The rapid adoption of SaaS applications and the growth of flexible working with more of the workforce working remotely, it’s not uncommon for companies to be using multiple management tools to secure and govern access to cloud services.
But as more workloads move to the cloud, old-school ways of securing access to IT services, such as perimeter-centric network security that were not designed for the cloud, no longer offer a good fit for today’s mobile workforce. In today’s business environment, it’s important for companies to combine cloud-based security services with enterprise networking technologies as the premise of their network architecture.
Secure access service edge, or SASE
Cue the arrival of secure access service edge, or SASE. Pronounced sassy, Gartner first coined the term in 2019 in its report on The Future of Network Security in the Cloud. As described in Gartner Glossary:
“Secure access service edge (SASE) delivers converged network and security as a service capability, including SD-WAN, Secure Web Gateway services (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker services (CASB), next generation firewall (NGFW) and zero trust network access. SASE supports branch office, remote worker, and on-premises secure access use cases. SASE is primarily delivered as a service and enables zero trust access based on the identity of the device or entity, combined with real-time context and security and compliance policies.”
While SASE is not a specific technology on its own, effective SASE solutions converge SD-WAN and security into a single, integrated experience that is delivered from the cloud. It enables consistent protection and a high-performance experience for users without compromising security effectiveness or network functionality. The consolidated nature of SASE gives security teams a single point of control and comprehensive visibility and enforcement capabilities to accommodate an ever-changing set of users and mobile devices across any environment.
SASE benefits
The benefits of bringing together networking and security services into a single solution delivered from the cloud instead of managing security and networking policies across many disjointed consoles is hard to ignore. SASE offers a perfect approach for companies needing to heighten network management and security when decentralising access to cloud-based infrastructure and applications by remote users in any location. A SASE security approach can be managed from a single console, with shared elements like threat intelligence, reporting, and high value AI-enabled services.
This security approach delivers a number of compelling benefits:
- Reduced complexity from simplifying IT infrastructure with fewer security products for your IT team to anage, update and maintain.
- Increased flexibility from enabling a range of security services including threat prevention, web filtering, sandboxing, DNS, security, credential theft prevention, data loss prevention, as well as advanced firewall policies.
- Enhanced performance from simplifying connections to information resources, with access available globally.
- Enhanced protection from a Zero Trust approach to the cloud, where all access requests must be authenticated, authorised, and encrypted, whether the connection is made inside or outside the traditional security perimeter.
- Stronger data protection and threat protection from the prevention of unauthorised access and abuse of sensitive data and more security and visibility into the network.
- Cost savings from using a single foundation, reducing costs and IT resources.
SASE makes secure connections faster and more resilient
As IT organisations rethink how to connect a remote workforce to the distributed information resources they need, SASE provides a powerful approach to secure internet and application access through mobile devices from anywhere.
To find out more about how to plan for migrating from the traditional data centre model to delivering decentralised access to cloud-based infrastructure and applications, please get in touch with the team at imei.
