AT&T Makes SD-WAN More Secure and Scalable With Cisco Teleworker

Dallas, TX-based telecommunications giant AT&T has revamped its SD-WAN offering with new additions from Cisco to make the service faster and more secure. AT&T says the new capabilities in SD-WAN will address the needs of a distributed workforce that accesses business applications both on-premises and from remote locations.

Powered by Cisco’s Teleworker, AT&T’s revamped SD-WAN service complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the federal information security standard, and offers public sector users more control over their usage patterns. This is a much-needed requirement for all SD-WAN providers as business applications are generally prioritized over non-business traffic. The adoption of Cisco’ features provides robust security by encrypting and channeling traffic and controlling inspection firewalls.

JL Valente, vice president of product management, Enterprise Routing and SD-WAN at Cisco said, “Today’s distributed workforce needs superior home office connectivity that makes working at home just as fluid as being in the office with consistent connectivity, performance and enterprise-grade security. The AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco Teleworker solutionOpens a new window meets these requirements by providing an office-like experience to workers while keeping enterprise assets highly secure.”

Learn More: Simplifying Distributed Networks’ Security With SD-WAN, NaaS, and SASE

SD-WAN and Cisco Teleworker – What Can Users Expect?

AT&T has customized its SD-WAN stack – making it feasible, faster, and more convenient for businesses with remote employees to manage a home office. The new teleworker solution can be deployed on the employees’ existing home internet connection, and the full stack of SD-WAN solutions can be layered with a single piece of hardware. It caters to employees who need continuous access to large, sensitive, or critical datasets connected to enterprise-grade services without compromising performance.

The tool gives resourceful insights to employees and helps them with real-time manageability. AT&T says the solution is easy to use, completely secure and can be deployed with zero-touch provisioning, allowing employees to work efficiently at home but on their corporate network.

AT&T also caters to a large number of government and public bodies for whom the security of data is a priority. The new teleworker solution adheres to rules and regulations stipulated under FISMA while offering a high-performance, managed, policy-based SD-WAN service.

The solution also comes with co-managed options where customers can control and self-manage their business applications while also relying on the network provider to support configuration, fault, and performance management.  

Learn More: How To Make Networks Ready for a Cloud-First Era With SD-WAN

Accelerating WFH Growth With AT&T SD-WAN

Traditionally, SD-WAN solutions catered to large organizations with multiple users, while remote users used VPN services to access enterprise data securely. However, as the pandemic led to the creation of hybrid working models, SD-WAN vendors like AT&T had to customize their services to suit emerging needs while ensuring the cost-effectiveness of their solutions. Engineers, designers, and other similarly skilled workers require persistent access to sensitive data, and a robust SD-WAN architecture can help them perform efficiently and at scale.

VPN has got the work done till now, but considering the hybrid work model is here to stay, employees and organizations are looking for a more secure option. While VPN solutions offer secure connectivity between employees’ devices and office networks, they do not provide access to other cloud-based applications. On the other hand, SD-WAN can directly route traffic to the cloud service instead of routing it through the data center.

AT&T SD-WAN and Cisco Teleworker solutions enable non-work traffic to be routed externally and routes mission-critical traffic either through the main office or cloud service, as per company parameters. This allows for maximum optimization of an enterprise’s bandwidth and infrastructure. Depending on an organization’s set-up, adopting SD-WAN for its home-bound employees is feasible and efficient.

“The workforce is continuing to evolve, and having the right tools is essential to a business – no matter where the business is getting done,” says Will Eborall, AVP, Product Marketing Management for AT&T Business. He added that with these enhancements to SD-WAN with Cisco, AT&T would continue to adapt its offerings to align with the customer needs of today.  

As a leader in supporting businesses across sectors and of all sizes, and the largest SD-WAN provider in North America, AT&T plans to equip businesses with the tools not just to manage their needs today, but prepare for the future as well.   

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