Arista debuts unified SD-WAN edge platform

Arista Networks is looking to simplify data protection at the edge of enterprise networks with a new security package that combines branch office security with SD-WAN connectivity in a single platform.

The company announced AI-driven Edge Threat Management (ETM) for VeloCloud SD-WAN, a platform that links typically separate products and capabilities including Arista’s next-generation firewall, IP reputation, external blocklists, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, application classification, geo-IP filtering, network address translation, deep packet inspection, and zone-based segmentation.

ETM provides perimeter protection at the WAN edge and is a software upgrade option to VeloCloud SD-WAN, according to Arista. It can help simplify branch operations with a common operating system, a uniform enforcement engine, and common end-to-end security policies, the vendor stated. The new ETM solution also leverages Arista’s AVA (Autonomous Virtual Assist) for AI-driven policy intelligence.

“Multi-vendor branch complexity creates the ultimate blind spot, and your adversaries are actively hiding in it,” wrote Brendan Gibbs, Arista’s vice president, AI, routing, and switching platforms, in a blog post about the new platform.

Sprawling multi-vendor infrastructure creates operational headaches and increases security risks, according to Gibbs. “When you have four or five different point solutions from different vendors stacked on top of each other, configuring them becomes a manual, disjointed process. In fact, industry data shows that up to 95% of network changes are still performed manually, which inevitably leads to configuration mistakes, the single biggest driver of network downtime and security policy gaps,” he wrote.

“When security policies are decoupled from local network routing, critical blind spots emerge. An attacker doesn’t need to break your cloud-delivered SASE firewall; they just need to target the unmonitored local traffic gaps between your Wi-Fi AP, your LA…