Silver Peak increased the member to its security technology alliance with the addition of three new security providers: Forcepoint, McAfee, and Symantec. The companies join current members Check Point, Fortinet, OPAQ, Palo Alto Networks, and Zscaler.

Silver Peak’s security alliance is meant to enhance and secure its SD-WAN, Unity EdgeConnect. Its enterprise customers can choose from the security offerings of the eight providers to ensure compliance with security policies and compatibility with its existing security infrastructure and services.

Each vendor is tested and validated for interoperability with Silver Peak SD-WAN. Core security functions are integrated from the security vendor into EdgeConnect to directly and safely connect users with known cloud and web applications. The alliance focuses specifically on cloud-based security services.

Most recently, Silver Peak added support of standards-based IPsec WAN connectivity to provide an extra layer of security for data and applications in transit across the WAN. In this case, IPsec WAN interoperability was demonstrated with Forcepoint, McAfee, OPAQ, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, and Zscaler.

These additions are in direct response to “growing customer demand,” said Silver Peak SVP of Products Damon Ennis. “We have active customer engagements underway with all three.”

These security capabilities are integrated using “drag-and-drop” functionality on Silver Peak’s SD-WAN controller and orchestrator. The controller centrally manages the SD-WAN service so enterprises can define and orchestrate application and security policies consistently across the WAN.

The drag-and-drop interface, aligned with Silver Peak’s application-driven WAN architecture, eliminates the need to deploy conventional routers at each branch site for tunnel termination, by enabling the use of IPsec as the transport tunnel. The controller can easily extend this interoperability to any cloud-based service the enterprise has. Network admins can use the controller to direct web and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications directly to the internet and can direct those that require further inspection to cloud security services.

According to Ennis this automated traffic steering across the WAN, enabled by the controller, will make Silver Peak the self-driving car of WAN technology. “With the addition of AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning, Silver Peak has a vision for delivering a self-driving WAN that automatically adapts to changing network and application requirements, much like self-driving cars.”

The application-driven SD-WAN edge enables WAN architecture to earn and adapt as network and application needs change. The security alliance ensures that security policies and capabilities are easily distributed across the WAN and supports the multi-vendor security architectures of Silver Peak’s customers.