No matter how sure you are that your network is secure, you may still be at risk of cyberattacks. It's no exaggeration Cybercriminals are constantly working to stay one step ahead of organisations and security professionals, exploiting any vulnerability they can in even the most sophisticated systems.
Technology is omnipresent in young people's lives and is opening up new channels of learning across the education sector, with pupils, students and staff utilising Cloud and video calling platforms both in and out of the classroom.
At the same time, cyber security is evolving at a rapid pace to answer ongoing concerns about pupils' safety online and the integrity of confidential data - concerns that have become even more critical with the move towards remote learning and virtual classrooms. Our full range of solutions provides schools, colleges and universities with the means to ease this transition to new ways of learning, ensuring IT infrastructure continues to put learning at the centre of everything, while meeting all compliance requirements and enabling more effective use of the available budgets.
Please explore these case studies for examples of what we have already achieved for customers across the education sector, helping them sustain their profitability and growth while keeping the learning experience at the centre of everything.
As students finally make their long-awaited return to the classroom, it is important that schools, colleges, and other institutes of education do not lose sight of the increasingly complex cyber security landscape they must navigate, and ensure the lessons learned throughout lockdown continue to be acted upon.
There's no doubt that the past two years have challenged the Hospitality & Leisure sectors in ways that would previously have been unimaginable, with social distancing requirements limiting the number of guests who can be hosted and making familiar processes like checking in and out significantly more complex. But, like every sector impacted by the pandemic, these challenges have inspired a new wave on innovation, as IT infrastructure has evolved to support staff and guests alike, ensuring safety does not have to come at the expense of an enjoyable stay.
Let's consider some of the ways the challenges of COVID-19 have impacted the Hospitality & Leisure sector, and how the lessons learned can - in the long term - open up new opportunities to deliver truly unforgettable experiences for every guest…
Ever since the Cloud as a concept entered the public consciousness, concerns about its perceived cyber security weaknesses have been a major obstacle to organisations - and, indeed, entire sectors - embracing digital transformation. The AEC sector, in particular, has traditionally been slow to begin the process of Cloud transformation, although the number of future-minded firms phasing out their legacy systems and embracing the scalability, agility, and operational resilience the Cloud has to offer in recent years indicates that we are seeing a shift in this regard.
Retailers - be they small local shops, online sellers, or top global brands - generate, transfer, and store more data than ever before, ranging from customer data (both online and in-store, as we have considered in previous articles), to supply chain and asset tracking data. Whether it's shopping online or utilising in-store apps to access the latest savings and special offers, the way customers shop has fundamentally changed forever, with the data they generate online and in person allowing retailers to build up unique personas that drive truly bespoke experiences.
With fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour, changing economic conditions, and a rapidly evolving regulatory environment, it's a challenging but exciting time for the UK's retail sector, and technology has a key role to play. In particular, advances in IT and networking solutions are empowering retailers to enhance their operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and retain their competitive edge in an increasingly online and interconnected world.
The nature of AEC projects and the high volumes of sensitive data firms generate, transfer, and store on a daily basis make them a natural target for cyber criminals. Indeed, a recent Government study found that 5% of building firms have already fallen victim to some form of cyber-crime in the just a year, but that 26% of them still did not have adequate cyber security measures in place.
The turbulence of the current geopolitical situation has affected numerous sectors, who must not only consider how to protect their infrastructure from anticipated cyber-attacks, but also ensure that they are able to maintain business-as-usual as possible against a backdrop of global disruption to supply chains. As a sector that depends on the ready availability of materials, the UK's AEC sector has been particularly affected.
In light of numerous dramatic shifts in the geopolitical landscape in recent months, this blog has reiterated the need for organisations across all sectors to strengthen and - if necessary - reconsider their cyber security postures, in order to prepare for the anticipated attacks by global bad actors. The legal sector is no exception, particularly as these attacks are anticipated to specifically target the most high-value data.
Software Defined WAN, or SD-WAN for short, is the new big thing in business networking. Everybody's talking about SD-WAN, and about what it can do for businesses. Well, there's no doubt that SD-WAN can do a lot for your business; in fact, we'll be talking about exactly that in part 2 of this 3 part blog series. But before we do that, we need to talk about what SD-WAN can't do. Right now there's a popular misconception among businesses concerning SD-WAN - a misconception fed and sustained by headlines and marketing hype - that could lead them to take damaging shortcuts in incorporating SD-WAN into their business.
