With SASE, build a fast and secure network for today's and tomorrow's needs

In this article, discover how SASE is the answer to all of today's IT uses and ways of working for organisations.

You will also find out which pitfalls to avoid to make sure you choose a fast, flexible and secure platform.

Here is our summary 👇

Etay MAOR 🕵, Senior Director of Security Strategy at Cato Networks and a cybersecurity expert, points out that the main goal of SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is to future-proof the corporate network 🔄. This means transport infrastructure is ready to support new needs in a flexible and secure way 🔓.

For example, remote work, which exploded with the health crisis, created strong demand for remote access capacity 📈. Organisations that had adopted the SASE model did not need to rush to upgrade their network infrastructure or make new investments.

SASE in a few points:

• 100% cloud ☁: SASE is a managed service built on a cloud-native architecture for greater agility and flexibility.
• Convergence: SASE brings network and security capabilities together on a single platform, meeting the need for simplified management and pervasive cybersecurity.
• Distributed: a true SASE approach relies on a global, private backbone of geographically distributed points of presence to optimise traffic routing and guarantee performance and scalability.
• Support for all devices: SASE securely connects every asset (sites, users, internal applications and applications running in public clouds) to deliver a consistent and secure user experience, whatever the way of working.

SASE is particularly well suited to multi-site organisations expanding regionally or internationally. With SASE, changes in scope (opening a site, divestment, headcount growth) require no network integration work from IT teams, and costs stay under control.

To take full advantage of the operational and financial benefits of SASE, it is important to identify what SASE is not:

• A chain of multiple products: some define SASE as a set of standalone products linked together through virtual machine service chaining. This means clients must integrate and manage several technology building blocks independently. Complexity will grow with every new requirement, removing the simplicity of adding capabilities as needed. Product chaining will not be able to future-proof the network for the organisation's growth and changing needs.
• On-premises appliances: on-site appliances combine SD-WAN and security, but cannot deliver these capabilities from the cloud edge. They must be configured at every site, which increases cost and complexity with each new location and widens the attack surface. Without a cloud-native architecture, there is no global network and therefore no optimisation, let alone an end-to-end guarantee. Mobile users will still face latency because traffic is concentrated through on-site appliances.
• Multiple cloud players: relying on the global Internet and forwarding traffic to cloud compute locations will not be enough for mobile users and latency-sensitive applications such as VoIP and video conferencing. These models cannot control traffic routing or expand quickly into new territories, as they depend on third-party cloud providers. Without a global private network capable of handling traffic optimisation and packet loss mitigation, the user experience will not be guaranteed and the network infrastructure will not be flexible.
• Operator bundles: telecom operators' bundled offers integrate several technology building blocks delivered as a service. Based mainly on on-site equipment, they do not rely on a proprietary global network able to guarantee end-to-end performance. In addition, security services are not mastered in-house but through OEMs, which limits their effectiveness and commitments.

The real value of SASE therefore lies in its dynamic and flexible service model. Once the architectural requirements are met, SASE promises to meet today's challenges while preparing for future workloads and the opportunities they may bring.

@EtayMaor @Christophe Lopez Castel @Bertrand Delassaux @Adrien Porcheron, @Joseph Fernando, @Sylvain Chareyre

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*Source: https://www.forbes.com