In this Article:
- What is SASE – Secure Access Service Edge?
- The Benefits of SASE
- What are the advantages of SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) Model
- The Growth Of SASE Adoption
- Conclusion – Why SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)is the need of the hour
What is SASE – Secure Access Service Edge?
SASE – pronounced “sassy,” is primarily delivered as a cloud-based service. SASE – Secure access service edge enables secure Cloud and even on-premise connectivity. It is a network architecture that combines software-defined WAN capabilities and cloud-native network security services, including zero-trust network access, secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers, and firewalls as a service.
The SASE framework allows enterprise security professionals to identify and specify performance reliability, security, and cost desired for every session while using network connectivity. In simple terms, SASE is an agile methodology that allows to achieve zero trust policies in a cloud-native environment.
Touted by Gartner as the future of network security, By 2024, at least 40% of enterprises will have explicit strategies to adopt SASE, up from less than 1% at year-end 2018 – predicts Gartner.
The Benefits of SASE
SASE leverages increased security in Cloud. It has been noticed that enterprises that use SASE benefit from it because of the increased speed and scalability while addressing the security challenges generally seen in distributed cloud-based environments. SASE is becoming popular because of its “verify, then trust” approach. This zero-trust approach emphasizes the protection of critical IP rather than simply trusting the users on a particular network by default. It follows strict identity verification for every user and every device, regardless of the network zone or location. This explicitly allows for better segmentation and control over each application and user.
What are the advantages of the SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) Model
The top benefits of the SASE Model are:
- Ease of use
- Transparency
- Effective network access and network security
- Best performance through latency-optimized routing
- Zero trust network access enablement
- Superior quality of service
- Risk-driven security controls
- Globally distributed & cloud-native architecture
- Edge enforcement with centralized policy
- Autoscaling
- Eliminating hardware refresh cycles & capacity planning
The Growth Of SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)Adoption
Derek Brost, Director, Professional Services – Security & Compliance at Intervision, states, “While SASE (secure access service edge) is the peak of Gartner’s “Hype Cycle,” it will continue to gain adoption as organizations move past the quick response measures they enacted this year for their massive and unexpected increase in remote worker connectivity.”
SASE allows for a reduction in complexity and cost. Based on the rapidly changing business needs,
SASE meets business needs by allowing it to scale up or down. While the benefits mentioned above may seem phenomenal, most IT organizations are not fully prepared to adopt SASE.
Organizations face cultural challenges since most might have separate networking and security teams. A move that involves coordination between two teams can sometimes be a jarring experience. Derek Brost says that “Many IT networking groups, unfortunately, found the strain and limits of their remote access VPN concentrators and, even after overcoming or addressing those breaking points, they next coped with emerging issues in their bandwidth constraints, lack of network segmentation, weakness in endpoint security solutions and myriad untrusted devices connecting to sensitive corporate systems.”
One of the other main factors limiting SASE adoption is that only 4% of the organizations have migrated entirely to the Cloud, leaving a majority of organizations yet to be Cloud and SASE-ready.
Conclusion – Why SASE is the need of the hour
Although SASE adoption can be challenging, the payoff for companies who adopt this is huge. IT groups must budget and plan for a converged, integrated, cloud-based approach to enable remote devices, workforce, and distributed security technology.
Recent surveys have shown that 67% of organizations will be SASE-ready by the summer of 2022. 1 in 4 organizations is looking to migrate applications to the Cloud and, in turn, adopt SASE. The main focus currently is overcoming the lack of skills and management complexity barrier and moving towards a SASE work atmosphere. Organizations must communicate that security functions are increasingly being inserted to protect workloads. That’s when zero trust access can be enabled and seen as a journey, not a hindrance.
Read the latest articles on AWS Cloud Cost Optimization Strategies and Best Practices here.
To get the latest insights, research and expert articles on AWS Services, Cloud Migration, DevOps and other technologies, subscribe to our Blog Newsletter here. For AWS Case studies and success stories, visit Case Study Section
