Issue link: https://insights.oneneck.com/i/1469039
CHAPTER 2 The Evolution of Networking and Security Solutions 17 These materials are © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. » Aggregating multiple links to provide greater total bandwidth » Rerouting traffic across an alternate link when a link is congested, unstable, or down » Prioritizing certain application traffic, such as voice and video, to ensure quality of service SD-WAN combines and optimizes traditional WAN technologies, such as MPLS and broadband Internet connections. This allows organizations to efficiently route network traffic to multiple remote branch locations while providing enhanced monitoring and management capabilities. SD-WAN monitors network traffic across all available links in real-time and dynamically selects the best route for each data packet traversing the network. The International Data Corporation predicts that the global SD- WAN market will reach $8 billion by 2021, and research by For- rester reveals that 64 percent of U.S. organizations are planning to implement SD-WAN in the next year. Tackling Internet Security Threats For most of the past 25 years, network security has focused on detecting and preventing malware threats (such as viruses, ransomware, spam, and phishing), identifying and blocking unauthorized Internet use (such as browsing inappropriate con- tent and downloading pirated content), and assuring network performance (with caching proxy and anti-distributed denial-of- service (DDoS) products). Back in 2017, several vendors and analysts in the industry defined a new concept — the secure Internet gateway (SIG). While the SWG is designed mainly for web traffic, this new type of cloud- native solution would offer multiple functions across more traf- fic types — such as domain name system (DNS) security, SWG, firewall as a service (FWaaS), and cloud access security broker (CASB) — to improve security and performance while reducing costs and maintenance tasks. A SIG provides a broad set of secu- rity from the cloud so organizations can protect users no matter where they are. It can easily scale to cover additional traffic and users more efficiently than the older on-premises SWG appliance approach.