Providing a consistent user experience for Work-from-Anywhere (WFA) employees can be a challenge for your clients.

While there are many financial and logistical advantages to shifting to a hybrid workforce, IT teams need to provide workers with a seamless Quality of Experience (QoE). This includes fast, easy access to essential resources, always-on availability for business-critical applications and quality of service -- especially for communication channels such as voice and video conferencing.

Your clients’ IT teams know that home networks and remote devices are exposed to numerous security risks. You can help them balance always-on access to business applications by providing security that can mitigate cyberthreats. Following are three key pain points IT needs to address in hybrid and WFA environments.

1. Unpredictable user experience
To mitigate security risks, your clients may not allow branches or home users to connect directly to the internet or the cloud. Instead, they might backhaul all application and internet traffic through the data center. This approach adds latency and wastes bandwidth while impacting application reliability.

2. Inconsistent policies
Your clients may have separate security sets deployed on-premises, at the branch, in the cloud, and for home locations. As a result, it’s virtually impossible to ensure consistent policy enforcement across the network. IT teams’ network visibility and control are often fragmented, which can lead to security threats.

3. Implicit Trust
Off-network users using a VPN to access applications—whether on-prem or in the cloud—are usually authenticated with a generic authentication process that provides access to the entire network. However, if a user’s laptop, identity or credential is compromised, cybercriminals can access and roam the network.

A Two-Pronged Approach to Delivering QoE
While securing networks and delivering QoE to WFA teams may seem daunting to your clients, you can introduce SD-WAN and ZTNA solutions that address these challenges.

SD-WAN provides reliable connections to cloud-based applications—helping to ensure QoE. Offer your clients’ Secure SD-WAN on a purpose-built security platform. These solutions blend advanced connectivity with enterprise-grade security, all managed through a single console for consistent policy creation, deployment and enforcement.

Combine Secure SD-WAN with Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) which enables IT teams to provide peruser access to specific applications. ZTNA ensures that every device, user and application is seen and controlled regardless of where they are connecting. ZTNA grants per-use access, enforces user identity and device posture and provides continuous monitoring.

Help your clients confidently offer an optimal QoE to their WFA workforces by providing solutions like SD-WAN and ZTNA that keep their networks and applications secure.