SASE enables work-from-anywhere flexibility while providing enterprise-level security for remote users, branches, and devices. Part of its comprehensive security suite includes a focus on cybersecurity supply chain risk management, ensuring the integrity and security of interconnected services and providers. This aspect is crucial in safeguarding against vulnerabilities that can arise within the supply chain network.
Using a cloud architecture, SASE delivers integrated network and security services, which streamlines implementation and management. By eliminating the need for multiple-point products, SASE simplifies IT infrastructure and reduces costs. Additionally, the incorporation of cybersecurity supply chain risk management within SASE’s framework demonstrates its commitment to a holistic security strategy that protects all facets of an organization’s digital operations.
Zero Trust Network Access
A Zero Trust network access solution combines advanced SD-WAN capabilities with comprehensive cloud-delivered security services. This technology removes the need for VPNs and DMZs that limit application performance and create security risks. This SASE architecture enables secure, direct user-to-application connections without first routing applications over the corporate firewall and data center for security inspection.
This solution uses identity and real-time context to assess the threat landscape. It continuously evaluates the integrity of devices, apps, data sources, and users to eliminate the concept of trust. It assumes a breach has occurred and minimizes the impact by segmenting access and limiting lateral movement, ensuring end-to-end encryption, and monitoring all activity in real time.
Like those offered by Versa Networks, the best SASE solutions deliver this capability as a scalable service, not as discrete networking and point solutions chained together. This reduces IT costs and workload, eliminates delays as traffic ‘trombones’ between systems, and improves security by preventing breaches in siloed systems that fail to share threat intelligence. It also makes it easier to add and update new protections as threats emerge, enabling IT teams to focus on core business initiatives.
Secure Web Gateway
A secure web gateway (SWG) sits at the edge of a network and inspects all incoming and outgoing web traffic, using company policy to decide whether it should be allowed or blocked. Unlike a typical web proxy, which blocks access to dangerous sites, SWG security can scan incoming files for malware or suspicious code.
This can help protect remote task forces, who typically use unsecured public networks that can’t be trusted by traditional firewalls, from malware that could disrupt an organization’s digital foundation. SWG software can also encrypt data to prevent attackers from deciphering code, and most modern SWGs include an additional layer of protection with sandboxing.
Look for an SWG solution that offers full security as a service capability, including SD-WAN, CASB, ZTNA and FWaaS. This approach reduces management burdens for IT by integrating networking and security in a single solution while supporting branch office, remote work and SaaS app protection use cases. It also promotes zero-trust networking by delivering a consistent, dynamic control experience based on user identity and device context rather than location or IP address.
Adaptive Authentication
Adaptive authentication goes beyond traditional 2FA, which asks users to enter a code via SMS or email. It looks at a user’s risk level (determined by granular IT policies and behavior) to dynamically change the requirements to log in, such as requiring multiple authenticators like a one-time password and biometric scan for high-risk users. A SASE solution looks at the context of each WAN session and applies security services and policies to it based on identity, location and data sensitivity. It enables security teams to reduce the time and effort spent logging in and out of systems while increasing their visibility and control over traffic patterns.
SASE solutions include several tools that make remote work safer for employees, including identity proofing, multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, virtual private network and visitor management. Remote workers can work safely anywhere when these technologies are delivered in a single easy-to-combine solution. This helps protect the business’s integrity and keep data safe from cyberattacks.
CAST
While stemming Shadow IT was a primary driver for the wide adoption of CASBs, protecting against more sophisticated and targeted threats has become equally critical. Today, malware attacks are more indiscriminate, phishing is more elegant and targeted, and even small mistakes can lead to data breaches. To meet these challenges, a next-generation CASB solution should promote convergence between cloud and enterprise security to close operational gaps. This includes a full security stack, enabling full visibility of everything in the cloud (even SSL-encrypted connections), compliance controls and monitoring, threat detection and prevention, and the core capability of control. To deliver the best possible security and usability, a next-generation CASB should be integrated into an overall SASE architecture, including other vital networking and security capabilities such as SD-WAN, branch FWaaS, and advanced DLP.
FWaaS
A cloud-delivered SASE platform delivers networking and security capabilities through a globally distributed fabric of points of presence (PoPs) with low latency wherever business offices, remote users or applications are located. IT teams can manage all functions through a unified backbone and edge service – eliminating the need for separate point products, reducing management complexity and hardware costs and providing agility to support business growth. The SASE architecture delivers a more agile network and security framework that scales as needed. This eliminates the need for costly hardware and appliances while allowing IT to implement the network and security capabilities necessary to meet evolving cybersecurity risks.
As with SD-WAN, a SASE architecture simplifies management and reduces costs by consolidating security functions into a single service. This enables security and network teams to collaborate on deployment rather than one team taking the lead, which is often the case with traditional legacy solutions. Security services include CASB, SWG, DLP and ZTNA, which can be deployed and managed through a unified security services platform. As a result, IT teams can deliver a more streamlined and secure user experience across the organization while keeping up with cyber threat evolution and supporting the work-from-anywhere imperative.
