As an added and unforeseen bonus especially during the pandemic shutdowns, the SASE solution was able to allow all end-users and devices to authenticate and gain secure access to all the resources both cloud and on-premise, that they are authorized to reach protected by security, located close to them. Once authenticated, the end-users had direct access to those resources, rather than having to be routed to a central location via traditional firewall and VPN. This dramatically reduced latency issues for all users working from home. 

Never Trust and Always Verify. Hmm, doesn't sound very productive in most business situations, but if you're talking about technology and security, I think we might be on to something.

"The traditional perimeter-based security model is dead. It has been overtaken by an era of cloud, mobility, and BYOD that requires a new approach to network access control."

The Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) model is a new method of access control that considers all network connections untrusted. This is a shift from the traditional concept of an inside/outside network where only some connections were considered trusted. The ZTNA model requires organizations to consider all traffic as potential threats, which means security controls must be in place at every stage of the attack lifecycle and beyond the firewall layer into your environment.

Never Trust and Always Verify is the general premise behind Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). A strong proponent for the replacement of traditional remote access like Virtual Private Networking (VPN), where a secure tunnel straight into the corporate network is created and anything that goes through that tunnel is presumed "safe" and "trusted". There are a number of "faith-based" assumptions that take place when using  VPN. One big one being the remote device creating the tunnel is still a trusted device. ZTNA takes a different approach: nothing is trusted and everything must be verified. This might seem laborious, but the user experience is minimally affected and security benefits are significant.

ZTNA is starting to turn heads with IT for its protection of applications, data, and networks, easier control, and innate simplicity allowing access to remote staff, suppliers, and contractors. Some providers offer client and clientless versions for far greater flexibility and no need to constantly update Active Directory just to let a supplier in for two hours worth of work. And even provided secure access to users' personal devices without the typically required "big brother'"intrusions. 

The real power of ZTNA comes when its combined with the power of a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution. These two put together forms a full security barrier and flexible perimeter thoroughly protecting endpoints and users. 

Using disparate/separate SASE and ZTNA platforms can certainly be done, but should only be done so by the most adept and experience security professionals. The management interface and integration of these separated systems is highly complex. Many solutions exist  that combine both SASE and ZTNA together with a single management interface. Some providers also offer a completely managed solutions as well. 

Regardless there is a lot to consider. Contact us and we'll get you in contact with a Strategic Tech Expert to wal you through all of the options and find out who the best vendors are for your business

We are now almost one-year into this ridiculous pandemic. Who could’ve imagined anything this crazy and far-reaching would happen and last this long? There’s a buzz, a feeling, and it’s almost palpable. Is that… could that be hope? There is certainly the smell of rebound in the air. As talks of rebooting and restarting take root, executives are already feeling the pressure to optimize, reinvest, and continue to reduce costs to help keep their companies moving forward.

According to PwC, managing the financial impacts of COVID—operations, future periods, liquidity, and capital resources— are the main concern for 75 percent of CFOs. Early on, executives had been concerned about a global recession, reduced workforce productivity, low consumer confidence, and supply chain disruptions. It has been and somewhat remains a “wait and see” economy.

Seventy-four percent of respondents in PwC’s study said they are prepared for a potentially “significant” impact on productivity. 39% of respondents in PwC’s study said that if COVID-19 were to end immediately, it would take one to three months for their company to get back to business as usual. That sentiment is changing as executives have realized that business as usual will no longer be usual. 

How are CFOs Responding to COVID-19?

“Cautiously optimistic” seems to be the theme for 2021, says most CFOs interviewed. Compared to early summer 2020 when sixty-seven percent of CFOs said they are considering canceling planned investments due to COVID-19, this is a big step in the right direction. At that time executives anticipated making cuts to facilities and general capital expenditures (82%), their workforce (67%), and operations (55%). Those cuts seem to be reversing with operational expenditures being the first to be revived. 

What’s more, 53 percent of CFOs claimed that IT investments were in the crosshairs, while 25 percent were looking to reduce or eliminate digital transformation. And 15 percent considered reducing customer experience spend with just 2 percent looking to reduce cybersecurity spend. But it seems this is no longer the case!

