Adaptiv Networks is updating its SD-WAN service this week with a new zero-trust foundation and cloud security capabilities as the company moves toward a future secure access service edge (SASE) release.

There is no shortage of SD-WAN vendors in the marketplace, with big names like Cisco, VMware and Palo Alto Networks, among others. Adaptiv Networks is targeting a specific segment of the market, aiming to help serve the needs of small and medium-sized businesses that have limited or no security and networking skills.

The company was founded in 2002 and has steadily grown its business and technology over the years, both organically and via acquisitions. Back in 2020, Adaptiv acquired LiveQoS to help improve application performance for SD-WAN deployments. Adaptiv has also built out its own unique innovations, with a growing patent portfolio.

With its latest update, the core foundation that underpins the Adaptiv SD-WAN is now working on a zero-trust network access (ZTNA) model to help better secure access and connectivity. The new Cloud Protect service further extends the company's security features, providing URL filtering to help protect organizations against risks.

"Our goal is to be an enabler of digital transformation for small and medium enterprises by providing amazingly simple cloud-based connectivity, and that's done through SD-WAN," Bernard Breton, CEO of Adaptiv Networks, told SDxCentral.

A common driver of SD-WAN adoption across businesses of all sizes is as a replacement for costly multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) connectivity.

For Adaptiv's target user base of small and mid-sized businesses, MPLS replacement is a use case, but it's not the primary one. Breton said that in many cases, organizations have a static intersite VPN approach across multiple routers to help enable connectivity.

Breton noted that his company's goal is bringing a better networking experience to small and mid-sized businesses. That is achieved with improved quality of service, visibility and manageability for the network with SD-WAN.

Enabling security for organizations that have limited-to-no security controls is another core focus for Adaptiv. Breton said there are still many small and mid-sized organizations that don't have proper security and firewall controls in place. That's where his company’s new Cloud Protect capability will help.

Breton explained that Cloud Protect provides address and DNS filtering to help protect entire networks from the risks of malicious websites and domains. While many modern web browsers (such as Google Chrome) integrate basic web filtering, sometimes referred to as “safe browsing,” Breton said the Adaptiv Cloud Protect is for an entire organization, not just a single user's browser.

As part of Adaptiv's latest set of SD-WAN platform updates, the company has also built out a ZTNA foundation.

Breton said Adaptiv's SD-WAN has a full ZTNA environment with role-based access control (RBAC). As such, when network traffic is encapsulated on the SD-WAN overlay network, Adaptiv provides identity information with the payload information. With that capability, the RBAC can be used to help make access decisions for different services based on policy.

Adaptiv also has an agent called My Connect for remote workers that implements zero trust at the endpoint. "The requirements for security don't stop at the branch office and work from home is not dedicated to just large businesses," Breton said.

With ZTNA at the foundation of its SD-WAN and the new Cloud Protect service, Adaptiv is taking its first steps toward being able to offer a full secure access service edge (SASE) solution.

Breton said Adaptiv is currently working on a full SASE service that will build on the company's ZTNA foundation that is now at the core of its SD-WAN platform. The full SASE service will integrate deep content inspection that examines the actual content of traffic to detect threats, viruses and data leaks. The inspection will go beyond just the URL and DNS filtering that is offered today by Adaptiv.

The future SASE update will also integrate data loss prevention capabilities to help block sensitive data from ever leaving the network.