06 February 2024

Simon Waller, regional sales director, Epsilon Telecommunications
Retailers are increasingly blending online and physical storefronts, transforming how they manage data, applications, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to adapt to the complex networking environment. They require massive scalability across diverse enterprise locations and must establish a flexible and secure foundation for new services.
Digital transformation demands networking models that can move with the speed and agility of the cloud, while minimising business risks. Retailers are challenged to go beyond legacy networking and adopt new solutions like software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), while enhancing their security posture with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).
It is critical that retailers evolve their networking strategies. SD-WAN provides better performance, reliability and scalability, with an optimised cost base; however, retailers must protect themselves against emerging threats stemming from modern network practices. The cloud, network expansion, and ongoing digital transformation have created vulnerabilities across many attack surfaces, including physical location-to-location or point-of-sale networks. SD-WAN alone cannot fully secure all points of vulnerability.
SASE is proving to be one of the most effective ways to tackle these potential issues. SASE integrates SD-WAN, security, and remote access into a single, global, cloud-based model. With digital transformation and cloud adoption on the rise, online threats will become more common and more dangerous.
There has been a marked increase in the number of vulnerabilities and attacks on retailers’ IT ecosystems in recent years.
With the ongoing digital transformation of retail businesses, network complexity has also risen. Legacy networking often lacks the flexibility and security needed to migrate retailers’ data to the cloud and accommodate new digital services.
With the increased growth of cloud and network services, security regulations have become increasingly comprehensive, exemplified by regulations. Compliance to these regulations can be difficult for retailers without prior expertise.
As the retail world forges larger connections, retailers need a secure and stable network that can counter the vulnerabilities associated with digital transformation and network expansion.
Retailers are increasingly adopting SASE because of its flexibility and ability to deliver security to any edge, while enabling a zero-trust model. By bundling SD-WAN, remote access, and security, retailers can utilise SASE’s different features to enhance their security posture and benefit from agile, efficient, and fluid networking.
Through encryption, multiple layers of firewalls, and traffic tunnelling, SASE can ensure that retail networks remain insulated from attack. Retailers can maintain flexibility by scaling SD-WAN features for both on- and off-site network requirements, ensuring fast network workloads without overburdening online and physical on-site operations.
SASE’s comprehensive suite of security capabilities makes it well suited to address regulatory compliance challenges. Its data loss prevention (DLP) features can help retailers prevent unauthorised access to sensitive data, ensuring it remains accessible only to authorised users. SASE’s secure web gateway and firewall-as-a-service components can help retailers protect their networks from external threats, such as malware and phishing attacks, a key requirement of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). SASE also supports separating credit card data from corporate data by adding Business Intent Overlays (BIO), which is another PCI DSS requirement.
All of this can be centrally managed through the SASE platform, providing retailers with complete visibility and flexibility across disparate networks at multiple retail locations. This allows retailers to optimise applications, such as point-of-sale application networks, via SD-WAN’s ability to prioritise business-critical applications and dynamically route traffic across any number of locations.
Moreover, SASE simplifies network management, potentially reducing costs while maintaining or even improving overall performance and agility. With SASE, retailers can fully utilise both SD-WAN and the cloud, allowing them to secure and expand their retail networks on a global scale.
With the right tools, retailers can advance their digital transformation and cloud adoption. Investing in cloud connections brings many benefits, from security to efficiency, for any retailer looking to migrate their retail services online.
SASE offers retailers looking to enter today’s cloud-centred business landscape a means to alleviate many of the issues that come with online activities. Retailers that adopt SD-WAN and SASE can seamlessly migrate their data, applications, and ERP systems online, while also improving their location-to-location networks. With this approach, retailers can rapidly expand their business in line with the digital economy and confidently navigate the digital ecosystem.