The advent of remote labor and digital transformation has put traditional security systems under extreme strain. The solution is a new framework built for the cloud era.
SASE solutions converge networking services (SD-WAN) with security technologies like secure web gateways, CASBs, firewall-as-a-service, and Zero Trust network access (ZTNA). It shifts the focus of security from the data center to the identity.
Scalability
With a converged infrastructure that centralizes all data and applications, SASE solutions offer improved and simplified manageability. This includes granular control over networking and security policies from a single platform that is easy to scale for growth and expansion.
This centralized management system also allows you to monitor performance and ensure your networks always operate efficiently. It also helps you reduce costs by consolidating networking and security functions traditionally delivered as point products into a single platform.
Traditional security models often need help to effectively implement least-privilege access and consistent policy enforcement across geographically distributed environments. SASE solutions for worldwide cybersecurity offer a revolutionary solution.
By unifying network and security services into a single, cloud-based platform and leveraging a distributed PoP architecture, SASE empowers organizations to deliver granular, identity-based Zero Trust policies close to end users. This unified approach ensures consistent security regardless of location, device, or access point, enabling organizations to operate with greater confidence and agility in today’s interconnected world.
Using this method, you can stop depending on the outdated perimeter controls that trap all network traffic inside the business network and make it pass via firewalls, secure web gateways, and other appliances before accessing the Internet.
It also helps to improve user experience by routing and processing network traffic as close to the end user as possible, thereby reducing latency. It also simplifies the security process, enabling IT to set policies centrally and deploy them at the edge. It also lightens the burden on IT staff, allowing them to spend less time juggling disparate solutions and more time supporting business initiatives.
Convenience
The security landscape is shifting as the ratio of employees working from home and accessing enterprise resources remotely is growing. As such, it has become more critical for enterprises to protect data from the growing number of devices on their networks.
From automobiles, refrigerators, and web cameras to IoT devices on industrial product lines and intelligent health monitoring sensors, these “edge” devices now connect to corporate networks. They can be used as entry points for cyber attacks.
SASE solutions address the issue by enabling the secure connection of these devices and delivering consistent policy enforcement. By integrating network and security functions through a single platform, enterprises can reduce costs by reducing the amount of equipment that needs to be maintained and managed.
Rather than deploying multiple point security and network infrastructure solutions, SASE combines them into a unified platform that can be easily managed. This reduces complexity and device deployment time and provides a more efficient way to deliver networking and security capabilities without compromising performance.
The key is to choose a SASE vendor with solid network performance and security capabilities and the ability to support all the functions your organization needs. This includes a secure web gateway, WAF, CASB, and DLP. By selecting a SASE solution that provides these capabilities, you can seamlessly transition to your new SASE architecture and achieve the performance and flexibility necessary for today’s hybrid, work-from-anywhere environment.
Flexibility
In today’s work-from-anywhere world, users and devices move between on-premises locations, interconnected branch offices, home offices, and temporary places where they travel. To address this, enterprises need solutions combining networking and security to enable flexible connectivity. Many are turning to SASE solutions that meld networking services, typically based on SD-WAN, with security technologies like Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Secure Service Edge (SSE).
With SASE, remote users can connect to enterprise resources without requiring backhauling into traditional data centers or DMZs for security inspection. This reduces the risk of these networks becoming beachheads for attackers to target internal assets. The combination of SD-WAN and ZTNA provides granular visibility and control for all connections, regardless of which branch office or device they come through.
Cloud-based SASE delivers numerous benefits that can improve digital business transformation, including reduced complexity and better scalability. The single-control plane architecture of SASE eliminates the need to manage separate point products and offers consistency of policy enforcement across the organization.
It also enables faster and more reliable connections worldwide, supports the Work-from-Anywhere user experience, and speeds up the delivery of applications to end users. It’s also a good choice for organizations that already have an SD-WAN deployment but want to use it to improve the security and performance of their remote access services.
Security
The most advanced SASE solutions offer a complete suite of security capabilities that work together to protect remote users and data. This typically includes multi-enterprise-grade firewalls, a cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateways, and zero trust network access (ZTNA).
In addition to protecting data with encryption, these security services protect against phishing, malware, man-in-the-middle attacks, DNS hijacking, and other threats. Top SASE providers use advanced behavior and context-based detection and response to weed out malicious traffic automatically.
Another way that SASE security improves remote user experience is by using global edge networks to process traffic as close to users as possible. This also helps minimize latency and avoid the need to route traffic through VPNs or other middle-mile networks.
While SASE is revolutionizing how organizations manage and secure their WANs, it comes with some challenges that technology teams must be aware of. For example, SASE services are delivered as a single service, so any technical issues with one of these functions can majorly impact the entire system for end users.
Like with any significant shift, organizations must carefully weigh the benefits and drawbacks of a new SASE solution. Organizations can test out SASE technologies through a managed pilot with isolated test groups to ensure the new tools meet their needs and do not introduce unexpected problems.