Management is revisiting, rethinking, and revising the way they do things. 2021, while cautiously optimistic, will also be the year of reinvention. The pandemic shook many organizations to the core, breaking the bonds of apathy and compelling them to embrace radical changes. Many businesses are on the path to consolidate the previous years’ insights and accelerate response to new ideas and innovations and it seems a solid digital transformation strategy at its core. Much of that strategy will be to continue to find creative ways to cut costs without sacrificing technology itself. 

CFOs need to understand, though, that it is possible to reduce technology expenses significantly, while maintaining — and even improving —operational stability. Doing so could free more capital to spend on staff, protecting jobs, and preventing the need to part ways with top talent.

But relying on understaffed, overworked IT may not deliver the best results. Especially considering many of the technologies, strategies, and tactics fall outside ITs wheelhouse. This is where it pays to have access to an independent Strategic Partner and Technology Expert. With the help of Cloud 9 Advisers, consultants can identify possible areas of waste and strategically re-allocate funding. Cloud 9 can provide access to a variety of key suppliers and technologies to help with this process. Protecting these budgets will determine how companies spend these resources and ensure the best outcome for all involved.

Here are some recommendations that companies should consider during this tough time, and how Cloud 9 can help:

Leverage Technology/Telecom Expense Management (TEM)

Businesses have a rat’s nest of bills ranging from network, phone, mobile, and everything in between. With complex, cryptic, and hard-to-understand bills, businesses often spend far too much money each month on unnecessary telecom expenses that can be reduced or, in some cases, eliminated. It can be challenging for CFOs to adjust plans and eliminate certain technologies, though, due to limited visibility or insight.

Cloud 9 Advisers has several vendors that specialize in these areas. We have access to TEM experts that can help a company get its digital infrastructure ‘house’ in order by assisting them in identifying waste and prioritizing what they need to be using — making it easier to slash costs. 

This exact concept also applies to corporate Mobile/Wireless plans as well. Sometimes referred to specifically as Wireless Expense Management (WEM). 

Take a closer look at Corporate Mobile Carrier Spend

Company-provided mobile phone and data plans are easy targets for finding savings without changing carriers, contracts, or eliminating plans altogether. Data overages make up, on average, over 35 percent of a business’ mobile bill. You can fix this by either modifying the plan to accommodate the higher data utilization, or you can try asking employees to minimize their data consumption. Add to the problem a complete lack of billing transparency (you can’t tell if an employee is using their data on work-related activities or giving their phone to a child who is watching hours of Netflix and YouTube on the company’s tab).

One of the best ways to prevent employees from blowing through their data limits is to deploy a back-end firewall and traffic-shaping service that deploys directly into the mobile carrier’s network, giving insight to application use and allowing clients the ability to limit specific app usage to avoid expensive overage penalties without any changes to phones, plans, or SIM cards. This service integrates with the carriers directly so there is no reduction in performance of user devices like with other enterprise deployed options. 

Other Cloud 9 vendors in Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), Managed Mobility Services (MMS), and Wireless Expense Management (WEM) can provide incredible savings through mobile carrier management, cost optimization, in-depth tracking, daily/weekly/monthly plan optimization, and continual analysis of the overall corporate mobility environment. All of which can be done without changing the carrier, agreement, or service itself. These services are also budget-neutral where they only get paid if and when they have realized savings on your mobile carrier bill, then they’ll get paid from a portion of your savings. 

Another option may be to switch to a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). Unlike the “big three” these mobile carriers are not hindered by the limits of their own towers, coverage, and networks. Rather, MVNOs can utilize the networks of all three of the big-three carriers simultaneously. The MVNO is the mobile carrier from the customer perspective but MVNOs are able to pool minutes and data across all three major carriers and give you far more flexibility for each of your corporate mobile users. MVNOs also purchase enormous amounts of data and minutes from these main carriers at the wholesale-level, so they can pass on significant savings and unique plans to customers. Switching to an MVNO can often save customers 25 to 40% on corporate mobile plans.

Cloud 9’s in-house team of vendor-neutral mobility and IoT experts can help find the right options for you and the best vendors to fulfill the plan. 

