Small to mid-size businesses require stable, uninterrupted internet access for essential services like email, cloud storage, video conferencing, and payment processing. However, cyber-attacks are increasing, with small to mid-size businesses as the primary targets. A cyber attack can cost a company an average of $46,000 in recovery, lost business opportunities, and downtime. SD-WAN technology can address these challenges by monitoring internet connections’ quality, rerouting traffic, and notifying network administrators before a full failure occurs, saving on costly downtime and lost business opportunities. This blog post will discuss how SD-WAN technology can help businesses improve operations and provide a cost-effective solution to connectivity and security challenges.
The Benefits of SD-WAN Technology for Businesses
SD-WAN technology provides secure connectivity for physically distant locations across the Internet, saving businesses from using costly point-to-point or MPLS solutions. With SD-WAN technology, companies can securely connect all points of their infrastructure and optimize the throughput and routing of their voice and data traffic. SD-WAN technology also has a secure security system that includes Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Anti-Virus/Malware Detection and Blocking, Web Filtering, and IP/Domain Reputation Monitoring. These features ensure that unauthorized applications do not pose any risk to the organization while blocking malicious inbound virus and malware attacks.
The Importance of Internet Connectivity for Businesses
Internet connectivity is crucial for small to mid-size businesses. Even those using traditional analog telephones are highly dependent on internet connections. Email, cloud storage, video conferencing, and payment processing are essential business services that require stable, uninterrupted internet access to perform correctly. SD-WAN technology can help businesses by monitoring internet connections’ quality, automatically rerouting traffic, and notifying network administrators before a complete failure occurs, ensuring uptime and business continuity.
Multi-Site/Employee Connectivity
Site-to-site connectivity has always been an issue for small to mid-size businesses. The high cost of point-to-point connections and off-the-shelf routers has led to inefficient and often insecure ad-hoc solutions. SD-WAN technology can help businesses by providing secure multi-site connectivity using user-configurable thresholds to determine when to failover. This ensures that connectivity is maintained on all pipes at all times, even in degraded operation, such as high latency or excessive jitter.
The Meraki MX Platform for Enhanced Security
The Meraki MX Platform offers extensive security features, centralized management, network monitoring, and secure multi-site connectivity. It provides businesses with a single-pane-of-glass for monitoring all hardware and identifying branch problems before they propagate. The platform’s security features include Intrusion Detection and Prevention, Content Filtering, Anti-Malware, Geo-IP-Based Firewalling, and Cisco Advanced Malware Protection. The platform’s layer seven fingerprinting technology lets administrators identify unwanted content and applications, preventing recreational apps like BitTorrent from wasting precious bandwidth. The integrated Cisco SNORT engine delivers superior intrusion prevention coverage, an essential requirement for PCI 3.2 compliance.
SD-WAN technology answers the security and connectivity challenges that businesses face today. Companies can remain competitive and efficient by optimizing the throughput and routing of voice and data traffic and providing an always-on and secure internet connection. IPFone offers SD-WAN technology solutions to help businesses save costs while improving their operations.
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