The emergence of SASE has been driven by a desire to improve scalability, connectivity, security, and costs. SASE reduces the number of solutions needed to secure enterprise applications and data, making it a more effective tool for digital transformation.
It integrates networking and security capabilities into a single-service, cloud-native architecture that shifts security from traffic-flow to identity-centric. It also emphasizes flexibility at the edge, where users and IoT devices connect.
Scalability
Scalability ensures business operations can handle increased demand, meet new service requirements, and seize growth opportunities. Choosing a premium SASE solution to deliver on this tenet is critical for long-term success.
When delivered as a cloud-native platform, SASE integrates networking and numerous security capabilities on a single point product: branch FWaaS, secure web gateway, DNS protection, CASB, DLP, and Zero Trust Networking (ZTNA). This reduces complexity, simplifies management, and delivers cost efficiency by consolidating vendors, equipment, and maintenance contracts.
A scalable SASE solution, like Fortinet’s SASE solutions in China, uses the concept of edge computing to bring security and access close to users by routing traffic through points of presence and edge servers most relative to endpoints. This accelerates performance and eliminates the need to backhaul traffic through a gauntlet of security devices in the data center miles away. This centralized model makes running holistic behavior analytics for threat and anomaly detection easier. Ultimately, it boosts productivity by providing frictionless network access and ensures that only authorized identities are allowed in. This mitigates cyber attacks and bolsters operational security.
Flexibility
The scalability of SASE also enables leaner IT operations and security processes. Consolidating network and security capabilities into a single SASE service, such as a branch FWaaS, SD-WAN, ZTNA, CASB, or DLP, simplifies management by offloading chores from IT staff to free up time for higher-level tasks.
SASE offers greater flexibility than legacy hub-and-spoke network technologies, such as MPLS. Instead of routing traffic to a central data center, inspecting it, and sending it back to remote locations, SASE delivers secure, direct connectivity from the cloud or on-premises applications to each user and device.
This eliminates significant latency and makes working from home or the office much easier. It also allows businesses to deliver a consistent application experience regardless of location, a significant benefit. This is because SASE solutions connect to a global network of gateways over high-capacity Internet connections. This boosts usable capacity and enables a smoother, more predictable performance than the public Internet or MPLS. Ultimately, SASE is ideal for supporting modern business demands.
Security
Modern enterprises need a more flexible, holistic security framework to protect users and applications from threats and attacks. SASE delivers this in the form of a single unified service offering a full suite of networking and security capabilities such as SD-WAN, CASB, branch firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), zero-trust network access (ZTNA) and cloud web security (CWS).
Delivering all these technologies as a single service eliminates the complexity and functional overlap of managing multiple specialized cybersecurity systems. It also reduces costs by eliminating the need for costly hardware in remote offices and reducing agent footprint on end-user devices.
SASE is designed for today’s perimeter-less environments and enables remote workers, branches, and IoT devices to connect to business applications and data securely. This is achieved by directing traffic from users to distributed points of presence (PoPs), where they are more effectively protected against DDoS attacks, data loss prevention, and lateral movement threats. In addition, centralized policy management and a single management console make the entire solution more accessible. This improves IT efficiency and reduces the total cost of ownership compared to traditional solutions.
Scalability
The ability to scale quickly helps businesses respond more effectively to sudden surges in demand. For example, e-commerce websites can increase capacity during busy holiday shopping to avoid website crashes or deliver products or services on time. This reliability builds customer trust and loyalty, generating repeat business and referrals.
A scalable business can also expand its reach into new markets, both geographically and demographically. It can also leverage economies of scale to reduce unit costs and improve profit margins.
When evaluating SASE solutions, enterprises should look for best-of-breed networking and security technology tightly integrated on one cloud-native platform. The right solution should offer a single management console and a unified client and policy engine to streamline operations and enhance effectiveness for network and security teams. It should also support global points of presence to enable low-latency routing across a worldwide network. This global footprint is essential to helping remote locations and a mobile workforce, where performance can be affected by distance from the nearest point of presence. It is also critical to enable centralized behavior analytics to identify and mitigate threats or anomalies that would be impossible to detect using siloed systems.
Scalability
Scalability has become one of the most critical factors for businesses seeking long-term success. A scalable business is better equipped to handle increased demand, capitalize on new opportunities, and stay competitive.
In contrast, traditional networking strategies like VPNs and firewalls often require much bandwidth to inspect remote traffic before reaching its intended destination. As a result, they can slow down productivity and hurt the user experience. With SASE, network and security policies are pushed to edge devices, which can be applied closer to users and applications.
SASE is also designed for today’s perimeter-less networks. Instead of forcing all remote user traffic to the data center, it is sent directly from the end-user to a local point of presence via SD-WAN and then to its destination – this reduces latency.
Many SASE solutions combine several discrete networking and security point solutions (such as CASB, Zero-Trust Network Access, and Firewall) into a single, unified service. However, it’s crucial to vet each component individually for its ability to meet an organization’s specific needs.
