The adoption of cloud infrastructure and edge computing and the current rise in remote work have changed the usual network and security pattern.
Due to the huge budget for IT and skilled employees, larger organizations have found it easy to adopt this new development, unlike medium and small-sized enterprises that are still trying to maintain access control and technologies for discovering threats required to preserve their remote and local assets. To learn more, click here.
But first,
What Is SASE?
Secure Access Service Edge(SASE) is a new networking category introduced by Gartner. The whole essence of this concept is to make it easy and convenient for organizations to secure access to their applications, whether hosted locally or in the cloud, from any location and device.
It is an IT cloud-based model that combines security network functions with software-defined networking delivering both from the same service provider.
Security is defined by real-time context, digital identity, and the regulatory compliance policies of a company.
SASE came into existence due to the increase in cloud, edge, and mobile computing in the enterprise due to the corporate and LAN data center.
Features Of The SASE Architecture
- Distributing the fabric of PoPs globally guarantees a full range of WAN and security abilities using low latency everywhere mobile users, business offices, and cloud applications are located.
- A digital identity can be attached to either cloud service, application software, device, edge computing location, or a branch office.
- Convergence of network security functions, including SD-WAN, FWaaS, and SWG.
SASE Opportunities
- SASE provides the security and network required to future-proof any form of international business.
- It allows migration to the cloud and remote work.
Benefits Of SASE
- SASE guarantees secured access for every device or user, regardless of the location.
- It decreases cost and management complexity since security and network software are infused in a single solution.
- Improved security and performance
- New business patterns are activated for better productivity.
SASE Challenges
SASE implementation hung on two main criteria, which are:
- Your willingness and ability to cause the change, coupled with the organization of your security and IT team
- Your choice of product.
The challenges are –
- Network Specialists/security professionals may turn SASE into their project.
- At times a standalone SASE may not be sufficient to meet the company’s requirements. For instance, branch-heavy requirements demand that data and applications be hosted locally. In such cases, a hybrid build-up matches cloud networking and on-premises in specific locations.
- Considering the need of diverse companies, Gartner’s Magic Quadrant may not be a perfect platform for all.
SASE Vendors Evolves
SASE focuses on balancing security and network requirements. However, before employing SASE formation, a business should consider its needs, cybersecurity, networking teams, and the required security and network functions.
Technology is evolving, and most vendors are following suit.
The SASE model must make critical applications available to globally distributed users, services, and endpoints. It should also be scalable for data management and control planes.
SASE Standards
Metro Ethernet Forum has become the next organization standard focusing on security infrastructure service and software-defined networks for enterprise network design, service providers, and technology manufacturers.
The MEF SASE Services committee was set up to provide a draft technical specification to guide public use. Its specification was made possible by the contribution of several technology manufacturers and service providers.
Best Ways To Deploy And Manage SASE
For adequate deployment, organizations should know the major factors of SASE architecture:
- The vendor’s PoPs
- Distance of users to the PoPs
- Distance to the user’s SaaS applications like Salesforce or Microsoft
- Office locations
- Existence of agent onboarding
- End-user devices.
Enterprises should also calculate SASE ROI(Return On Investment) for 3-year and 5-year increments.
Evgeniy Kharam, director at Herjavec Group, over network security architecture, and Dmitry Raidman, CTO at Cybeats, suggested analyzing the breakdown of the cost factors in the current IT budget to recognize the items that become outdated in the conversion to SASE. Aspects to be considered include data sources, monitoring, physical infrastructure, administration and power, and inbound and outbound connectivity.
Conclusion
Enterprise networks constantly depend on cloud-based applications to keep their business running and support distributed workflow that helps mobile and remote users.
Due to this, conventional enterprise networks have caused the infrastructure leaders to manage and secure the ever-growing attack surface. In contrast, networks are not relenting to provide support to the workflows of the remote endpoint.
For companies to remain relevant and competitive, their endpoints must be managed and secured by the same networking and security policies.
