Secure Access Service Edge, or SASE, is one of the most hyped concepts in cybersecurity right now.
First named by Gartner in a pre-pandemic research note penned in 2019, SASE is currently more of a paradigm or framework than an actual product range.
But soon, full SASE solutions will be literally everywhere, protecting users or devices wherever they are, rather than leaving security tied to a location or perimeter.
Gartner has predicted that 40% of businesses will be seeking to adopt SASE by 2024, with many organisations starting their journey today by implementing Zero Trust and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) security systems.
Censornet already offers some of the components of this security framework, including CASB, and we’ll be here to help you on along the road to SASE.
So, what will this new dawn mean for you and your business?
What are the benefits of SASE?
1) SASE is in the cloud
We’ve been talking about the death of the perimeter for many years. But in 2021, the concept of the perimeter – a notional barrier between an organisation and the wider internet – has been finally buried.
Gartner famously said the legacy “data centre as the centre of the universe” model is obsolete, meaning security needs to shift to the user and device, focusing on identity and context during authentication.
SASE is a new model for a new world in which everyone is working remotely at least some of the time. Delivered in the cloud, it’s a security everywhere paradigm that’s uniquely suited to our distributed society.
2) SASE combines two forms of security
Secure Access Service Edge represents the convergence of network as a service, such as software-defined WAN (SD-WAN), with security as a service including SWG, CASB and firewall as a service (FWaaS), delivered wherever users or devices are located.
It serves the needs of digital transformation and a world where the perimeter is no longer lurking just outside the office but anywhere the enterprise needs it to be.
3) It’s suited for the modern world
We’ve living through an era in which work is no longer a place, but an activity which takes place in sheds, cafes, kitchens and pubs rather than just offices.
Even if secure remote working turns into hybrid working of some variety, the change has come.
SASE is designed for remote workforces and cloud applications.
Discussing this point, Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research, wrote: “If I’m trying to move to a modernised application infrastructure, why am I still using a network architecture designed for client-server from 30 years ago?
“A lot of my apps are now in the cloud; I’ve got people working from everywhere. This transition would have happened with or without the pandemic, but the pandemic has accelerated it.”
4) SASE reduces costs
Censornet is all about offering a total security package that combines everything from MFA to email security into one single secure cloud platform.
SASE offers a similar approach. By combining several different security systems, it will allow vendors to offer packages at reduced cost.
It’s worth remembering that few, if any, companies have full SASE solutions on offer today. But this will change in the coming years. Some vendors will partner up with others to provide full SASE systems, whilst others will offer a unilateral solution.
Whatever happens, the end user is likely to benefit from cost savings.
5) It improves agility
You are opening a new office at the top of a mountain in some remote part of the world. A few years ago, this would have been extremely tricky to secure.
The advent of cloud-based security has changed all this. Now security works at the level of the user and device, rather than being bound to a data centre or on-prem systems.
SASE is part of this march away from physical security systems. Security needs to be wherever your workers are – which can now be more or less anywhere.
This means businesses can benefit from greater agility and could quickly open a new outpost in a far-flung location or bring on new workers in an exciting territory, safe in the knowledge that security doesn’t have to be a concern. The new world is flexible and fast-moving, which is why SASE suits it.
