SD-WAN vs. VPN: All You Need to Know | StrongDM (2024)

Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) is a networking technology used to simplify the management of wide area networks (WANs). More secure than traditional WAN solutions, SD-WAN has evolved to meet the needs of the cloud.

Enterprises use SD-WAN to connect users, applications, and data across multiple locations and vast distances. SD-WAN gives organizations centralized control of their WANs and provides visibility over the entire network while offering scalability, reliability, and high performance.

SD-WAN provides real-time monitoring and management of WAN connections and traffic, enabling optimizations to ensure high speed and connectivity. Granular controls allow IT administrators to restrict traffic by type or user.

Although SD-WAN technology is relatively new, adoption is growing rapidly as demand for mobility and remote work increases.

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a service that creates a safe, private connection between an individual device and a network—or between two networks—across an insecure medium, such as the public internet. Companies often use VPNs to enable network access for remote workers.

Fundamentally, a VPN extends a private network across a public one. VPN servers enable users to send and receive data securely over a public network while appearing as if their devices are directly connected to a private network. VPNs use an encrypted tunnel to establish a virtual point-to-point connection between the user’s device and a public network.

The demand for VPN technology is growing rapidly, driven by the explosive adoption of smartphones and wireless devices.

Although SD-WAN and VPN work differently, they have the same goal: to facilitate secure access to a network from a remote location. Both provide an encrypted connection plus security features.

Here’s how SD-WAN and VPN compare in terms of security, performance, and cost.

VPN has strong encryption capabilities and can offer smaller businesses significant benefits; however, it carries security risks. VPNs are vulnerable to attacks because they depend on the public internet. If security is improperly implemented, the entire network becomes exposed. Common VPN-related security threats include credential theft, identity theft, the spread of malware from remote users’ devices to the internal network, and risks associated with split tunneling.

With SD-WAN, businesses can enable secure end-to-end encryption across an entire network instead of securing individual connections manually. SD-WAN authenticates all devices at each endpoint within a network. Although specific SD- features vary depending on the provider, SD-WAN solutions offer more security capabilities than VPN—for example, traffic encryption, URL filtering, firewalls, and network segmentation.

Enterprises seeking to adopt an even more robust network security posture may want to consider SASE—a cloud-based service that combines SD-WAN capabilities with security features.

VPN’s reliance on the public internet makes it vulnerable to internet-related performance issues. For example, spikes in traffic can degrade connection time, and traffic traveling long distances can introduce latency.

Cloud-based SD-WAN eliminates the latency issues that occur when traffic has to travel a long distance. It also includes various performance optimization features that VPN lacks—for example, dynamic path selection, application-aware routing, and Quality of Service (QoS).

VPN pricing is typically straightforward and affordable. Although prices vary by provider and depend on which features an organization chooses, a business VPN typically costs about $10 per month for each user, not including the cost of a private gateway. Some providers calculate costs based on the number of connection hours and the amount of data transferred instead.

Larger enterprises that can’t get by with a simple VPN solution have two options:

SD-WAN and VPN both provide a secure, encrypted network connection that enables remote access. Both solutions are also internet based.

Although SD-WAN and VPN both connect users to a network, they do so in very different ways. Aside from sharing the same goal, the two solutions are as distinct as apples and oranges. Each has a unique purpose, and the features and use cases associated with each are markedly different.

Unlike VPN, which relies on only one path, SD-WAN has many paths to choose from when routing traffic. SD-WAN provides more flexibility because it can manage multiple types of connections, including MPLS, broadband, 4G, and Long Term Evolution (LTE). This capability enables SD-WAN to optimize routing by directing traffic to the most efficient path in real time.

While VPN can provide a secure, encrypted internet connection for remote employees, it lacks SD-WAN’s monitoring and management capabilities. Consequently, VPN users are more likely to encounter low bandwidth, latency, and other performance issues.

The network edge is becoming more complex as cloud adoption, mobility services, and remote work continue to grow. Rapid advancements can be overwhelming. It’s not surprising that most organizations are struggling to keep up with all the changes as technology continues to progress.

To stay agile, companies are increasingly turning to digital transformation to meet the demands of today’s ever-evolving business and IT landscapes.

Modern networking solutions like SD-WAN are superior to VPNs and legacy WANs in many ways. Besides providing more comprehensive security, SD-WAN offers scalability, flexibility, and visibility while delivering better performance and a high-quality user experience—regardless of where people are located when they connect.

Want to know more? Learn how StrongDM can help address VPN security gaps or schedule a demo.

Overall, SD-WAN offers more comprehensive security and better performance than VPN. SD-WAN is also more reliable, as it includes a security feature that automatically repairs a service failure by transferring an IP address to another network. Perhaps most importantly, SD-WAN is scalable whereas VPN is not.

SD-WAN also provides a more seamless experience for business users because it minimizes packet loss, which degrades performance.