Security and SD-WAN, a Doubleheader for MSSPs

… selecting solutions that offer the combined differentiation without additional total cost of ownership and complexity (which is commonly associated with multiple vendors, appliances and touch points).

How-To for Differentiated Service

If you’re an MSP looking to take advantage of the convergence of SD-WAN and security, consider the following features and tools that will enable a differentiated service for customers:

• Single point of procurement — Why manage multiple devices and appliances from multiple vendors when you can leverage a single appliance or device that offers LAN/WAN networking and routing features (such as support for multiple WAN links, dynamic traffic distribution and optimized route selection, site-to-site VPN setups, and traffic shaping, and more), combined with network security services? This enables the lowest total cost of ownership associated with deployment, management, technical training and program benefits.
• Zero-touch deployments for both services — The ability to deploy the combined solution without technical expertise on-site can be invaluable to customers. This eliminates the cost and complexity associated with travel and remote deployments.
• Centralized remote management and remote monitoring — It’s important to have a simple and intuitive interface that enables setup and management of networking functions. This can include link monitoring for jitter/loss/latency, application traffic management, and quality of service, in addition to functionality that enables MSPs to set up security policies and deliver remote reporting for usage and compliance. As a result, MSPs can deliver cost effective, differentiated services, while demonstrating success to their customers.
• Layered and packaged security services — MSPs should look for consolidated offerings that include services from stateful firewalls with HTTPS inspection. This includes the ability to add fundamental security services such as URL web filtering, application control and gateway antivirus (which can be the key to preventing common threats). Furthermore, you want the ability to add advanced security services such as DNS filtering or built-in cloud sandboxing with threat endpoint or network intelligence (for detection and response against evasive and zero-day threats).

SMBs need simplicity with packaged services. MSPs have an amazing opportunity to give them that by leveraging solutions that consolidate use cases, as with SD-WAN and security. This strategy can greatly reduce costs and simplify management processes as MSPs scale to meet their customers’ packaged needs, while still maximizing profits.

As security threats and network complexity increases, what challenges are your customers facing?

Himanshu Verma is a director of product management at WatchGuard Technologies, with a primary focus on delivering WatchGuard products and solutions to the managed security service provider (MSSP) market. Prior to WatchGuard, he held product management roles for the enterprise authentication-as-a-service division of SafeNet (now Gemalto). During his time at SafeNet, Himanshu helped transition the enterprise authentication business from a traditional on-premises product to a successful SaaS solution. He has extensive experience in in-bound and out-bound product management, engineering and R&D for information security and data protection technologies. Follow @watchguard on Twitter or Verma on LinkedIn.