What Is Branch Networking?

Branch networking includes the tools and strategies needed to send information to and between remote locations, branch offices, data centers, and stores. Branch networking is an essential element of the IT infrastructures of schools, retail, and restaurant chains, and many companies with multiple offices in different locations or spread out across a central campus.

Branch office networks involve the networking infrastructure for each branch office as well as the network security designed to protect each individual office and the network as a whole.

Branch offices are satellite entities that work as parts of a larger organization. Often, they support or run under the management of a central headquarters, as is the case with larger enterprises, banks, or governmental organizations.

Network security for a branch office involves securing the data and communications that have to be passed between the branch locations, headquarters, data centers, customers, and other businesses. This also involves ensuring remote workers and their connections are safe from cyberattacks and other security threats.

Branch networks, to be secure, need infrastructure that establishes transparency, secures corporate resources, provides secure internet and cloud applications, mitigates zero-day threats, and prevents users from circumventing the system. These are necessary considerations whether you are piecing together a security solution or using a "branch in a box" approach, which involves combining several security functions within one physical device.

Transparency or visibility in a branch networking security environment is an essential element of mitigating the risks to the system. With full visibility into those who connect to the network and their devices, you can detect potentially malicious behavior, as well as control access credentials, reducing your attack vectors.

The digital resources of a corporation include proprietary data, customer data, the dependencies and infrastructures that support their custom applications, and the systems used to manage critical elements of their operations. Securing these resources falls under the purview of branch network security administrators, whether the setup involves on-premises, cloud-based resources, or a combination of both.

In some branch networking setups, such as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and SD-branch setups, cloud applications are a central part of the infrastructure, making their security a top priority.

Zero-day threats are those that are novel to your organization’s threat landscape and therefore have not been studied and accounted for in cybersecurity hardware and software solutions. Because branch offices introduce a relatively wide range of threats due to their disparate locations and connections, zero-day threat mitigation is essential.

Each branch office may welcome dozens or hundreds of new people every year, allowing them to connect to the network. This increases the likelihood of attacks. To counteract the resulting potential threats, it is essential to prevent user circumvention of security tools and protocols. This can be done using restrictive access controls, as well as enhanced visibility and monitoring capabilities.

Branch office networking solutions need to leverage what is SD-WAN and clearly define the SASE framework for cloud-delivered security features.

With an SD-branch or SD-WAN solution, it is important to take advantage of the agility and control that comes with SD-WAN technology. This will involve defining the SD-WAN environment in detail, connecting disparate branches, as well as the subnets and local-area networks (LANs) to the solution. 

This can, in effect, keep everything under one umbrella and make it easier to deploy security and other networking solutions across the SD-WAN.

SASE combines several services, such as cloud access security brokers (CASBs), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), and zero-trust architecture into one cloud-native solution. SASE makes it easier to provide consistent protection across several branch locations.