MANAGEMENT EDGE: How NSM Zero Touch Simplifies Deployment and Preserves Budget and Resources

As more businesses consolidate through mergers, acquisitions and organic expansion, the challenge of deploying and operating firewalls to protect each new location becomes more expensive both in terms of money as well people power. By providing a centralized, zero-touch deployment methodology, SonicWall partners, using Network Security Management (NSM), are minimizing their personnel requirements, slashing their travel expense and dramatically improving the quality of security and compliance services they deliver to each customer location.

“Time is money” is one of those clichés people use so regularly that we may no longer realize how important this concept really is!

In the context of network security management, the concept that time is money almost works overtime if we consider all the ways it affects us.

Installation Time: The time it takes to actually install a network firewall is really only part of the total time investment. First, there’s planning and design of the security architecture. Then, a qualified engineer must travel to the location where the firewall is being installed, which also incurs travel and lodging expenses in addition to the engineer’s compensation. Finally, we reach the actual installation, configuration and testing.

Management Time: When installing firewalls at remote locations, locating a qualified network security management engineer at each location is beyond most budgets. This can result in the same travel time and expense investments made during initial installation.

Downtime: The most insidious cost related to network security management is the time between an incident or event's occurrence and its resolution. If an attack succeeds in disrupting or halting operations, each minute those systems stay down, it potentially costs thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in lost productivity, lost sales, or delayed operations.

The SonicWall Network Security Manager (NSM) prevents and eliminates many of these costs by enabling the remote deployment, configuration, and management of SonicWall firewalls wherever they may be located. When deployment and management are centralized in this way, firewalls can be shipped to remote locations with simple instructions for physical installation. Configuration and activation are accomplished remotely from central network control. Zero-Touch Provisioning increases the cost reduction as firewalls are automatically configured and added to NSM upon installation.

In many use cases, even the physical installation may be unnecessary. The firewall service is delivered as software as a service (SaaS) with no dedicated on-premises equipment required.

Reduced Operational Expenses

Travel expenses are eliminated when all firewall deployment, configuration, and management are accomplished from a central site.

Payroll is also significantly reduced as the requirement to locate trained, capable technology professionals at each remote site is eliminated.

NSM incorporates policy templates with which policies can be created and uniformly applied to a large fleet of firewalls without configuring each one individually.

NSM’s Real-time Alerting, Monitoring, and Reporting provides continuous visibility over firewall health, security events, and potential threats, and traffic patterns through quickly readable dashboards and reports.

Increase Profitability with SonicWall NSM

Network Administrators are always seeking new ways to convert the perception of their department from a cost center to a profit contributor.

There are two fundamental ways to increase profitability. One is by simply selling more to add more revenue. The other is by decreasing operating costs. SonicWall NSM does this in many ways, including substantially reducing the wear and tear on your network management staff and you.

To learn more about SonicWall NSM or sign up for a free trial, visit the NSM web page.