Migrate to SD-WAN and/or SASE Where Possible

Far too many companies are still using old, limited, and very expensive MPLS, Point-to-Point, and other legacy and carrier-based, WAN technologies where some will limit speeds to guarantee quality. SD-WAN can help companies leverage nearly any type of available connection, including inexpensive and very fast broadband connections, that emulate and often exceed MPLS quality, with massive increases in speed at far less cost. It accomplishes this by controlling and strategically allocating multiple connected links, for peak performance and maximum cost savings, across an entire global network. In many instances, it could make sense to replace expiring MPLS contracts that customers have with the large telcos with SD-WAN. 

Some SD-WAN service providers can add their service to augment an existing MPLS network, increase its speed, agility, and uptime, and make the transition far easier when it’s time to dump the MPLS. Enterprises with a need for global WAN should especially pay attention to SDWAN and SASE solutions.

A relatively new term, coined by Gartner, Secure Access Service Edge or SASE (pronounced “sassy”) might be considered the next-generation of SDWAN, bringing with it a host of advanced security features. While SASE and SDWAN can exist separately they work exceptionally well together, like bread and butter. SASE is especially appealing to hybrid, remote, distributed enterprises. In addition to next-gen firewall capabilities, SASE adds a special gatekeeper where users and their requests for data will be stopped to check for correct identity and access. This gatekeeper is much smarter than a typical firewall alone and can deploy stateful filtering by examining the data inside the requests and make intelligent decisions based upon these values.

Cloud 9 employs a team of unbiased network, connectivity, and WAN experts to help clients sort out all the options, choices, variants, and vendors in both the SASE and SDWAN markets. Our vendors are Gartner quadrant leaders and others and thoroughly vetted and scrutinized. 

Revisit SIP

For enterprise customers that still run on-premise PBX systems and trying to get the most out of those investments, it’s time to pull out that last bill. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk pricing has substantially decreased in recent years, providing another easy target for cost-savings. Cloud 9’s communications and telecom experts can help sort out the best options for you. 

Explore Mid-Term Renewal

Another way to save money is to lock in today’s rates and by committing to a longer-term with a telecom provider. This is called mid-term renewal, and it’s a strategy that companies tend to overlook because they aren’t aware that it’s possible.

Cloud 9 Advisers can help negotiate telecom rates, positioning customers for long-term financial savings on essential services.

Managed Services

Across the board, IT departments are understaffed, overworked, and exhausted right now — working nights and weekends to keep employees up and running on remote networks. COVID has been a nightmare for IT staff. Yet, most companies can’t afford to hire more full-time IT due to the current economic climate.

One approach is to keep a small core of IT staff and then augment them with help from third-party managed service providers at a fraction of the cost. Managed services can be used for everything from helpdesk support to network security to WAN management. This is a flexible, affordable, and scalable approach to specialized help or for general, broad-based IT support. Cloud 9 offers a wide range of managed services from a robust portfolio of providers such as Synoptek, Thrive Networks, Quest Technology Management, Netrio, and Splice.

A Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP), as defined by Gartner, provides outsourced monitoring and management of security devices and systems. Common services include managed firewall, intrusion detection, virtual private network, vulnerability scanning, and antiviral services. MSSPs use high-availability security operation centers (SOC) to provide 24/7 services designed to reduce the number of operational security personnel an enterprise needs to hire, train and retain to maintain an acceptable security posture.

Most MSSPs go much further than just monitoring to provide full risk and security assessments, penetration testing, and remediation services. The MSSP can provide significant peace-of-mind to executives, get organizations compliant, and be a significant load off in-house IT that likely doesn’t have the training or expertise to perform high-level security strategies and tactics suited from many enterprises.

Re-think and Consolidate Maintenance Agreements

Telecom hardware and other system maintenance agreements typically arise once every few years. And while they’re necessary for system stability and performance, they’re also costly —and companies tend to pay far too much.

Consolidating multiple system maintenance agreements may reduce costs by up to 25%. Work with Cloud 9 to find appropriate third-party maintenance & support providers to consolidate agreements and improve terms and service.

Deploy Automated Assistants

As we mentioned, CFOs are looking to reduce Customer Experience (CX) spend to save money. However, this can be risky. Customers still expect reliable service, even during challenging times. Many recent surveys reveal that customers reward businesses that meet them when, where, and how they want. Customers want to look up, research, explore, and ultimately buy the way that best suits them, The demand for seamless service hasn’t gone away —and certain technologies can boost CX while allowing companies to re-allocate staff members to tackle more pressing needs.

