IT’S TIME TO PUT YOUR BIG-BOY (OR GIRL) SASE PANTS ON

With over 1 billion cyber attacks in April 2021 find out here why the Channel needs to be selling SASE (as well as SD-WAN) to every one of its customers.

The way we work now has radically changed; things will never be the same. How and where businesses access technology, applications and data, means security has become THE most pressing issue for many. Most business leaders and IT teams know it is absolutely crucial to safeguard their users, protect their data and secure their digital finances from all manner of malicious online activities – and brands and reputations will fall if they fail in this essential task.

Enter SASE security!

In this Blog, we explain what SASE is, how it will protect your business 24/7 365, whether in the office, WFH hybrid or in the cloud and why it’s considered the best online security available today to keep the 600% growth in cyber-attacks at bay.

WHAT IS SASE? – SASE security explained in just 33 words!

SASE is an acronym for SECURE ACCESS SERVICE EDGE – a network solution that combines WAN function with security to deliver physical or Cloud based network security at every edge location on your network.

SD-WAN & SASE Networks are fast and Secure – How we use SASE

Some companies have as many as 40 different security solutions and products, which their IT teams battle to manage and maintain. We’ve devised SaSe and SD-WAN security solutions that enable you to consolidate these myriad solutions, simplify management and, most importantly, allow you to strengthen your network and increase worker protection. Check out our SASE page here.

Remote Working Needs an Uber-Secure, Unbreakable Network – how SASE is essential for WFH

Working from your home office, kitchen or dining table, garden shed (you get the picture) in fact, anywhere remote has been an established norm since Q1 2020. Initially lockdown brought immediate concerns around staff accessing their company’s cloud services, but in reality the issue was also about using crowded, slow and vulnerable consumer networks in people’s homes – it soon became evident that the pressing need was to seperate corporate traffic from your little darlings’ Fortnight battles or video streaming.

SD-WAN solved the infuriating slow connectivity issue and frustrating downtime with a fast, reliable, scalable, agile, highly visible network that’s easily managed and provides for today’s needs remote and cloud operations, and separates your home and work traffic. But the huge amount of sensitive and financial data meant SD-WAN needed a further innovation in security – and so, we integrated SASE into our SD-WAN Solutions, which makes WFH networks as secure as office-based ones.

Is Working from Home and Remotely here to stay? – key statistics on remote working.

In our opinion the working from home genie is now far too big to go back into the office-based bottle anytime soon. Already there has been a ‘workers revolt’ by staff being asked to return to the office, with some big name corporations rapidly revoking the call after realising that not having a WFH or hybrid offer might negatively impact on their retention strategies! But what is everyone else saying about the remote working revolution?

A recent Gartner Survey stated 47% of organisations will give employees the option to work remotely on a full-time basis, while 82% would allow at least one day per WFH post-pandemic lockdown. it is now evident that remote and hybrid working are here to stay, and therefore the benefits gained from SASE should be at the forefront of an organisation’s network and security strategy, as already overworked IT Teams can’t be expected to maintain and troubleshoot hundreds of VPN connections. Below are some more facts and stats that prove working from home is firmly entrenched as normal working practice.

• • 16% of companies globally operate 100% remotely
  • 44% of companies today STILL don’t allow remote working
  • 77% of remote workers firmly maintain that their productivity increases when working from home
  • ​85% of managers believe working from home will remain post-pandemic
  • 74% of workers stated having a WFH option is a key driver to staff retention
  • 22% of remote workers said they had difficulties switching off at the end of the day
  • 19% said loneliness was a issue for them 
  • 17% said they missed collaborating and communicating with colleagues
  • 70% of remote working teams stated experiencing IT and ITC issues working from home
  • An astounding 54% of people WFH had to wait as much as 3 hours for IT and network issues to be fixed
  • A truly astonishing 600% increase in malicious email and malware has been reported by home workers. ¼ of workers reported these increases
  • Due to online security issues and “worse case scenario” fears, 28% of home workers said they kept copies of documents to cope with downtimes and slow networks 

Cyber-attacks reach epidemic proportions – SASE stops the cyber-criminals

SASE security ensures our increasingly dispersed networks are safe from the prevalent cyber-attacks, which according to Interpol are on a stratospheric trajectory. CaaS or Crime-as-a-Service is a nefarious global growth industry which has boomed during the pandemic, and is still growing month on month today. Interpol further predicts cyber crime revenues will exceed $25 trillion dollars by 2025.

