Teams to our metaverse office to challenge our tech team with a real, live problem or to simply enter into a probing Q&A session to see what SD-WAN and SASE will do for your business. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE YOUR VERY OWN 1-2-1 SESSION WITH THE ONLY COMPANY ON THE PLANET WITH 2 MEF DOUBLE-ACCREDITED SD-WAN SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS EMAIL US AT info@sdwansolutions.co.uk and book a time that suits you!