Cradlepoint, a unit of Ericsson, today launched a secure access service edge (SASE) platform for branch offices using 5G wireless services to connect to the Internet.

Camille Campbell, senior product marketing manager for Cradlepoint, said the NetCloud SASE platform makes use of a control plane accessed via a cloud service that enables organizations to centrally manage and secure a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN).

Designed to enable organizations to provision a remote 5G wireless network in as little as six minutes, NetCloud SASE provides IT teams with a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application platform for managing remote offices.

Of course, the definition of a remote office now includes any home office in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as employees work from home either full time or with greater frequency. The challenge IT teams face is they can’t dispatch a team to configure and secure a wireless network, so the need for a way to centralize the management of a wireless network has become more pronounced. Otherwise, organizations become dependent on the level of security that employees with little expertise configure, using what are often consumer-grade routers.

A 5G service can be used to either route sensitive data, or as an alternative network in the event a WiFi network service becomes unavailable.

In addition, organizations can reroute traffic to different services depending on how many minutes have been already consumed for the month, or how much one 5G service might cost at one hour of the day versus another, noted Campbell.

Cradlepoint makes use of intelligent bonding to ensure network connectivity by aggregating wired, cellular, satellite and Wi-Fi links in a way that obscures all IP addresses and blocks east west traffic. The company also provides support for remote browser isolation to prevent end users from inadvertently accessing malicious web content.

It’s not clear how many organizations are taking advantage of 5G wireless networks to connect remote offices to a wide area network, but most end users are already connected to one of these services via their smartphones. Most of the network traffic in a remote office of home is still moving via a cable service, but telecommunications carriers are increasing their efforts to provide fixed 5G wireless services, noted Campbell.

In the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic many employees began working from home to curb its spread. While many of those employees have returned to the office, most employees are now regularly accessing applications over a remote network. Beyond deploying a virtual private network (VPN) that might be easily compromised, many organizations have still not revisited how to secure all the endpoints that are now connected to their corporate network.

In the meantime, cybercriminals have identified end users working remotely as easy prey. Once compromised, they then use the networking services being provided to those end users to laterally inject malware into applications. That malware, as most cybersecurity professionals all too keenly know, might not be activated for months. There is, of course, no such thing as perfect security, but as it stands right now many home and branch offices are today too insecure.