Tasks like answering phones and chat help, for instance, can now be off-loaded using virtual live-answer receptionists and chat assistants. Sometimes referred to as an “answering service”, these automated assistants don’t come with any additional salary or benefits but come to you as a service and as a virtually unlimited team to provide 24/7 customer support by highly trained humans!

Other, more involved, considerations might be to look at Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). These services can off-load many tasks including customer service itself. Domestic and international staff augmentation is available by highly trained and certified professionals, medical billing experts, and even registered nurses. 

Cloud 9 Advisers specializes in communications technology and solutions related to Customer Experience and Contact Center to help clients rationalize and reduce technology spending without sacrificing technology itself. 

Explore the Internet of Things (IoT)

It may seem hard to justify spending money on new connected technologies right now. However, certain IoT solutions can prove to make a big difference in reducing operational costs, especially when deployed on a large scale. 

For example, an HVAC & Refrigeration company that services restaurants and grocery stores may use connected sensors to monitor and control refrigerator and freezer unit temperatures and other critical metrics across all of its serviced customers — based on certain thresholds, the company would be able to better predict when units need maintenance, reducing the need for costly manual inspections and wasted truck-rolls, and greatly improved customer service.

Other examples include trash dumpster load sensors, moister, humidity and water leak detectors for a range of applications, and numerous “smart building” solutions that produce immediate and obvious cost savings.

IoT costs have also fallen in recent years, and connected technologies are now very accessible to businesses of all sizes and budgets. Making a small technology investment now could produce significant financial savings and ROI in a short time.

Contact our Mobility/IoT experts to learn more about creative ways to apply IoT.  in your business. 

Be Innovative

It’s normal during strange and unusual times like these to be conservative, but it is clear at this point that the pandemic isn’t going anywhere and when it is finally over everything will be different in many respects. We can no longer consider it a temporary setback. It’s time to review, rethink, and revise. Even minor investments in smart innovations will make a huge impact. 

A conservative mindset to protect spend and budgets is absolutely the right emotion; however, leaders that take this catalyst to find new and creative ways to accomplish critical tasks, saving money doing so, and enable their companies to take advantage of new technologies to make them more competitive will have powerful advantages over their competitors that attempt to survive the status quo.

There may be some light at the end of this pandemic tunnel… oh wait, no. That’s just a guy on a bicycle with a flashlight coming this way to tell us it ain’t over yet. Nevermind.  ...but it is clear that many companies will never go back to demanding employees come to the office once this thing is finally over. The thought of not coming back to the office at all has crossed the minds of some owners, founders, and executives, leaving the open question “do we still need to pay all that money for all that space?”

We can no longer assume the current environment is temporary and we must start planning and investing accordingly. The systems and tools that once supported the occasional road-warrior workforce and coincidentally served companies so well during the initial season of COVID now need to be revisited, rethought, and revised. 

The glorious benefits and ability to work from anywhere has been in the vernacular of tech company sales teams for ages now. I remember, just a few years ago, being required to chant “anytime, anywhere, any device” in every sales meeting I had back when I was pedaling phone systems. Even if it was just for a 50 site gas station franchise. 

Once relegated to traveling executives and sales teams, now the anytime, anywhere, any device mantra is the prevailing, and often only, option for many people. But enterprise tech needs to go much further than a decent cloud phone system and a VPN connection if companies want to pivot and make real and lasting changes.

Digital transformation is the promise of fundamentally changing how businesses operate and deliver value to customers by integrating “digital” into all areas of the business. It is no longer a distant pipe dream to keep pushing to the back burner. It is real, it is important, and it is necessary for change. Of the many categories, parts, and tactics to an overall digital transformation strategy, a solid security foundation might be the most important and therefore the best place to start. 

Those systems and tools that once served so well in the beginning of the pandemic now need closer inspection. Creating an extended and enhanced secure foundation is critical. One that is nimble and flexible, able to support the “new normal” hybrid/remote workforce, able to provide access to all the company’s workflows, and enhance collaboration for dispersed teams.

