Ponemon Study: IT Pros Prefer Best-of-Breed for Security and Networking vs. Single Vendor Solutions

By: Larry Lunetta, Vice President of Portfolio Solutions Marketing at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

As IT pros continue on their journey to cloud, at the forefront of their collective minds is how they secure an increasingly complex IT environment where sensitive data is generated and processed at points between the edge, data centers, and the cloud. In fact, organizations today are migrating from large and centralized data centers to more diffused centers of data.

Specifically for networking planners, how do they manage and provision effective security solutions that work seamlessly with their network, specifically within Secure Access Services Edge (SASE) and Zero Trust security architectures?

That’s why we asked the Ponemon Institute to find out how organizations of all sizes approach building a security architecture such as Zero Trust or SASE. Because these architectures require a variety of solutions from the network to the security ecosystem, we wanted to know:

Do IT teams want to buy all their networking and security from one vendor—which is tantamount to a lock-in strategy—or do they prefer to choose best-of-breed solutions?

The results are clear. No matter the size of organization, whether a generalist, networking, or security professional, across all industries, 71% of IT teams prefer a best-of-breed solution.  

Given that frameworks like Zero Trust and SASE require close edge-to-cloud integration between the network and the supporting security controls, it might be tempting to simply buy everything from a single vendor and let that vendor handle the complexities. The reality is, as demonstrated by the survey, no one vendor is great at everything.

Meanwhile, as the hybrid work environment becomes the norm along with the explosion of IoT devices and IoT-driven business models, plus accelerated cloud migration, today’s digital transformation demands the best solutions for both the network and the supporting security infrastructure.

An especially critical networking component is the wide area network (WAN), where software-defined solutions are streamlining and automating access to cloud-based resources. In this context, SD-WAN plays a prominent role in the SASE architecture, and as organizations optimize their respective networks through SD-WAN, they also want to optimize cloud-delivered security components such as a cloud access security broker (CASB), a firewall as-a-service (FWaaS), etc., by partnering with leading vendors in those spaces. In fact, when asked, “What is the preferred approach to implementing cloud-delivered security in general?” the majority of organizations said they would prefer using leading vendors who focus on these specific solutions.

Here are other key findings from the survey:

• Organizations that are highly confident that their security architecture and implementation are effective are leading in the deployment of Zero Trust, SASE, and SD-WAN.
• Zero Trust is more widely known than SASE, but both play a key role in protecting the organization.
• There is a growing collaboration between the network and security teams.

The network and the supporting security framework have never been more integrated, and that partnership continues. With Aruba Edge Services Platform (ESP), we have built into the network both edge-to-cloud connectivity as well as the access control security foundation for Zero Trust and SASE implementations.

With more than 150 Aruba security partner integrations, such as Netskope, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler, and more, organizations know that the security solutions they select will work seamlessly with the network to deliver the best-of-breed protection they need.

Afterall, that’s what the market wants.

To see more of what the Ponemon Institute uncovered from its survey, read the report. To learn more about the Aruba approach for edge-to-cloud networking security, visit https://www.arubanetworks.com/products/security/.