Benefits of Implementing SASE Architecture in Your Organization
Implementing SASE architecture is key to supporting a work-from-anywhere environment. Start by reviewing your current infrastructure to identify what needs to be changed.
Next, select a SASE provider with a unified solution for networking and security functions. This simplifies management and improves agility. Historically siloed teams can collaborate, and changes can be made quickly without the risk of a maintenance window being wasted isolating faults.
Scalability
As the business grows, so will the need for secure remote and hybrid work access. The SASE solution consolidates networking and security functions traditionally delivered as point products, providing scalability to address these needs.
Rather than relying on an internal team to install, configure and manage multiple-point solutions, the SASE architecture offers a simple, easy-to-use single management application. This eliminates the complexity of managing multiple tools and reduces IT workload by removing the need for patching and hardware replacements.
Moreover, because the tools are deployed in points of presence close to users, it avoids the need for data to be sent back to the corporate office for security processing, and performance is improved by reducing latency. Finally, because the solution is cloud-native and scalable, IT teams can quickly deploy new capabilities without waiting for an appliance to be purchased or installed at each location. This enables organizations to scale with their business needs, reducing operational costs by avoiding over-provisioning resources. The scalability of SASE also provides flexibility for future expansion and the ability to add additional locations to support remote and hybrid work quickly.
Virtualization
Most IT departments are organized by technology domains — WAN, campus, data center and security. As a result, they work in silos and often don’t communicate unless they respond to another team’s request. Implementing SASE architecture breaks down these silos and facilitates collaboration across IT teams.
A unified SASE architecture provides visibility of network performance issues and enables IT to proactively respond to them, whether on-prem or in the cloud. It also streamlines management, eliminating the need for multiple-point products to be managed separately by separate IT teams.
The pandemic shift to remote work and increased use of IoT devices, mobile devices and wireless workspaces demand the scalability, speed and control SASE offers. SASE makes it possible to replace costly VPNs with secure digital workspaces accessed on any device from any location. This is possible because SASE combines a “network as a service” with a “security as a service” model, providing unified connectivity and security delivered over the public Internet. This allows IT to deliver services with agility and scale without sacrificing user experiences, application performance or safety.
Flexibility
SASE offers a flexible solution that can adapt to your network and security requirements as your business grows. Combining networking and security functions into a single cloud service saves external traffic loads from routing back through your data center, reducing application performance latency for your remote workforce.
It also enables you to leverage SD-WAN, making it simple for employees to connect to your organization’s systems, whether in the office or from home. This flexibility helps keep your workforce productive while ensuring you have the best security protection to protect sensitive information and systems from malicious actors.
SASE also reduces the number of hardware devices your team needs to manage. This means you can scale your architecture as your business grows and reduce the IT time required for technology maintenance, day-to-day performance management, security firewall alert monitoring, and threat response. This will help your organization improve efficiencies and reduce the total cost of ownership.
Security
The security advantages of SASE enable accelerated digital transformation. Legacy network security models require a patchwork of solutions to secure remote systems. SASE reduces that number to just one, so IT teams can spend more time on priorities like improving performance and less time on maintenance tasks.
SASE enables granular visibility and control of users, devices, and services as they connect to applications. Tools are built into the same portal employees use to access their corporate systems, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware. This also translates into more consistent policy enforcement and a reduced attack surface across the network.
Additionally, SASE can optimize bandwidth and connectivity issues at the network edge by decoupling networking services from the underlying networks, reducing circuit bandwidth costs, and right-sizing traffic to data centers. You can save money by reducing or eliminating expensive internet circuits at the data center and branch offices. This also helps you better align resources with the needs of your business. Lastly, the SASE architecture delivers strong protection for your data at rest and in transit with DLP features.
Cost
The distributed approach of SASE allows you to consolidate many networking and security functions into a single architecture. That reduces the total cost of ownership because you deal with fewer vendors and hardware deployments are eliminated. Additionally, SASE runs as a service in the cloud, so it’s easy to change functionality on demand. This adds efficiencies and speed to the change process, which can help your teams stay ahead of threats without spending hours isolating problems in siloed systems.
SASE also delivers centralized visibility, which can detect performance bottlenecks and resolve them more quickly. That translates to better network performance and lower bandwidth costs for your end users.
When considering a SASE solution, it’s important to ensure that it includes all essential networking and security capabilities. That has zero trust network access, a cloud access security broker (CASB), a secure web gateway, sandboxing, remote browser isolation and data loss prevention services. Choosing a SASE provider that offers these in-line security technologies as part of one comprehensive platform will provide you with the best value for your organization.