Trends like bring-your-own-device, mobility, and cloud computing are creating a surge in the number and types of devices connecting to the network and driving demand for WAN bandwidth. Remote and branch office employees expect fast, secure connectivity but most enterprises don't have spare operational budget to increase their WAN bandwidth to backhaul all traffic to headquarters in order to keep it secure.

Enter Intelligent WAN, or IWAN. With IWAN, the Internet becomes a reliable, cost-effective way to supplement the WAN. Cisco's IWAN also enables secure direct Internet access (DIA). Instead of backhauling branch office Internet traffic across the WAN, traffic is redirected to the Cisco Cloud Web Security (CWS) proxy, located in one of our data centers around the world, for inspection.

Now Cisco CWS is available on even more Integrated Services Routers (ISRs) for improved IWAN capabilities and additional deployment flexibility. Enterprises can use Cisco's newest branch routing platform, the ISR 4000 Series, to redirect traffic to a CWS proxy using Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) over IPsec.

Re-directing traffic to the CWS web proxy through ISR 4000 Series Routers delivers more:

Security

GRE over IPsec creates a secure, encrypted tunnel for your traffic and provides data confidentiality. This means you don't have to backhaul all your traffic to headquarters over expensive MPLS circuits in order to keep it secure. Instead, you can forward some of the traffic that needs to go directly to the Internet through CWS for inspection and get protected Internet access. Further, to protect all branch office endpoints from threats, the solution supports tens of thousands of nodes with direct point-to-point connections and consistent policy enforcement across all sites.

Speed

With Direct Internet Access, branch office users experience increased speed and performance of websites and applications since they're taking a shorter path to the Internet and not backhauling. Access to business critical applications hosted at headquarters is also faster since Internet-bound traffic goes directly to the Internet from the branch, reducing the overall amount of traffic on the WAN.

Cost Savings

Through infrastructure that you already own you can preserve WAN bandwidth for tasks that require corporate access and defer additional bandwidth investments. In addition, by using the industry standard GRE over IPsec technology, maintenance costs are reduced with a reliable, well understood, and mature technology. Users can also seamlessly connect to different infrastructures, which are critical to support a secure, fast and affordable mobile experience.

To learn more about CWS on ISR ISR4000 Series Routers, watch our launch webcast Extending Security Everywhere or visit the ISR Web Security product page.