Today, organizations and their employees heavily rely on network infrastructure for productivity and performance. Unmanaged networks pose a significant risk to workplace productivity and security. In this article, we will examine the importance of secure employee interaction and the role of Zero-Trust and SASE architectures in achieving it. We will explore the benefits of a hybrid network approach, challenges of rapid adoption, and the importance of comprehensive visibility to user experience in achieving a balance between security and user satisfaction.
The Need for Secure Employee Interaction: Zero Trust and SASE
Securing employee interactions and access to the network is critical in today’s increasingly remote work environment. Zero Trust and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architectures are two effective solutions for achieving secure network access. Zero Trust involves verifying users’ identities before allowing them to access network resources, while SASE involves integrating crucial network security and access policies into a cloud-based platform. Both help to ensure secure employee interactions while reducing risks to the organization.
The Benefits of a Hybrid Approach to Network Security
A hybrid approach involves using both on-premises and cloud-based solutions to create a secure network environment. This approach can help organizations achieve flexibility and scalability while reducing costs. By using a hybrid approach, IT teams can determine which data is best suited for each environment, ensuring safe and secure access to the resources employees need.
Balancing Security with User Experience: The Challenges of Rapid Adoption
The rapid adoption of Zero-Trust and SASE can create challenges for organizations that aim to balance security with user satisfaction. The rapid implementation of security measures can sometimes limit visibility into user experience, putting productivity and customer satisfaction at risk.
The Solution: Comprehensive Visibility of User Experience
To avoid this scenario, it’s essential to find solutions that provide comprehensive visibility of user experience. Network-centric digital experience monitoring can illuminate the network path’s end-to-end performance of any application or service, enabling organizations to proactively monitor impacts on unmanaged networks. This approach helps maintain a proper balance between security and user experience by ensuring that network performance and reliability are not sacrificed for security.
Case Study: Proactive Network Monitoring for a Northwest Healthcare Provider
A healthcare provider in the northwest recently implemented proactive network monitoring for their telehealth application. This allowed them to monitor the end-to-end network delivery experience and proactively detect and address any performance issues, ensuring the application’s reliability and improving customer satisfaction.
Case Study: Resolving Access Issues for a Southeastern Manufacturer
A manufacturer in the Southeast experienced access issues with a critical cloud application for managing production supply and inventory. With network-centric digital experience monitoring, they were able to identify the root of the problem and quickly address it, ensuring uninterrupted access to the application and maintaining employee productivity.
The Challenges of Network Degradation Despite Indications of Successful Deployment
Often, new deployments of software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN) are seen as the source of network degradation, despite indications that everything is working as intended. Without visible end-to-end network performance, it can be challenging to pinpoint potential problems and remedy issues before they escalate.
The Benefits of Network-Centric Digital Experience Monitoring
Network-centric digital experience monitoring enables organizations to measure network performance by identifying the source of network degradation and resolving issues proactively. This approach ensures minimal downtime and optimal user experience while maintaining excellent network security.
As organizations continue to transform from data center-focused to cloud-based environments, it is essential to reduce the risk of unmanaged networks and safeguard employee productivity and satisfaction. Achieving this balance requires a hybrid approach to network security that facilitates visibility and monitoring of the entire network path, from end to end. Incorporating network-centric digital experience monitoring helps organizations to track the overall health of their network, ensuring that network security and user experience do not become a trade-off.