Having debunked some of the myths surrounding SD-WAN’s money-saving properties in part one, and having provided some hypothetical examples of how it can actually save you money in part two, in the final part of this series I want to really ‘get real’ about SD-WAN.
Because once the hype has died down, and the ‘magical box’ myths are a distant memory, SD-WAN will still be there, generating tangible benefits for businesses across all industries and making them real money. A Google search will show you that SD-WAN is already a trend – there’s no getting ahead of that. But even though everybody’s talking about it, relatively few businesses are actually making the most of it. But some are – and here are three ways in which they’re doing it.
For businesses, globalisation is a wellspring of opportunity, but it also creates new challenges. Many businesses have international offices that they need to connect-up - securely, reliably and cost effectively. And of course, it’s the cost effectiveness that often presents the biggest problem.
Why? Because security and reliability costs. Historically, those wishing to connect an international site or sites with full resilience have had to shell out for not one, but two international MPLS circuits (the second acting as a backup). Given the cost of international MPLS circuits, doing this isn’t exactly cheap.
Thanks to SD-WAN, though, businesses can now take a hybrid WAN approach to connecting international sites. This means using an international MPLS circuit backed up by an Internet circuit – and saving a pile of money in the process.
Before SD-WAN, running an MPLS circuit backed by an Internet circuit would have meant compromising your service. By cleverly using SD-WAN, however, we can now guarantee as good a service as an all-MPLS set-up, with as much resiliency, across a lower cost-based setup.
We do this by taking advantage of the application steering SD-WAN enables. This functionality allows us to put priority applications on the main MPLS circuit – thereby retaining the SLA and quality of service required – while mapping non-critical stuff onto an Internet line – thereby saving money.
With threat vectors multiplying as the Internet of Things emerges and businesses move more and more of their operations into the Cloud, cyber security has arguably never been so important to get right - or so challenging. And for businesses in possession of more than one office or site, there are obviously additional challenges; security can be extremely complex and expensive to set-up and maintain across multiple sites.
If you’ve got twenty offices, for example – that’s twenty physical firewalls that need to be installed and supported, with twenty different support contracts. And even once those firewalls are set up, if you want to roll out a new policy or software upgrade, that’s twenty separate upgrades you need to devote money and man-hours to. It’s making me tired just thinking about it! By the way, twenty offices might sound like a lot to some businesses, but could actually be quite a modest number by the standards of (for example) some retailers, some of whom have hundreds of sites to oversee and secure.
Transferring to a cloud-based security service will eliminate many of these headaches, and SD-WAN is arguably the best way to go about it. With SD-WAN, you get single-pane-of-glass visibility and control over your entire network, including all devices and endpoints (which SD-WAN networks authenticate with scalable key-exchange functionality and software-defined security). You’ll be able to roll out updates, configurations, patches and policies at the touch of a button, and - what’s more - you won’t even have to set-up physical firewalls in the first place!
For many businesses, there are times when sites need to be set up so quickly that connecting them up to the business’s main network isn’t an option. For construction and retail businesses, this is an increasingly familiar challenge: both routinely have to set up a porta-cabin site or pop-up store without access to fixed-line connectivity. In these situations, there’s unlikely to be space for hardware. Very likely there’s no IT staff on-site. It could also be a short-term implementation, making it difficult to install hardware in time to make it cost effective.
Once again, SD-WAN comes to the rescue! Because SD-WAN can be accessed through just about any access mechanism – from Ethernet to 4G data – you can use it to get up and running in no time at all. A retailer armed with SD-WAN can set up a pop-up shop and connect via 4G, and can switch to a more robust access point – at which time 4G becomes the backup as and when it becomes available.
Supplementing the savings in hardware costs will be the increased revenue businesses can expect to generate by eliminating delays in setting up. The agility SD-WAN’s flexibility gives to businesses also means they can set-up in a wider range of locations – and that equates to even more potential revenue.
So there you have it – three examples of how businesses are proving that SD-WAN is more than just hype, and that the savings you can make using it are real and tangible. And these are only three examples, and this is only really the beginning. Ultimately, the control SD-WAN gives businesses over their network management means that the only limit to the ways in which it can save them money is the limit of network experts’ ingenuity.
Thanks for reading this blog series. We would love to hear your feedback on the blogs, any questions you might have, and any thoughts you yourself have on SD-WAN and its capacity to positively impact a business’s bottom line. Please leave comments below this blog or on social media, and let’s get the conversation started!
In the meantime, you can learn more about SD-WAN on our website
