What is sase?
August 2022
Introduction
Digital transformation and adoption of mobile, cloud and edge deployment change the fundamental network traffic patterns. This renders existing network and security models obsolete especially in the post-COVID world.
Gartner predicts the demands for simplicity, flexibility, scalability, low latency and pervasive security will force convergence of WAN edge and network security markets. This convergence is known as the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).
SASE is comprised of 3 key architectural requirements:
- Truly converged and centralised (Single-pane-of-glass)
- Global cloud-native functionality
- Support all edges i.e. branch connectivity, mobile, cloud, on-premise etc.
SASE is also defined by 4 attributes; it should be:
- Identity-driven: In terms of both user and resource identity, not just by IP address. This allows companies to develop a single set of networking and security policies for their users regardless of device or location based on profiles.
- Cloud-native: All networking and security functionalities need to be implemented in the cloud. This allows it to leverage key cloud advantages such as elasticity, scalability, self-healing and self-maintenance to deliver a full suite of security and networking capabilities to a given organisation.
- Able to support all edges: Creates one secure network for all edges e.g. on-premise datacenters, branch offices, cloud resources, mobile users.
- Globally distributed: Across dozens of Points of Presence (PoPs). Enterprise edges connect to PoPs thus all traffic is secured and optimized at the PoP and across the global backbone of PoPs to its destination.
One of the main problems faced by organisations is restricted traffic visibility and traffic inspection blind spots. SASE is built to cater to this by providing full visibility for all traffic from all edges including between edges (WAN) and from these edges to the Internet.
What does sase provide to an organisation?
- Agility: Provisioning of new resources and capabilities is fast and simple.
- Collaboration: IT teams can leverage the convergence of network and security to manage everything from a single interface i.e. single pane of glass. This cross-team collaboration improves the overall service delivery to the business.
- Efficiency: IT can better achieve service to the business, while focusing precious resources and skills on solving business-specific tasks rather than generic infrastructure maintenance.
- Cost reduction: The simplification provided by converging the network and security stack allows for reduction in overall costs of keeping the infrastructure running (OPEX).
- Business continuity: The elasticity offered by SASE makes it possible to shift to a work-from-anywhere, remote-first model instantaneously.
Lots of companies are currently thinking of the shift to cloud and as such, using SASE in their network and security strategy. They are looking at eliminating their IT silos and “point solution patches”. There are a few reasons that it could be time to move to SASE like a lack of agility in the company when it comes to innovation and business processes, security processes becoming more cumbersome, poor app performance and limited network visibility.