The following sections are elements and excerpts from the article “6 top security technologies to protect remote workers” from our friends at www.CSOonline.com and written by Peter Wayner, Contributing Editor. We’ve embellished, elaborated, added, and removed some to fit here better. They illustrate a few basic security tools and technologies to support the new age of full-time and hybrid remote workers.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

One of the first challenges will be identifying the users. The old-fashioned password may be sufficient within the confines of a trusted office but adding a layer of assurance is better. The simplest solution is to require a second level of authentication such as the employees’ mobile phones. Some service providers like 8x8, GoTo, Vonage, Ooma, and RingCentral offer a wide range of communications channels to users including business SMS text messaging.

More sophisticated solutions use apps running locally on the mobile device that can generate single-use passwords based upon the time. Tools like Google Authenticator, DuoLingo, FreeOTP, and LinOTP store a shared secret when the user first initializes them and then uses this to generate a new password each time the user wants to log in.

For the hyper-secure, there is increased interest in dedicated hardware tokens that apply all encryption and authentication algorithms inside a special piece of hardware. Tools like the RSA SecurID, Yubikey, or Onlykey aren’t susceptible to attacks that are able to infiltrate the desktop or mobile operating systems. They offer increased security but at the cost of requiring users to juggle one more device.

Identity and access management

The tools for multi-factor authentication (MFA) need to work closely with enterprise applications, and this is a challenge for in-house developers who will need to adjust the local codebase. Some teams are turning to identity and access management (IAM) services. They are often referred to as Identity as a Service (IDaaS) or authentication as a service (but AaaS is not really a thing)  IAM is  designed to be easily integrated into any codebase. Software from companies like Auth0 or Okta handles identity and access management with the best algorithms, allowing the in-house developers to concentrate on the business logic.

Auth0, for instance, offers a collection of quick-start examples that let a developer cut and paste a few lines of code and secure everything inside the application. The code from Auth0 adds a login dialog box and then the Auth0 servers check the password and enforce any stronger rules like a requirement for two-factor authentication. If you need to trigger a mobile app or send an SMS, Auth0’s servers do the work. When it is satisfied, it passes control back to your application.

Okta offers a similar set of services and likes to call its approach an “identity engine” for testing anyone who wants access. It rolls together a collection of authentication and management tools into a flexible pipeline that simplifies creating accounts and granting the owners correct access. The steps can be configured to include a variety of options like tracking the user’s specific laptop or phone to reduce the focus on the password alone.

The companies also simplify the work of juggling all the accounts by providing a dashboard for tracking users, adding new accounts and adjusting access roles. The developer can add a sophisticated layer that organizes both identity and authentication with the pre-tested code. 

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)

If you use a virtual private network (VPN), you already know that you must be able to trust the endpoint. Keep in mind that just because the company bought the asset three years ago doesn’t necessarily mean that it is still a trusted endpoint.

While still widely used, VPN itself leaves much to be desired and is beginning to show its age. Today, VPN is not the best model for a world where there are no clear lines that mark where the office begins and where it ends. Growing in popularity as an alternative, some organizations are adopting a zero-trust model, which assumes that all employees are logging in from a dangerous place like, say, a coffee shop whose WiFi is compromised by an evil hacker collective. ZTNA always assumes that all packets are flowing through enemy territory. 

This wary attitude is not just for bits and bytes traveling over the network. Many inward-facing applications are constructed with the assumption that they will live in a secure network because some firewall or other tool has filtered out dangerous packets. The old paradigm of a strong perimeter made it possible for application developers to ignore security concerns.

Moving to zero trust means shifting attitudes. Todd Thiemann, vice president of marketing at threat intelligence firm HYAS, says, “The perimeter is thoroughly dead. If you are relying on gateway security, you are not watching all the traffic flowing in and out of the work-from-home [and other remote] endpoints.”

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)

Another way to rework existing applications for staff on the open internet is to add a special gatekeeper where users and their requests for data will be stopped to check for correct identity and access. One growing architectural model for this kind of smart, pan-enterprise filter is a process that some vendors call “Secure Access Service Edge” or SASE (pronounced “sassy”). This gatekeeper is much smarter than a typical firewall and can deploy stateful filtering by examining the data inside the requests and make intelligent decisions based upon these values. SASE aims to remove the outdated idea of a site-centric network to a more user-centric approach. 

