With more data moving to cloud services, remote workers, and branch offices, SASE is an emerging cybersecurity model that enables organizations to adapt to the new business environment. It combines FWaaS, CASBs, and more into one solution that connects users with distributed business systems and controls access to corporate data wherever it is located.
Secure Access to the Edge
What is SASE cybersecurity? The SASE approach rejects the idea that network connections should be automatically trusted based on their networking location, and it shifts security to the edge, away from centralized data centers. It enables much tighter access control to help prevent attacks from entering the organization’s core, even from remote users and branch offices.
While SASE can reduce complexity, enterprises must evaluate several factors before implementing it in their environment. Choosing the right SASE vendor will significantly impact the implementation, and organizations should look for a provider with experience in both networking and cybersecurity to ensure that the platform delivers the expected benefits.
A SASE platform should integrate networking and security capabilities into a single service, which helps minimize costs and introduce management efficiencies. For example, a SASE solution offers comprehensive network capabilities, including branch FWaaS, Secure Web Gateway, ZTNA, and CASB, as a single, cloud-delivered service that simplifies policy management while eliminating costly point products.
In addition, SASE should be scalable to meet growing business needs and provide consistent performance while reducing latency by connecting users to data centers via direct routes. It will help to reduce the risk of performance degradation from rerouting traffic across long distances and the resulting latency and loss of functionality. A SASE solution should also include global data centers to support the most optimal connectivity for users and applications.
Zero Trust Access
The SASE approach to cybersecurity takes an identity-based perspective, focusing on dynamic perimeters, user authentication, and segmentation. It helps security teams re-engineer their networks to reflect cloud transformations while minimizing complexity and enabling strong protection against cyberattacks. Zero trust access is an essential part of this vision and a great way to secure the edges of an organization’s network.
Zero trust access is a framework for restricting network access by requiring users to authenticate and then be vetted before accessing any internal data, servers, or applications. This approach eliminates the traditional attack surface by removing direct access to resources from end-users, making monitoring and controlling user activity easier. Microsegmentation extends this concept even further by separating various subsets of the data, server, and application network to reduce the size of the threat surface and enhance visibility into what is being done in your environment.
The best SASE solutions offer a full suite of networking and security capabilities. They incorporate the WAN optimization and SD-WAN capabilities of software-defined wide-area networking with comprehensive NGFW and SWG technologies into a single, integrated cloud-native platform. With this architecture, organizations can enjoy secure remote access and strong protection no matter where they work – all while simplifying management, reducing cost, and boosting efficiency. It is crucial to successfully tackle the challenges of remote work and other trends driving digital transformation.
Secure Data Transfer
Unlike traditional security, which only relies on the firewall to verify connections, SASE infrastructure adapts the zero-trust approach to cybersecurity by rejecting trust based on network location. It allows for much tighter access controls to ensure that every connection is legitimate and can be trusted.
The result is a less-expensive and more secure network that protects against threats and delivers the performance employees require for work from anywhere, anytime. SASE also streamlines management by consolidating networking and security capabilities typically delivered as point products, such as branch FWaaS, ZTNA, SD-WAN, CASB, and DLP, into one cloud-based service. It reduces complexity for users and administrators, eliminates siloed policies that can be easily breached, and introduces cost savings by eliminating the need for hardware and reducing operational costs.
A leading SASE solution uses TLS to validate that the end-user device is connected to a valid server. That makes it impossible for bad actors to intercept or spoof the connection. Then, it encrypts the data to prevent rogue devices from reading it in transit. In addition, the architecture dynamically binds user devices to their specific identity markers and enforces access rules based on these rather than relying on IP addresses. It means that it can secure mobile workers and deliver policy enforcement.
Zero Down can be a more leisurely time
Since laptops, smartphones, and IoT devices require a network connection, IT teams must ensure they can authenticate and authorize them quickly. That’s why many organizations adopt a zero-trust mindset that authenticates every device connecting to the network before making them a part of the organization’s secure environment. To do this, they need robust authentication technologies to verify users and their devices, regardless of the network location or the device type.
That’s where SASE comes in. SASE combines vital networking and security functions like software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) with cloud-based network security services, providing a unified solution that dynamically delivers access based on an organization’s policies. It also eliminates the need for hardware upgrades and reduces IT overhead by consolidating multiple-point products into a single software stack.
With DNS security tools that use a trusted centralized DNS server, SASE delivers an end-to-end network security solution for remote and mobile employees. That’s why 30 percent of respondents to a study report that they have adopted or plan to implement SASE architecture.
