In a win for Cisco, AT&T today announced it added the vendor's Secure SD-WAN platform to its managed services portfolio, which includes the carrier's own network-based SD-WAN platform and VMware's VeloCloud offering.

Security is a core component of AT&T's new offering, and it is aimed at customers that need secure access to workloads regardless of whether they're running in the branch, headquarters, or the cloud.

“Successful network and digital transformation requires effective security management,” said Mo Katibeh, EVP and chief product and platform officer at AT&T Business, in a statement. “AT&T SD-WAN with Cisco combines connectivity, SD-WAN, and security, which allows businesses to expand and scale without worrying about the security of their branch locations."

In addition to SD-WAN functionality like dynamic routing, optimized cloud connectivity, and application performance monitoring, Cisco's Secure SD-WAN also includes an application-aware firewall, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and advanced malware protection.

The platform will be available on Cisco's line of Integrated Service Routers (ISRs) and its Aggregated Service Routers (ASRs) hardware and can be managed through a unified cloud dashboard.

According to Ravi Chandrasekaran, SVP of Cisco's intent-based networking group, these capabilities are critical as enterprises continue to shift workloads to the cloud. "The new AT&T managed service based on Cisco's Secure SD-WAN addresses this by providing businesses with the application optimization, integrated security, and consistent intent-based networking polices for their hybrid, multi-cloud environments," he said, in a statement.

While security has always been a core component of Cisco's SD-WAN platforms, the company took that to the next level with the launch of its secure access service edge (SASE) platform in mid-June.

Cisco SD-WAN customers can now activate Cisco Umbrella integrations from within the management console allowing them to transition to a SASE architecture.

Penned by Gartner late last summer, SASE ties together elements of SD-WAN and security into a single cloud-native service.

In addition to making it easier to adopt SASE, Cisco also addressed a common criticism leveled at its SD-WAN service with the introduction of secure sockets layer (SSL) proxy support. Prior to this development, security policies could not be applied to encrypted traffic on Cisco’s SD-WAN.