Cisco research highlights network complexity, security challenges

According to the report, 40% of IT leaders cite cybersecurity risks as their number one concern impacting network strategy over the next 12 months, and respondents said they were handling this challenge in a couple ways, according to Davidson: “First is integrating network and security processes, technology, and tools, with half of respondents making this their top network security investment over the next two years. Second, is moving more security tools to the cloud to protect the increasingly distributed infrastructure and workforce better.”

When asked about their top network security priorities for the next two years, 52% said the integration of network security into broader IT security functions was their top priority. To that end, 76% of those organizations plan to deploy a secure access service edge (SASE) architecture with integration of SD-WAN and security service edge (SSE) cloud security within the same timeframe, researchers stated.

In addition, 44% of respondents said that faster cybersecurity threat identification and response is the most important benefit expected from the convergence of networking and security technologies, processes, and tools.

“Sharing data and telemetry between networking and security domains was the second ranked benefit for 29% of respondents, followed by providing consistent, secure access to multicloud applications from anywhere for 27% of respondents,” the report stated.

Multicloud environments are prevalent, with 92% of organizations saying they have deployed two or more public cloud providers to host their workloads and 34% using more than four, according to last year’s networking trends report.

“However, each public cloud service provider, private data center, and hybrid cloud environment uses different network and security operational models. Organizations need to address the resulting management complexity with a strategy that enables better visibility and more consistent control of connectivity and security across disparate private and public cloud environments,” researchers stated.