Networking

I recently spent time with the CISO of a global financial services company who found himself in a quandary. He knew that his company’s existing port and protocol firewall was woefully inadequate to protect the organization in today’s cybersecurity threat environment, but he couldn’t figure out a reasonable plan for moving to a next-generation platform.

The issue wasn’t funding or resources; his firm understood the importance of cybersecurity and was willing to invest both time and money in protecting its assets. Rather, he was facing significant pressure from his peers on operational teams to complete the migration without any downtime. After all, time is quite literally money in the financial services sector. Other teams were willing to cooperate with the migration but were not willing to endure any downtime.

As we talked through the issue, I explained that there simply wasn’t any way to carry out a firewall migration without any downtime, but that we could work together to develop a plan that would minimize the length of an outage and control the risk of implementing any new features. I’d worked with other customers under similar circumstances and used that knowledge to help my client build out a four-phase migration plan.

Software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) have many benefits, but their key advantages are improving the user experience, leveraging WANs more efficiently, reducing costs and simplifying operations. Proper planning and design of an SD-WAN deployment makes for a smoother process while minimizing potential issues.

Optimizing an SD-WAN deployment, particularly a large-scale one, requires a structured methodology. It’s critical to spend time in the beginning on a thorough requirement-gathering process, which can reduce the number of issues that arise during deployment. Rigorous planning allows for better design, which in turn supports the development of templates that speed up deployment, reduce mistakes and take advantage of economies of scale.

When it comes to cybersecurity analysis, context is critical. A vast amount of information is available to help security systems make automated decisions and to allow analysts to quickly triage security events. This can boost defenses and improve the efficiency of security teams. Recognizing this, cybersecurity vendors are now integrating new elements of data context directly into their products.

Context becomes even more crucial in organizations pursuing a secure access service edge (SASE) approach to networking. SASE recognizes that users no longer all sit in a central office but instead work in a variety of places, including at an office, from home or while traveling. SASE solutions combine a set of cloud-based security services to apply dynamic policies to individuals based on the specific circumstances of each event. The more context available to a SASE system, the better the decisions it can make.

The network edge has evolved drastically in recent years. The pandemic, of course, fast-forwarded everyone’s plans for moving distributed services out to the cloud. As a result, the edge has exploded, and it’s no longer the traditional perimeter of campus and data center networks. The new edge is wherever devices are.

Many universities can benefit from a modernized network, but the coronavirus pandemic made meeting this need a much higher priority. Early in 2020, Kent State University in Ohio had already taken steps toward a core network refresh. After the sudden shift to remote learning and socially distanced on-campus activities, the demand for a refresh became urgent.

Working under a short timeline, CDW partnered with Kent State and Aruba Networks to install new switches, controllers, access points, a master controller and two network management solutions, Aruba NetEdit and Aruba AirWave.

As Wi-Fi 6 and 5G become more widely implemented, the potential benefits they offer for a variety of industries are becoming clearer. Each technology has different use cases but they tend to play well together, delivering the flexibility and seamlessness that users and organizations expect.

5G is a great fit for outdoor applications, such as when colleges need to cover large areas of their campuses. It can be simpler and more cost-effective than trying to supplement coverage with Wi-Fi. 5G will also advance smart city applications, enabling governments to deliver services remotely, such as reading smart water meters. It also can help ensure reliable connections to services including police and emergency response.

Wi-Fi 6 is primarily for use indoors and in large spaces, such as stadiums, where existing cell towers can’t handle the demand. Stadiums also demonstrate the way that Wi-Fi 6 and 5G can work together. A stadium could augment its Wi-Fi 6 installation with 5G as the number of base stations increases. Both are designed for high speed, low latency and high capacity, which makes them align effectively.