Cisco SD-WAN's fabric security refers to the security measures implemented in the solution to ensure privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of the control and data plane traffic as it travels between different network sites.

Hardware-Based Trust with SUDI

When it comes to infrastructure security, the first essential security question for each organization is “what is trusted”? And it is a very tough question to answer.

How do you ensure that all network devices within the network environment are genuine and run uncompromised software images? 

In classical networking, trust often comes from the process. With the traditional security methods such as "This router has been deployed by our trusted engineer." and "We use BGP/OSPF/PIM/ HSRP/etc. authentication." do you feel confident that you operate a trusted infrastructure? You don’t. Having a good security culture in place is good, but it still leaves many blind spots.

• How do you know for sure that your hardware hasn't been compromised during the supply chain? You don't.
• How do you know that your hardware hasn’t been altered at a low level (for example, in the BIOS)? You don’t.
• How do you know a device's firmware hasn't been compromised during boot-up and initialization? You don't.