What are the Benefits of SASE?

The rise of the cloud and the ever-evolving demand for stronger, more reliable security in every industry has prompted a new age for networking, driven by concepts like SASE. Coined by Gartner, the term “SASE” or Secure Access Service Edge, refers to a new framework for SD-WAN functionality. In this landscape, SD-WAN is delivered alongside the security tools and configuration applications required to take the deployment to the next level.

Though still in its early stages of development, SASE is already projected to grow from a value of $1.2 billion in 2021, to $4.1 billion in 2026. This represents a CAGR of around 26.4%. By converging both your networking needs and your security requirements into a cloud-native, single-service solution, SASE turbocharges the existing benefits of SD-WAN.

For the right business, a SASE deployment can strengthen your distributed and flexible networking environment with tools like Secure Web Gateways, Zero Trust Network Access, Cloud Access Security Brokerage, and Firewall as a Service.

Here are the biggest benefits of SASE.

1. Lower Costs

Cost savings will always be a major factor determining how successful a new technology might be. With SASE, you’re eliminating the common costs of WAN, by tapping into the benefits of SD-WAN. In other words, you’ll be replacing the need for expensive leased circuits and MPLS in exchange for VPN connectivity over the public internet, and a wider range of options.

SASE also ensures you can eliminate the somewhat jointed model of purchasing virtual appliances and physical tools from multiple vendors. Buying everything you need through a single, cloud-native solution generally means you’ll get a better deal. Plus, you can reduce the cost associated with unnecessary network complexity and management.

SASE simplicity can even reduce the workload for your IT staff, reducing the costs involved with paying for experts to manage your ecosystem.

2. Scalability

SASE is a truly flexible approach to networking. Traditional point-to-point hub-and-spoke solutions in the WAN environment required significant excess time and resources to scale your system up and down. However, with SASE and SD-WAN, you can streamline provisioning times, and minimize the work for your IT staff.

There’s also plenty of options when it comes to choosing where your applications live with SASE. You can place your apps in a corporate data center, in a public or private cloud, or in a SaaS environment. SASE’s distributed architecture ensures you’re free to choose the structure that works best for your business.

3. Centralized and Simplified Control

One of the biggest benefits of SASE is also a significant benefit of SD-WAN – centralized control. With SDWAN and SASE, you’ll get access to a single, central environment for managing your entire environment within the cloud.

This is a much better alternative to the old-fashioned and distributed structure, which would involve hiring additional IT professionals as you continue to distribute VPNs, SD-WAN, SWG, and other tools across multiple sites.

As your network grows with SASE, the complexity of managing that environment doesn’t grow along with it. Instead, you can control everything from a remote location, provision new technology without having to visit a site in person, and roll out patches instantly.

4. Integrated Edge-to-Edge Security

A major component setting SASE apart from standard SD-WAN, is the in-built security solutions that come with it. With SASE, you automatically get various security functions built into your system when you start deploying your SD-WAN environment. A SASE solution can include security measures like:

• RBI
• Zero-trust network action
• DNS reputation
• Data-loss prevention
• Malware protection
• Firewall as a service
• Intrusion prevention and detection
• Secure web gateways

The right SASE provider will allow you to essentially mix and match the various tools required to create the perfect secure environment for your landscape. This means you can have all the control and privacy you need to adhere to even the most significant compliance standards.

Because all of the security technology you need is located in an all-in-one cloud environment, this also significantly reduces the complexity of deploying security policies. You can create policies in the cloud and distribute them to your teams remotely, in an instant.

5. Consistent, Dynamic Protection

Aside from giving you access to various excellent security tools; SASE can also provide consistent and dynamic network protection actions too. For instance, your SASE mechanisms can identify cases where malware may begin exploring and attacking your infrastructure.

SASE enables higher levels of Data Loss Prevention, in a time when data is the most valuable tool any business can access. A cloud-based solution will be able to automate various DLP processes, from the classification and discovery of sensitive data to the authentication of people who want to access certain data lakes and applications.

With protection policies implemented across your entire network, you’ll have complete control over how your data moves throughout your ecosystem.

6. Improved Network Performance

Thanks to the inclusion of SDWAN in the SASE technology stack, SASE also provides constant network monitoring functionality, which allows you to track the performance of the data flow through all kinds of streams throughout your business.

Efficient monitoring of virtualized cloud environments and remote data streams will give you a real-time picture of all your outbound and inbound process connections, so you can optimize them instantly.

The integration between SASE security solutions and routing capabilities means you can easily ensure the right traffic is moving at the right speed to empower and enable your teams, while simultaneously taking extra precautions to protect your data.

7. Distributed Architecture

The SASE environment builds on a distributed architecture with a central management strategy in the center, just like SD-WAN. This distributed architecture means you can access a greater level of resiliency, when faced with outages and denial-of-service attacks.

SASE gives overall better network latency support than using a VPN connection to a corporate data center. What’s more, thanks to a Cloud Access Security Broker, you can ensure you’re constantly managing the right balance of security and network performance in every environment, both for the cloud and in on-premises deployments.

Taking Advantage of SASE

Considered by many to be the next stage in SD-WAN technology, SASE can help companies to build on the existing benefits of SD-WAN, with increased access to new control components and greater security. With SASE, businesses can truly prepare their network for the next stage of digital transformation, and the transition to a secure cloud.