SD Wan Vs VPN - A Quick Guide

To use the internet and make secure connections while doing so, people can use a virtual private network (VPN) or a secure SD Wan. Each of these primarily has the objective of providing a safe method for employees or private citizens to either use the internet more anonymously or to encrypt the data traffic to protect communications. While VPNs are far better known, SD Wan is now becoming something that businesses are considering due to its advantages and distinctive differences to VPN technology and implementation. For this article, we briefly look at both to better appreciate the differences.

What is an SD-Wan?

SD-Wan, which is short for software-defined WAN, provides a network setup intended to provide improved connectivity for users of the network. The idea behind an SD-Wan is that data requests are tracked on a per applications basis and then routed accordingly to their priority. The advantage of this is that all the available bandwidth in an office environment isn’t used by a few active, large downloads or other data-intensive activities where everyone notices that the network is suddenly crawling along.

Priorities and separate policies may be configured for each application when they’re compatible with the SD-Wan. This avoids creating data bottlenecks through network congestion. Another version of an SD-Wan is a secure SD-Wan. This includes additional encryption to make it even safer than the standard version.

What is a VPN?

A VPN is a way to connect between two points on computers, servers, or networks. An encrypted tunnel is created between two points and once the connection is established, data can be transferred between the two. A VPN manages the internet connection and sends all internet traffic through the virtual private network. Using a VPN can allow data to be sent to a secondary location and it appears that the user is using the web from another location. Companies use VPNs for a variety of reasons including remote workers, off-site employees, and others who need to access the company’s network securely.

Are There Different Use Cases for Each?

When thinking about how your business can benefit from SD-WAN, there are various ways to do so. These include providing secure communication for remote workers or avoiding a sudden slowdown in data transfers by prioritizing network traffic. By splitting out data usage between separate applications, priority usage can be given to the most important apps while others can be data restricted to avoid eating too much bandwidth at a critical time.

VPNs are harder to control from this perspective. They’re mainly a single solution for encrypting internet connections to make them more secure. However, they cannot usually manage the data by priority like with an SD-Wan.

Is One Superior to the Other?

An SD-Wan is an excellent solution to better control network data usage, reroute traffic, and still do so securely. For granular control down to the application level, SD-Wan is the better option. VPNs are still useful; however, they encrypt and tunnel all the data together, making it difficult to prioritize effectively. As a result, bottlenecks can occur. VPNs overall are easier to configure though.

While some people will be unfamiliar with SD-Wan compared to VPNs, it’s worth becoming better acquainted. In the corporate world, the former is likely to overtake the latter in the coming years as more companies realize their potential.

 

 Expanding a Business Overseas: 3 Key Factors to Consider

Lots of business owners have dreams of expanding their businesses internationally. Expanding this way not only helps them enter new markets and gain new customers, but it can also be a key strategy in increasing revenues and profits. When doing so, there are some challenges that businesses have to overcome and some factors they have to consider. Each of these challenges and factors can make a huge difference. It is, therefore, important to take a closer look at what businesses need to consider when expanding internationally.

Business Registration

The time it takes to register a business as well as how complicated the process is are huge determinants of how quickly a business can get going in a new market. The time it takes to complete a business registration varies by country and businesses should do their research to find out what the timelines are like.

Once registered, businesses have to also think about how long it takes to get the business doing. Other factors like space availability, additional licenses, technology, living quarters, and others will affect how long it takes to do so.

Cultural and Language Barriers

It is never a good idea to start a business in a country that is not ready for your products or services. When expanding internationally, therefore, it is important to understand both the business and consumer culture. One way to overcome cultural barriers is to use a registered entity that acts as both a legal representative and employer on record on your behalf. This way, there will not be any clashes between your business and the local culture.

Language is another important barrier that businesses expanding internationally have to overcome. Businesses have two main options here: hire locals to help you with translations or hire a translation company to do it for you. Hiring locals is a great idea because they will help you with both the cultural and language barriers you might experience.

While it is great to hire locals to handle day-to-day translations for you, things can get complicated when it comes to technical translations. Technical translations are an important part of introducing new products into the new markets you are entering and have to be done right for product launches to be successful. A company like International Language Services provides technical translation services to support your international business while ensuring the technical translations are done right and promptly.

Political and Economic Stability

Political and economic stability is a lot more important than many of the other factors that businesses have to think about. Even when all other factors like finding the right talent and being able to register a business easily align, all of it can be wiped out in case of political or economic instability.

