According to Gartner, by 2025, 80% of enterprises will have adopted a strategy to unify web, cloud services and private application access using a SASE/SSE architecture.
If you’re a technology leader and a decision maker for your business, then you will know something about ‘secure access service edge’, but let’s have a quick recap of the fundamentals and why Gartner’s prediction is on the money.
Put simply, SASE is the convergence of networking and security into the one platform, providing seamless connectivity to all applications from anywhere.
It identifies users and devices and continuously applies policy-based security, delivering secure access to the appropriate application or data regardless of the user’s location.
With so many more people now working in a ‘hybrid’ capacity, whether as a result of COVID or the general move to more mobile and flexible arrangements aiding better work-life balance for staff, as well as more dispersed and diverse workforces for companies, SASE is fast becoming a top priority.
Deployed properly, it should help CIOs, CISOs and other technology managers create far simpler IT environments that are easier to manage, and especially important in the current climate, easier to secure.
There are three key benefits that SASE delivers to modern digital organisations.
1. All applications are in the cloudThis provides genuine visibility and insights into applications, traffic, network and endpoints, culminating in something called ‘autonomous digital experience management’. ADEM is emerging as a critical requirement for today’s organisations with staff now more demanding of seamless, fast experiences the likes of which have come to define social media and other online platforms, such as retail. And achieving it requires true visibility.
2. Simple and scalableSASE helps to reduce the complexity associated with securing your digital environments and communications. It allows you to deliver consistent security to remote networks and mobile users providing protection at scale with global coverage securing all traffic from all users.
3. WAN modernisationSASE also lets you ‘WAN-enable’ branch services, like networking and security, to be delivered from the cloud, simplifying WAN bandwidth and deploy rapidly at scale. Gain application visibility with Layer 7 intelligence to simplify network policy creation and traffic steering capability.
Other benefits of SASE include removing the need for multiple point products while controlling access to cloud services and ensuring data is secure. It also provides a framework for providing consistent and compliant policies across your organisation.
The journey to SASE
As any technology leader knows, network and security infrastructures are rarely simple, with every organisation having its own unique requirements for design and functionality.
What’s more, businesses typically have multiple vendors, point solutions and layers of management, while network and security teams are often siloed and unaccustomed to working together.
This means that implementing the right SASE framework for your requirements can’t happen overnight. Rather, it requires in-depth consultation, consensus and planning, so as to gain a proper understanding of your entire environment, ranging from the technical to the commercial, as well as compliance and contractual.