Software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) company Aryaka is working with some third-party vendors to integrate more security into its technology. These kinds of partnership announcements are pretty common. But Aryaka says its new Passport service is different because the security is integrated into layers of the SD-WAN, and it leverages Aryaka’s global private network.

The company’s network already provides enterprises with a level of security that other SD-WAN providers can’t provide because traffic is less exposed to the public Internet.

“For decades MPLS was the king, and by nature MPLS is a private network and is a more secure model than the Internet,” said Gary Sevounts, chief marketing officer at Aryaka. “But it’s expensive. It doesn’t address cloud connectivity, and it takes forever to deploy.”

With SD-WAN, more network traffic has been migrating to the Internet. “That is where you need security because you’re going from a closed private system,” said Sevounts. “The global private network is the foundation of our security platform; something that nobody else has. Ninety percent of the time traffic is in our network with dedicated bandwidth, so it's inherently more secure than any Internet-based SD-WAN."

Along with developing its own security controls and layers, Aryaka’s Passport service now also integrates security from Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, and Radware.

Aryaka is working with Radware for distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection. Its work with Radware, along with its own private network, sets it apart from other SD-WAN vendors. Aryaka added Radware’s DDoS protection in each of its 28 points of presence (PoPs) around the globe.

It’s working with Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler for a layer of cloud security for non-critical traffic that traverses over the Internet. And Aryaka’s edge devices now include firewall protection from Palo Alto Networks. Aryaka also provides additional integrated security from Palo Alto Networks for virtual firewalls hosted in services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

Sevounts said multi-layer defense is important for SD-WAN to protect against different types of threats. And having the layered security provided by different vendors is the best practice. With a single vendor, “If the vendor gets compromised, all the layers crumble,” he said. “If you have multiple vendors, only one layer gets compromised.”

Two executives from Big Switch Networks’ sales team recently joined Aryaka. Claudio Perugini was hired as Aryaka senior vice president of global channels. And Greg Orr joined Aryaka as the vice president of sales for its Americas business.

Sevounts said Aryaka now counts about 800 enterprise customers. While many other SD-WAN providers have focused on winning service provider customers, Sevounts said, “Ninety-nine percent of our customers are global enterprises.”

A couple of years ago rumors surfaced that Aryaka was prepping for a $1 billion IPO. Asked about the status of that, Sevounts said, “We are very much on track for our IPO. Our goal is to hit IPO next year. We’re the only SD-WAN vendor gearing up for an IPO instead of hoping to be acquired.”