It is often best to do thorough research and be cautious when expanding into countries and markets whose economic and political stability is unknown or cannot be trusted. Businesses can also use an employer on record arrangement to rest the waters.

While expanding a business internationally has become easier in recent years, there is still a lot business owners should think about before doing so. Thorough research as well as testing the new markets before entering them are both very helpful steps.

 

Diversity and Inclusivity Set the Tone for the Future of the Workplace

With the backdrop of today’s social justice movements, both employees and consumers are demanding that companies improve their diversity, equity and inclusivity (DEI) in the workplace.

Recruiters play an integral part in creating a more diverse work environment and culture. There are even tools at their disposal to help reduce subconscious bias during the hiring process. Unfortunately, as reported in Harvard Business School’s “Hidden Workers” study, AI resume scanners already filter out some 27 million people by focusing on a person’s credentials over their capabilities.

The same research found that using AI resume scanners results in fewer applicants from underrepresented sectors of society – despite recruiters’ insistence that they’d like to diversify the talent they’re exposed to, in order to advance innovation and round out their teams’ skills.

Apparently, many AI-powered recruiting tools are failing minorities, and, as a result, failing HR teams and their business objectives.

Making the Case for an Inclusive Workplace

Amid the challenge of rebuilding following the economic shock of the pandemic, it’s even more important for companies to draw on diverse opinions and to employ a committed and engaged workforce.

For example, research from Boston Consulting Group finds that organizations that have stronger than average diversity are more innovative, see more revenue from their innovations and are overall more profitable.

Having a diverse workforce helps create an inclusive and welcoming culture that attracts better talent. Employees look to employers to drive change in society, thus top talent will choose employers that meet their standards. In fact, 40% of millennials won’t accept jobs with organizations that are not inclusive.

According to Deloitte's 2020 Human Capital Trends report, 93% of respondents believe that a sense of belonging is a key driver of organizational performance. Backing up this claim, research by Gartner indicates that 75% of companies that are focused on improving their DEI benchmarks surpass their financial goals.

How to Avoid Bias in Recruitment

One of the building blocks of an inclusive workplace is diversity in recruiting; a company’s workforce must reflect its inclusive agenda. And in recent years, companies have started relying on AI-powered software and tools to help them achieve their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals, especially in the enterprise.

Without denying the incredible advances in machine learning and AI, it still has one major flaw: it was created by imperfect humans, so a machine can make biased assumptions. Recruitment diversity models might have been trained on datasets with a built-in bias from their human creators.

The American Economic Review found that not only was there bias against applicants with ethnic-sounding names, but that AI-based applicant screening software was skipping over highly qualified applicants based on factors such as having gaps in employment, choosing to work versus doing an unpaid internship, or working remotely as a freelancer. These are examples of socio-economic bias that largely affect minorities.

To course-correct and cut the cycle of bias in recruiting, new HR tech is emerging that focuses on underrepresented candidates and attempts to eliminate bias against talent that is typically undervalued. One such company, Joonko, self-described as a diversity recruiting platform, has created a pool of job seekers who are ethnic and gender minorities, as well as army veterans. Joonko’s tech connects directly into a company’s applicant tracking system (ATS) in order to help recruiters bring about a truly diverse workforce.

Joonko uses metrics that have been proven to prevent discrimination by holding onto the information of “siver medalist” candidates who are also highly qualified and surfacing them in the ATSs of partner companies for suitable openings. In this way, Joonko offers a dedicated ATS feed, to help recruiters achieve their DEI goals, and it does so by training algorithms for desired results.

Ilit Raz, Joonko’s Co-Founder and CEO, says, “Recruiting teams struggle to source, attract and recruit diverse talent due to common mistakes made during the recruiting process such as exclusionary job descriptions and unconscious biases. Underrepresented talent is indeed out there, you just have to learn to expand your recruitment practices to reach the right audience.”

The Future Is Diverse

Mirroring the public sentiment for social justice, companies should work towards building a team of individuals that come from a variety of backgrounds, ethnicities and life experiences. Finding integral team members that meet DEI standards can be challenging for a number of reasons, including simply locating candidates from underrepresented groups.

Companies with a progressive selection process are great examples for other organizations that want to integrate inclusive recruitment practices. Using solutions that are specifically engineered to help underrepresented groups get noticed such as Joonko can also help organizations reach their DEI goals.

Successfully cultivating an inclusive company culture is more than just recruitment. It’s an ongoing and all-encompassing process that plays a big part in what an organization can achieve.