Overlaying SD-WAN and WAN Acceleration for a Future-Proof Network Infrastructure

With advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), cybersecurity threats are becoming increasingly complex and persistent - with attacks even coming from nation states and, increasingly, sophisticated cybercrime groups. Critical infrastructure is at risk in areas such as energy, healthcare, transportation, utilities and financial systems.

Jane Frankland, CEO of KnewStart, writes in her CISO Platform blog, ‘Key Cybersecurity Trends for 2025. My Predictions,’ “An attacker could map a country’s power grid vulnerabilities without triggering any alarms, setting the stage for future, large-scale operations.”

She also claims that cyber-criminals aren’t resting on their old tactics. Subsequently, she predicts that cyber-crime will cost $12 trillion in 2025. Ransomware remains the main threat, but how it’s unleashed is evolving. Attackers don’t just encrypt a company’s data; they are now targeting the backup data as well as also steal sensitive information. “The stolen data is then used as leverage, with threats of public leaks or regulatory repercussions, leaving victims with little recourse,” she warns.

Human-centric exploits

These bad actors are also using social engineering and insider assistance to launch their attacks, moving their methods towards being human-centric exploits, despite the increasing use of AI. With insider threats, employees of an organisation are maliciously or unwittingly used as “an attack surface”. Social engineering, phishing campaigns or financial incentives make it possible to use them as tools to gain access to systems, and for the attackers to maintain their foothold once in.

She adds: “Additionally, the use of customisable ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platforms is now mainstream, enabling even novice threat actors to launch professional-level attacks. With 24% of all data breaches using ransomware, this commoditisation of cybercrime significantly broadens the field, resulting in a sharp increase in the frequency and variety of attacks.”

Action required

To obfuscate cyber-criminals, something needs to be done, and greater investment in cyber-security is needed – no matter what. . This includes investing in network infrastructure to ensure that systems can be backed up and restored whenever a cyber-attack occurs. Effective cybersecurity is not just about firewalls and anti-virus programs, it is about getting encrypted data to where it needs to be securely while preventing unauthorised access to it when it’s at rest.

With the increasing need for enterprises to build cloud-ready networks, Ritesh Agarwal, Partner in McKinsey & Co.’s New York office in the United States, and his co-authors, comment in in their January 2024 article, ‘Building the cloud-ready enterprise network’: “Global technology trends are forcing organisations to rethink how to operate efficiently and securely. Network modernisation should be part of the conversation.”

Times-are-a-changing

Traditionally, the answer to securely transmitting data, backing it up and restoring it, has been WAN Optimisation. Reddit user, azz_kikkr, explains that things have changed: “The focus has shifted to intelligent traffic management, security, and cloud integration in the SD-WAN era. Organisations are more likely to invest in additional bandwidth and improved routing strategies, rather than dedicated optimisation solutions.”

Unfortunately, WAN Optimisation often doesn’t live up to its promise. For example, it can’t transmit and receive encrypted data. Next in line are SD-WANs - a great technology - but they often could do with a WAN Acceleration boost. There’s also Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which often incorporates SD-WANs and security functionalities to securely connect users and resources regardless of location.

Gartner finds that SASE is rapidly gaining in popularity – predicting that the market for SASE will reach over $25 billion by 2027. It is also thought that in 2024, 40% of enterprises will have explicit strategies to adopt it. SASE adoption is expected to continue to grow in 2025, as it’s widely thought that many enterprises are planning to implement it, or they are already doing so.

This upsurge is driven by a requirement need for secure, efficient access to cloud applications and resources in hybrid environments. Still, SD-WANs – next to WAN Optimisation – are still more popular. Yet, SASE – perhaps because it also includes SD-WANs – is expected to take the lead. Yet, they often don’t adequately deal with the network Gremlins of latency and packet loss.

Creating synergy

Nevertheless, WAN Acceleration with technologies such as PORTrockIT, offer synergy with SD-WANs. With artificial intelligence, machine learning and data parallelisation, WAN Acceleration mitigates latency and packet loss, while enabling organisations to utilise 98% of their network’s bandwidth without having to invest in new network infrastructure. When overlayed onto SD-WANs, it provides a boost in network performance, including for backups and restores to ensure regulatory compliance and to maintain service continuity in the face of cyber-attacks.

Not only does WAN Acceleration help to protect data in flight – enhancing cybersecurity - and create a robust and future-proof network infrastructure, it can be used to improve the performance and security of cloud-based applications. That’s vital because they are often impacted by latency and packet loss. A slow network connection can render cloud applications useless, and an insecure connection can create data security and data privacy risks.

SD-WANs and WAN Acceleration therefore complement each other with SD-WANs, providing intelligent routing and traffic management. Meanwhile, WAN Acceleration enhances data transfer speeds, data security in flight and efficiency by mitigating latency and packet loss. To achieve this ideal partnership, WAN Acceleration has to be overlayed onto SD-WANs.

Backing up and restoring data

Together they offer a means to improve the performance of backing up and restoring data, as well as of cloud-based applications – helping organisations to achieve and maintain compliance with regulatory frameworks, such as HIPPA and GDPR. However, they are just part of the cybersecurity solution because organisations should always locate their datacentres and disaster recovery sites outside of their own circles of disruption, and back up data in at least 3 separate locations.

The problem is that distance often increases latency, and there aren’t alternative solutions on the market today that can mitigate latency as well as WAN Acceleration, which is not WAN Optimisation – despite claims saying it is on the web. It renders concerns about distance obsolete, and it enhances SD-WANs. However, due to the physics of latency, it can only be mitigated, as it can’t be eliminated completely. Yet, they go a long way to reduce its impact, helping to ensure that data is secured, accessible and available whenever it is needed.

Enterprises should therefore explore adopting an SD-WAN-WAN Acceleration overlay strategy as part of their bid to obfuscate cyber-criminals, and to improve their ability to back up and restore data to maintain operations when disaster strikes – not mention the benefits of better cloud-application performance, more accurate big data analysis, and team collaboration. So, by overlaying WAN Acceleration onto SD-WAN, it’s possible to future-proof network infrastructure.