Silver Peak wants to make it easier for enterprises to secure their SD-WAN infrastructure. The company is adding a new segmentation and service chaining capability to its Unity EdgeConnect SD-WAN gear that will let enterprises segment their users, applications, and WAN services. The end result, according to the company, is better security policies.

In an interview with SDxCentral, Damon Ennis, senior vice president of products at Silver Peak, said that many enterprises have installed branch office routers and added firewalls and WAN optimization but they haven’t yet automated or optimized their security systems. That’s why Silver Peak decided to add this new capability to EdgeConnect that allows network administrators to centrally define and orchestrate their security policies and create secure zones across any segment of users, application groups, and virtual overlays. This allows administrators to push certain security configurations to the sites. “Branch offices typically have different user groups that are fully segmented from each other and can’t talk to each,” Ennis said. “We maintain that segmentation to the data center.”

He added that this capability saves time because in the past network administrators had to manually program their devices. However, now they can define their security policy and create certain “zones” and then push that policy to all of their sites.

But Silver Peak doesn’t actually provide the security software. Instead it partners with many different security vendors including Check Point, Fortinet, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, and OPAQ. The latest release of EdgeConnect makes selecting that security partner easier because now the orchestrator has a “drag-and-drop” interface to service chain application traffic to third-party security services. “You only need one box and Silver Peak will be enforcing security policies from end to end,” Ennis said. “The partnership is integrated into the user interface.”