At the G7 2021 summit the UK government announced plans to crack down on cyber criminals with the foreign secretary stating in a later interview that, “[the UK judicial system] will apply costs to those who are systematically engaging in cyber-attacks, for either profit or espionage and to those who seek to inflict damage or wreak chaos.” He then went on to imply tough new sanctions against online criminals and vandals and ‘cyber retaliation’ – which would likely see harsher penalties, freeze assets and include travel bans.

Frankly, the stats are frightening and with infrastructure, NHS systems, big name banks and even government departments being held to ransom (and often paying it!) it’s time to get SASE and make a stand against the cyber crooks. We all have a duty to ensure remote working doesn’t compromise data, payments and transactions and ultimately reputations caused by security breaches (including accidental internal ones!)

SD-WAN & SASE The Perfect Network Mix – what technologies SD-WAN and SASE support together

All sectors will benefit from the increased network capabilities of SD-WAN and the optimal security of SASE, but as a further guide we’ve outlined below some industries which have benefited from our recent projects and just some of the technology our tailormade network solutions underpin, besides the everyday applications most of us rely on daily to operate which are perfectly supported by SD-WAN & SASE.

• Retail Technology: Omnichannel everything – in-store customer technology such as smart mirrors and virtual changing rooms – Ar – Vr – online virtual try before you buy – scannable everything – IoT -POS – secure guest Wi-Fi – separate and secure corporate network.

• Construction Technology: ERP – Cost Estimation Software – BIM – Digital Twin – Drone -3D – Ar – Vr –Ai – wearables – robots – collaborative software solutions

• Hospitality Technology: Ai across all touchpoints – integrated guest apps – POS – cloud migration – going touchless – location-based services – tech lounges and furniture – self-service meeting spaces – social listening – service automation

• Banking & Finance Technology: Extremely heavy emphasis on all aspects of security – risk analysis and avoidance Ai –  sharing economy embedded tech – blockchain and crypto monitoring Ai – customer intelligence Ai –  revenue growth predictor and profitability predictor software – Re-shoring and localisation

Check out our industry pages to see what we say about SD-WAN and SASE for your (or your customers’) sectors.

Key Network, Online and Digital Security Fact and Stat File 2021

We could write pages on the subject of network security, but instead we’ve put together some key insights from other much-respected sources so you can make your mind up if what we’re saying here bears scrutiny elsewhere. 

• The worldwide information security market is forecast to reach $170.4 billion in 2022 (Gartner)
• Only 5% of enterprises are using Gen 5 Cyber Security (Check Point)
• The average lifecycle of a breach was 280 days from identification to containment (IBM)
• Attacks on IoT devices tripled in the first half of 2019 (CSO Online)
• 69% of organisations don’t believe the threats they’re seeing can be blocked by their anti-virus software. (Ponemon Institute)
• 1 in 36 mobile devices have high-risk apps installed (Symantec)
• 52% of legal and compliance leaders are concerned about third-party cyber risks due to remote work since Covid-19. (Gartner)
• Remote work has increased the average cost of a data breach by $137,000 (IBM)
• 47% of employees cited distraction as the reason for falling for a phishing scam while working from home (Tessian)
• Cloud-based cyber-attacks rose 630% between January and April 2020 (Fintech News)
• Remote workers have caused a security breach in 20% of organisations (Malwarebytes)
• Nearly 80% of senior IT and IT security leaders believe their organisation lacks sufficient protection against cyberattacks despite increased IT security investment made in 2020 to deal with distributed IT and work-from-home challenges, according to a new DG Research Services survey commissioned by Insight Enterprises
• Gartner estimates that by 2025, 75% of data will be processed at the edge, outside of traditional, centralized data centres and the cloud, up from less than 10% today.
• In a recent CEO survey stated 69% of Financial Services CEOs are extremely concerned about cyber-threats (PWC)

So, if my facts and stats on how remote working is exponentially driving SASE adoption globally, have convinced you to get your network (or your customers’ networks) the biggest, sassiest innovation since SD-WAN, then email me nicola.hunter@sdwansolutions.co.uk or find out more here https://www.sdwan-solutions.global/solutions/security/