Secure SD-WAN

Fortinet SD-WAN is a software-defined wide-area network architecture to enable digital innovations. SD-WAN solutions transform an organisation’s capabilities by leveraging the corporate WAN as well as multi-cloud connectivity to deliver high-speed application performance at the WAN Edge of branch sites. SD-WAN provides a centralised control mechanism that can determine and route the ideal path for traffic—MPLS, 3G/4G/5G, or broadband—ensuring organisations can quickly and easily access business-critical cloud applications. But SD-WAN solutions don’t provide in-built security which is critical for direct internet access. Secure SD-WAN enables organisations to enable Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) with SD-WAN in a simplified offering.

Fortinet received second consecutive NSS Labs “Recommended” rating in the SD-WAN Group Test. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN delivered lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) per Mbps among all eight vendors.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN Solutions provide:

• • World’s only ASIC Accelerated Secure SD-WAN
  • 5,000+ application identification and steering
  • Best User-Experience based on WAN remediation
  • Advance routing capabilities and WAN optimisation
  • Best Security Posture with built-in NGFW

How SD-WAN Works:

An SD-WAN solution connects users to any application wherever it resides from data center to the cloud. SD-WAN intelligently determines which path best meets the ideal performance needs for a specific application. It then routes the traffic through to the ideal WAN path, whereas traditional WAN architectures only have the ability to route all applications through MPLS. Below are a few characteristics that define how an SD-WAN solution works and has evolved from a WAN infrastructure:

Application Awareness

With traditional WAN solutions, organizations suffer a less than ideal quality of experience and have a hard time delivering high-performance bandwidth for critical applications. Since legacy WAN architectures rely on packet routing, they lack in-depth application visibility. SD-WAN solutions, however, intelligently identify applications on the very first packet of data traffic. Network teams gain the visibility they need about which applications are used most widely across the organization, which helps them make smarter, more well-informed decisions and policies.

Dynamic Path Selection

SD-WAN solutions enable dynamic path selection for traffic to flow through: an MPLS connection, a broadband connection, and LTE. The SD-WAN solution can intelligently identify applications and determine the best path it should take to maximize functionality. Moreover, with self-healing capabilities automatically routes traffic to the next best available link in the event of an outage of the primary link. Not only does this automated capability reduce complexity within the network, but it delivers an improved user experience and improves performance of applications.

Zero-Touch Deployment

SD-WAN solutions provide control and data plane separation to ensure centralized management and orchestration. SD-WAN enables faster deployments with zero-touch provisioning capabilities while doing it at scale. In addition, a unified management console for both network and security operations helps to simplify operations at WAN Edge.