This new layer can be added to protect any of the various cloud and web services including many that might even be hosted outside the company. The user’s computer talks only to the SASE gatekeeper and the other services only answer to requests that have been checked by the SASE gatekeeper.

Solutions from companies like CATO Networks, Cloud Genix (Palo Alto), Open Systems, and others not only combine all the benefits of SDWAN and Next-Gen Firewall technologies but also track users over time and make decisions about access to all services even if they aren’t hosted in the same location or the same cloud.

Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP)

If it isn’t evident by now, allow me to reiterate. Networks operate far differently than in the past and especially so these days. Considering the dramatic increase in and changing patterns of traffic; both internal and external, the traditional “fixed” perimeter is severely limited. The traditional perimeter usually and simply deemed the internal network as trustworthy and the external network as hostile. Visibility and accessibility were the basis of that traditional approach. 

SDP is an extension of an overall zero-trust methodology and effectively creates a new flexible network perimeter. Rather than a fixed, static perimeter, SDP functionality deploys multiple dynamic perimeters to account for cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid environments, and on-premise and heavily relies on two important things; authentication and authorization. SDP can also be especially useful for the required dynamic access of today’s (and tomorrow’s) mostly permanent remote workforce.

Cloud applications and storage

Employees’ remote computers can’t become regular storage locations for sensitive documents and data. Employees should not be able to work with sensitive information with unencrypted thumb drives or other hardware and leave the data in locations where thieves could prey upon them. Ransomware continues to be a serious threat for destroying remote data.

Many companies are shifting to web-based office tools like Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) or Microsoft Teams where cloud storage with encryption is available. These platforms are very flexible, perfect for dispersed teams, and relatively easy to deploy to a large workforce, but the security details are still not completely understood. While the major companies employ large security teams, the model of shipping code to people’s browsers is still evolving. Google, for example, suffered an embarrassing leak of private documents. And Microsoft has had its share of awkward moments and outages. 

On the other hand, from a security perspective, these two giants have cleared several strict Federal cloud security programs like FedRAMP and others. FedRAMPs mission is to “promote the adoption of secure cloud services across the Federal Government by providing a standardized approach to security and risk assessment.” Ultra-security conscience agencies and contractors often rely on FedRAMP approved vendors and service providers because of the strict minimum standards required. 

TLS certificates

When employees log in remotely, they should use encrypted connections. Make sure websites have updated TLS certificates and the sites use HTTPS for all communications. Installing certificates to enable encrypted web connections couldn’t be easier thanks to the efforts of projects like Let’s Encrypt. Certificates offering more elaborate guarantees like organization are found with other certificate authorities like DigiCert, GeoTrust and Comodo. Many cloud providers and colocation services will resell certificates.

Review assumptions about remote security

Some of the most important steps are not technical; they’re emotional and personal. “Everybody went home very rapidly and now I think we're in an era where we have to formalize procedures,” says Greg Conti, a co-founder of cybersecurity research firm Kopidlon. “We can’t assume it's temporary, then we need to develop policies for the long haul." 

One important premise behind digital transformation is user and customer accessibility. The best foundation for digital transformation is “distributed” security. The best strategy for security is a layered approach. Combining a few, or in some cases all, of the technologies and techniques here may be the right approach for your organization. For example ZTNA and SDP work well together, when done right. In many instances, these technologies can completely replace existing legacy solutions and methodologies. Caution should be taken so that things don’t get unnecessarily complicated and undermine goals and objectives.. 

Everyone should pause and revisit all decisions made in haste. The pandemic forced everyone to act quickly and in some cases rashly. It’s no longer a matter of holding on until this thing is over. Even if it’s all ends tomorrow it has changed everything and those changes aren’t going away.

Last summer, Gartner estimated SASE adoption at less than 1% of enterprises and said it would take five to 10 years before the technology reaches mainstream. But today, SASE is one of the main topics of client interest, according to Gartner analyst John Wheeler.

"Companies that were on the fence about whether to upgrade to SASE, they're falling over to the 'adopt now' side," says Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research. "If I'm trying to move to a modernized application infrastructure, why am I still using a network architecture designed for client-server from 30 years ago? A lot of my apps are now in the cloud, I've got people working from everywhere. This transition would have happened with or without the pandemic, but the pandemic has accelerated it."

