Who needs SASE in reality

First of all, SASE! stands for “Somehow Administer Security Everywhere!”. With these regards, it’s a task for every business of any size without any dependency on its home country or headquarters’ location. When we come to discussion from the perspective of telecom world, where SASE means “secure access service edge”, the task of maintaining security downgrades to a simpler task of SD-WAN integration with a number of cloud-based security tools, such as zero-trust network access, classic firewalls and some more. However, relying solely on the cloud-based security is not a sufficient solution for anyone nowadays.

In fact, security of all the aspects is a continuous challenge with constantly changing requirements and needs due to the harsh dynamic of the world and numerically growing dangers coming. So, the solutions proposed have to be multifaceted and this is why connectivity issues really matter. There’s also possibility of totally new types of dangers coming, like it happened with the Covid-19 pandemic last year, and these threats can bring totally unexpected shifts in traffic consumption, which, in the worst cases, lead to disruptions in business functionality or even the whole businesses going bankrupt.

Currently, enterprises keep on constructing multilevel internet security systems where alignment with overall strategy in the sphere of IT and digital transformation also plays an important role. Since the diversity of companies worldwide varies by a number of factors (such as geographic network reach, business diversification, number of networked sites, type of users (e.g. customers, employees, suppliers, authorities, regulators and others) and scope of application – the solutions also vary significantly, which leads to a higher degree of adjustments needed.

The factors mentioned above drive the security designs and implemented tools globally, since the higher personalization is needed. However, there are some similarities worldwide. As a result, there are several key tendencies developed globally, that define the general path of the related technologies:

• The highest priority is now given to cybersecurity above all the other types as more and more key business elements are bonded with IT systems

• Most service providers have several SD-WAN options from different vendors as they are not interoperable.

• Service providers always offer for carrier managed SD-WANs only the basic security options (like stateful firewall), sometimes also recommending their own advanced capabilities.

• The key decision for ones migrating from some another solution to SD-WAN is one regarding replacement of their own existing network of security solutions.

• Retaining the MPLS networks after buying SD-WAN services is mainly explained by inherent security

• The recent impact of Covid on work-from-home (WFH) patterns caused the demand for scaled-down, lower-cost SD-WAN and other VPN solutions

• There’s a risk of one’s WFH solution inspecting packets over the connection that’s used in someone’s place for entertainment, amusement or other networked applications. So, WFH SD-WAN solutions can be revealing privacy issues

All these trends define the future development route of security-related issues to ensure fully applicable win-win solution.