Business Transformation with 5G, SD-WAN, and Zero Trust

Modern paradigms like 5G, SD-WAN, and zero trust can enable organizations to be more agile, secure, and competitive. 5G aims to make transmission delays a thing of the past; SD-WAN provides a seamless, centralized way to manage your WAN. Zero trust implementations can significantly improve your security posture. But how do you go about adopting these new technologies to transform your business?

What problems do SD-WAN and zero trust solve?

An executive said that an SD-WAN setup enabled them to reduce the need for manual configurations, improve network security and availability, increase efficiency, reduce costs, and have a central dashboard to manage all connectivity. Zero trust is a concept that empowers organizations to decrease their attack surface and enhance their security outlook. It lets them enforce the principle of least privilege and assign permissions on a per-user or per-resource basis. In today’s perimeter-less world, it enables them to go beyond legacy VPN and perform continuous, adaptive authentication and authorization.  

What does zero trust implementation even mean?

A participant remarked that zero trust is an abstract concept that can mean different things for different organizations, depending on the business outcomes they are trying to achieve. e.g., For some organizations, achieving zero trust could mean enforcing MFA and SSO to eliminate lateral movement. For another, it could mean investing in an IAM solution that offers adaptive authentication, identity lifecycle management, and granular access control. It’s important to start your zero trust journey by identifying your personalized business needs, potential security risks, and compliance requirements.

Adopting new technologies and battling change resistance

When adopting a new technology, it’s important to train the relevant teams regarding its architecture, usage, and troubleshooting. Start with a small group of people and educate them on configuring, deploying, securing, managing, and troubleshooting the tool before rolling it out to the bigger teams. Starting small will enable you to get quick wins and identify change advocates who can push your agenda across the workforce. Getting the executive buy-in early on also helps in bringing people on board.

Use-cases of 5G

A contributor said that certain organizations are leveraging 5G to implement an always-connected strategy for their enterprise employees. The CBRS band is being used for this purpose. The government and military institutions are also experimenting with CBRS in several areas. E.g., establishing a private connectivity zone for field operations or putting augmented reality overlays on combat goggles for test exercises and more.  

‍