Sanjay Uppal, senior vice president and general manager of the VeloCloud business unit at VMware, says that use of the company's SASE network has gone up five-fold since the pandemic hit. "It's a dramatic increase," he says. "We had one company that has deployed 5,000 employees at home in less than one week. Another customer called up and said they had to send 500 nurses and diagnosticians [to work from] home."

Networking without new hardware 

For new SASE customers, the biggest delay is typically on the hardware side. Employees may need new SASE edge devices to handle networking and security in employee homes. In addition, corporate data centers may need new hardware to connect to the SASE networks.

But there are also ways to deploy SASE without any new hardware. CloudCheckr, a 200-person software company that makes cloud management tools, uses Zscaler's SASE platform to connect its employees to the cloud services they need to do their jobs, including AWS infrastructure, in a secure way.

By: Mike Siegler, CEO, ECESSA

Networking best practices include installing redundant Internet connections from different providers and a device to facilitate automatic failover. The secondary connection doesn’t have to be as robust as your fiber ring – but it does need to handle core business functions while repairs are being made on that primary circuit. Remember, those repairs could take hours – or days.

Even the most reliable telecommunications providers acknowledge some probability of service disruption. Most public broadband Internet providers do not offer any service level guarantees. Unless your area is hit with a major disaster like a hurricane or forest fire, it’s unlikely two providers will experience service issues at the same time. By leveraging two or more providers, organizations mitigate the risk of an outage or intermittent service disruptions. Redundancy and automatic link failover, provided by an intelligent SD-WAN controller, should be a critical piece of every organization’s business continuity planning, as well as a key to optimizing daily performance.

Find out more about Ecessa's Secure SDWAN for internet optimization and redundancy solutions by reaching out to Cloud 9 Advisers. Ecessa is one of only a handful of "SDWAN-only" and "SDWAN-focused" providers in the market today, where the only thing they do is SDWAN, and all of those providers are available through the Cloud 9 Supplier Portfolio. Contact Cloud 9 today to find out if SDWAN and Ecessa are right for your business. 

Cloud 9 Supplier Spotlight:  Aryaka

By: Syed Ghayur, Aryaka

• Cost – more routers are needed to deploy and manage as well as additional MPLS fees.
  
• Complexity – already overcommitted teams must manage multiple systems to fulfill network and security needs across multiple locations, and traditional MPLS-based networks are notoriously hard to provision or modify.
  
• Performance – with the rise of SaaS-based apps comes a need to not only ensure that networks are performing as needed, but that the apps critical for employees and customers are as well.
  
• Security – data breaches and attacks are part of today’s reality, and in the world of cloud services where data is traveling over the public internet, there is no fixed perimeter to patrol.

So how can organizations cost-effectively and securely meet the needs of remote branch offices? In reality, overcoming the challenges presented by centralized network architecture or legacy SD-WANs means re-imagining remote office IT infrastructure. It needs to be cloud-delivered rather than based on complex hardware or software stacks, and:

• WANs have to be unconstrained and highly reliable
  
• Security has to be pervasive across multi-cloud, SaaS, and data centers
  
• Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), voice, and video have to be highly reliable
  
• Multi-cloud access has to be high-speed
  
• IT operations have to be proactive

Next-gen WANs: The CloudGenix Autonomous WAN

The CloudGenix Autonomous SD-WAN uses global intelligence to deliver performance and security SLAs for all applications over any WAN-type. By providing app-policies aligned to business intent, direct access to multi-cloud and dev-ops frameworks, it delivers significant productivity gains and cost-savings compared to gen-1 SD-WAN alternatives.

• Apply traffic policy to application traffic. No longer are they restricted to applying policy within the on-premise network. L3 is insufficient in a multi-cloud, hybrid model. L3 – L7 is ideal.
  
• Ensure consistent performance and high availability by automatically monitoring performance metrics against threshold, minimizing the need for manual intervention.
  
• Create policies in the cloud once and deploy them everywhere without the need for backhauling traffic to a controller
  
• Via an easy-to-use platform, integrate other services to be used in conjunction with SD-WAN and deploy them with a few clicks