SASE: It’s Not Just a Buzzword, It’s the Network of The Future
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), pronounced “sassy”, is a comprehensive and converged approach to WAN security and connectivity. It is also poised to change the face of network connectivity and security in the first half of the decade. After less than 1% adoption rate in 2018, Gartner expects that more than 40% of enterprises will have specific strategies to leverage SASE by 2024.
The driver behind these impressive adoption rates is simple: the dynamic security and network challenges of the modern digital business demand a new means of connecting and securing users. But, what makes SASE more than just another IT buzzword? Why aren’t traditional WAN solutions and architectures no longer enough? Here, we’ll walk through the answers to those questions.
Security and connectivity challenges facing digital businesses
Many WAN connectivity and security technologies and solutions were designed with a particular network architecture in mind. In years gone by, a corporate data center was the center of network connectivity and used as the hub for network security and connectivity. However, cloud and mobile workloads have turned that paradigm on its head.
For example, Gartner specifically calls out these fundamental changes to modern networks:
- Users are doing more work off enterprise networks
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) has led to many workloads running outside of on-premises data centers
- Public cloud SaaS (Software as a Service) has become a more popular means of application consumption than on-premises hardware
- Large amounts of sensitive data are now stored with cloud service providers
- Bandwidth used for public cloud access often exceeds that used for accessing resources within an enterprise’s data center
From a network connectivity standpoint, these changes have played a major role in the demand for MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) flattening, and an increase in SD-WAN (software-defined WAN) adoption. Similarly, the dynamic nature of network data flows has created demand for an approach to network security that is more agile and scalable than the traditional centralized appliance-based approach. This has led to increased adoption of cloud-based solutions such as CASBs (Cloud Access Security Brokers), FWaaS (Firewall as a Service), and cloud-based SWGs (Secure Web Gateways).
However, prior to SASE, no single solution has provided a single holistic offering that addresses all the major connectivity and security issues facing the modern enterprise. This meant that many network architectures in the second half of the 2020s were often a hybrid design using a variety of network and security appliances as well as cloud services to connect and protect corporate WANs. While this approach was an improvement, and a logical transition point between the traditional data center focused network architectures and SASE, it had its own challenges. Multiple different solutions mean room for oversight in network security policies as well as management and integration challenges that can increase complexity.
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How SASE solves the problem
SASE solves these problems by delivering enterprise-grade network and security functionality in a holistic and converged manner. Delivered using a cloud-service model, SASE provides enterprises with features and functionality such as these (referred to as “core components” of SASE by Gartner): SD-WAN, CASB, ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), FWaaS and SWG.
By delivering networking and security functionality with a cloud-based service model, SASE providers ensure all network edges – headquarters, remote workers, branches, data centers, public clouds, and mobile users – can be connected to the WAN securely without sacrificing security or performance. Additionally, network complexity is significantly reduced as IT has fewer appliances and services to maintain and a single centralized management platform for streamlined network control and increased visibility.
The real-world benefits of SASE
It’s clear that a solution that offers the functionality SASE promises can have a significant impact on agility, scalability, performance, security, and cost of an enterprise WAN, but potential and execution are not one and the same. As the industry has seen (with buzzwords such as NFV – Network Functions Virtualization), not every new acronym lives up to the hype. So, how can you be sure there is substance behind the SASE hype? Because enterprises are already benefiting from SASE adoption.
Case in point: this Alewijnse and Cato Networks case study (PDF). Alewijnse, a multinational electrical systems integrator with offices in Europe and Asia was able to reduce bandwidth costs by 25%, increase overall bandwidth by 10 times, and significantly streamline their network and security architecture with Cato Networks’ SASE offering.
Final thoughts: Convergence is key
The fundamental driver of SASE’s value to enterprises is convergence. By eliminating the need for multiple solutions from multiple vendors, SASE can lower WAN costs and complexity while increasing security and performance. Additionally, the converged and cloud-based delivery model means users at any network edge can access the network and receive the same level of security as they would connecting from an enterprise data center. As a result, SASE is capable of living up to the hype in a way few IT buzzwords can.