While your customers are scaling their digital businesses, they may mistakenly assume that their current security solutions will be enough to protect their expanding networks. In reality, they have exposed themselves to greater risks. Traditional security solutions were designed to secure fixed perimeters and monitor predictable traffic and workflows between static network servers and known, external devices. Because your clients’ networks now have many edges, it's impossible to create the sort of single defensible boundary most legacy security tools were designed to defend.

Educate your customers on how a security-driven networking strategy can tightly integrate their organization’s network infrastructure and security architecture. Adopting this approach will provide them with advanced security that expands and adapts to their dynamic network perimeters. With security at the core, their networks can evolve, expand and adapt to address expanded attack surfaces. This type of security-driven networking enables your customers to move forward with their digital acceleration while addressing five critical elements:

1. Network design and planning – A security-driven networking strategy enables IT teams to factor in security early in their networking planning. This can facilitate the development of network strategy that supports pre-defined security policies.
2. Network access control and segmentation – As work-from-anywhere (WFA) policies become standard for many organizations, IT teams need to be vigilant about identifying and establishing access policies for new devices that are added to their networks. Tying access to network segmentation ensures these devices are automatically assigned to secured network segments that have been enhanced with authentication. These network segments can then be monitored to prevent and detect unauthorized behaviors, inspect applications and secure workflows. Because security and networking are tied together, changes to the network infrastructure automatically include changes to security.
3. End-to-end data protection – Data collected across your clients’ networks is often mined and shared across geographically dispersed teams. Security-driven networking can protect data, applications and workflows across their entire data path. It can also consistently protect network segments, multi-cloud environments, data centers and devices.
4. The network perimeter – Organizations that add new devices, network platforms and application models, will experience fragmentation in their network perimeters as they expand outward. However, these perimeters often expand inside the network as organizations adopt connected IoT devices, extend their networks across multiple environments and connect their networks to support smart systems. A security-driven network approach provides consistent visibility across the entire perimeter, both inside and out, as the network adapts and changes.
5. Branch offices and secure SD-WAN – Traditional MPLS connections limit application performance and dynamic communications. By combining NGFW appliances with advanced SD-WAN networking capabilities, organizations can eliminate MPLS-required traffic backhauling, prioritize business-critical applications and improve overall user experience without compromising on security.
Implementing security-driven networking for your clients empowers them to move forward with their digital transformation and expand their digital footprints without fear of exposing their critical resources and expanded network to new risks.