Cybersecurity Drivers

The most respondents chose security as their biggest priority on the WAN side of the business. That fits well with just under 40% of them saying that they have integrated their networking and cybersecurity teams.

However, Garson noted that security doesn’t appear to him as the biggest driver of SD-WAN deploment.

For Garson, migrations usually stem from the technology life cycle.

“While security improvement is an obvious benefit of an integrated SASE approach, SD-WAN is typically driven by an expiring MPLS contract and the fact that most applications have moved to the cloud, where internet is the transport of choice,” Garson told Channel Futures. “The security organization has different priorities and the timing of contracts often varies between the network team and the security team. Where security and network teams work closely, security is a driving force.”