With many of us working from home during COVID-19, one unexpected benefit remote workers may be experiencing is better performance and faster response times to the business applications that are used daily to perform our jobs, such as email in Office 365 or GSuite, Salesforce, Dropbox and many other cloud-based applications. This improved performance may be a result of not traversing across a corporate network to get access to the internet to reach these cloud-based applications. You may have a more direct path to these applications from home than you have from your office, especially if you work at a remote branch office that is tied to a corporate network.
This unprecedented event has proven that the internet is clearly capable of providing enterprise level networking. Surely, each of us has experienced the occasional fuzzy video or audio drop, but by and large, the internet has held up well with the big spikes in network traffic since stay at home orders were put in place.
As organizations will look to cut costs with reduced budgets, Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) provides an opportunity to lower network costs while improving application and network performance for the branch offices to cloud-based applications you’re accessing from home today. SD-WAN enables you to augment or replace your traditional legacy WAN services with lower cost broadband internet services for direct access to cloud-based applications and ensures that performance is not sacrificed in doing so.
Security must still be a key consideration when implementing a SD-WAN solution as enabling direct internet access at branch offices opens the network to more entry points for potential threats. Combining network security and SD-WAN onto a single platform provides the ability to gain improved remote branch application performance while ensuring your critical assets and data are protected from outside threats. A combined Secure SD-WAN platform also reduces equipment costs and management complexity. Organizations with legacy MPLS network infrastructure should take a hard look at the performance and cost benefits a secure SD-WAN solution can provide as more and more applications move to the cloud and out of the corporate data center.
To learn more about Managed Secure SD-WAN, CONTACT US TODAY!
Every company is aware that the proper data protection measures are of utmost importance. Yet many businesses still utilize older methods of data backup such as tape systems, costly onsite backup methods, and offsite systems that may mean several days until recovery takes place. These methods consume resources and pose more risks of failure in addition to being complex, costly, and labor intensive.
New data backup and recovery technologies eliminate (more…)
In the current economic downturn where IT budgets are declining and the demand for IT resources is increasing, the expectations for many companies are you must accomplish more with less. As a result, many businesses and enterprises are working to find ways to cut costs without compromising productivity while remaining competitive. With all of these pressures and responsibilities how do you ensure ongoing growth while meeting compliance requirements and your service level agreements?
The answer to this dilemma is the incorporation of new technologies into your IT infrastructure. Although this may sound like you are increasing IT capital expenditures you are actually cutting costs while increasing productivity in response to the ever changing market. Here are some thoughts on how to reduce costs while still maintaining the competitive advantage. (more…)
Network monitoring is an essential responsibility for businesses of all sizes. Medium-sized and large companies typically have a network monitoring system in place either onsite or offsite in the cloud but what about small businesses? This is exactly what hackers are asking when they are seeking to breach a network.
In the last few years small businesses have become (more…)
Backdoors are a method that hackers use to establish unauthorized access to a network from a remote location. Hackers use backdoors as a means of gaining repeated access to a network without being logged by the systems administrator. This type of network intrusion hides its presence while the hacker is actually using the network without the knowledge of others.
How Backdoors Work
Hackers gain access to a network by (more…)
As many of you have probably noticed, the number of network security breaches in the news has been on the rise. Some of you are probably thinking “thank goodness I am at a small company”. The unfortunate truth though is you are just as likely, if not more likely to be a target of online hackers.
As the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out in their July 21st article “Hackers Shift Attacks to Small Firms”, small businesses end up being very lucrative for (more…)
Many companies that have a series of branch offices or a staff that works remotely deploy what is known as a virtual private network or VPN. The primary purpose of a VPN is to allow business partners to communicate over a secure network from a remote location via IPsec or Internet Protocol Security. By using a VPN companies view this as one of the safest ways to link users together that are distributed across multiple locations.
Not only are VPNs used to communicate securely over a public network such as the Internet VPNs are also (more…)
Efficient IT management is all about being prepared for an emergency situation. It can be achieved by regularly updating your network management software and monitoring the network constantly to prevent dangerous attackers from accessing your network. For successful network management, network security is the most important step towards making your network resistant to attacks.
Improving your Network Vulnerability
A network security suite not only provides protection from internet attacks but also from
Most people only regard bandwidth and latency as the health of a network. They don’t realize the importance of security and loads on servers. Viruses and bugs decrease the quality of your network. High load on servers can lead to high response time or sometimes poor internet speed.
First thing you should analyze is (more…)