Changes to the cybersecurity landscape are frequent due to the tireless work of security professionals in perfecting and streamlining existing technologies, as well as coming up with new and innovative security measures. While new products, services, information, and tactics are constantly becoming available, it is much rarer to see a single development with the ability to rock the cybersecurity world to its core. Secure access service edge (SASE) is one such development. In order to properly comprehend why SASE has the potential to disrupt cybersecurity so thoroughly, it is necessary to first understand what it is and how it works.
Defining SASE
The traditional setup of most businesses has involved workers located in an office and data stored in secure data centers. This arrangement lends itself to certain security measures and methods that work best when device and application users are in one location and their apps and data are also in a central location. However, the trend in the last few years has been a massive shift in favor of remote and hybrid working and cloud storage and computing. This means that employees are spread out, in offices as well as at home and in other locations, and apps and data are spread out across the cloud.
What SASE does is take into account the fact that users and data are widely dispersed and attempt to consolidate and centralize security controls. Whereas physical data centers have dedicated security hardware, cloud storage and computing require a different approach to security; the same is true of remote work in comparison to having employees on-premises. Because there are so many different processes, technologies, and endpoints at play, it is important to be able to make sense of security controls. SASE puts security controls in one place to protect users both in the office and at home, and apps and data both in data centers and in the cloud.
Benefits of SASE
There are a number of ways in which SASE is an improvement over traditional security, factors that are driving the adoption of SASE among businesses. Whereas integrated appliances have been a useful way to somewhat consolidate security controls, organizations are still left with multiple discrete devices to manage; SASE, on the other hand, completely converges these controls in one place. The single-vendor approach to SASE also saves businesses the trouble of juggling multiple separate contracts with various vendors of security products and services.
SASE addresses and solves many of the issues that come along with traditional security approaches. Appliance sprawl is eliminated by the convergence of security controls. The costs of transport, data center aggregation, and communication delays are at least mitigated by the lack of backhauled traffic flows. IT complexity and the onus on IT staff are reduced due to SASE’s consistent policy enforcement. SASE supports growth and development of technology over time, allows for effective scaling, and provides client security. The use of the principle of least privilege and zero-trust network access are crucial to SASE and extremely important for enterprise security. SASE makes network, device, and data security easier and stronger, saves security teams a great deal of time and effort, and accounts for many of the challenges of securing a business.
SASE Adoption Tips
SASE can be a game changer for businesses, but as with all security solutions and tactics, it is necessary to take steps to implement it properly. Ensuring that your SASE meets your needs requires first understanding what those needs are: what use cases would be relevant for your organization, what security problems need to be addressed, and what your goals are in adopting SASE. It is also necessary to assess your current security environment and identify gaps. This includes taking a look at the security infrastructure and finding where it falls short and where it may pose difficulties for SASE adoption.
Because of SASE’s single-vendor approach combining various services “meant to monitor and route employee web traffic to ensure data protection and user access to the appropriate resources,” it is vital to do sufficient research into which SASE provider is the best fit for you and your business. There are no one-size-fits-all security solutions, and each vendor will have its own benefits and services offered. Adopting SASE means finding a vendor that meets the unique needs of your business and closes the gaps that exist in your current security strategy.
Conclusion
Many of the security solutions and tactics that businesses have been using for years were designed with one kind of environment in mind, where users consisted of employees centralized in one office and apps and data were stored in physical data centers. As remote and hybrid working arrangements and cloud-based apps and data have gained more popularity, it has become clear that cybersecurity must adapt to work for a wider range of situations. SASE provides converged security controls that streamline many of the processes involved in protecting a business and its data. This development solves a great number of the problems that accompany traditional security strategies and has the potential to disrupt the cybersecurity market.
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