Journey to SASE

Rohan Naggi
3 min readJun 2, 2021

U say “SA” and i say “SE” : “SASE” : Secure Access Service Edge

This blog post will cover

  1. What is SASE
  2. Problem Statement. What problem SASE is addressing and the
  3. Benefits of SASE.

What is SASE?
Secure Access Service Edge
SASE brings together networking and security into a unified offering to protect users, devices, data and applications to eliminate perimeter security or on-premises point products. The SASE is offered as a Cloud-delivered services.

Cloud Delivered SASE Framework

The SASE framework offers necessary security services like secure web gateways (SWG), Secure Access (ZTNA=Zero Trust Network Access), cloud access security brokers (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP), which are converged in the cloud-native model and utilizes SD-WAN edge network for optimal user and application performance.

The SASE architecture integrates security functionality into software-defined wide-area networking to provide a cloud-delivered service that simplifies deployment, unifies management, and controls user/application experience.

SASE Secure Access Service Edge

Problem Statement

What problem SASE is Solving?

Digital transformation is rapidly changing corporate culture, business processes, and technology. The introduction of and increasing demand for cloud services combined with employees working from anywhere — office, home, or coffee shop — places new demands on networking and security architectures. Users are becoming more mobile and accessing business systems off-premises.

SaaS business applications have drastically changed the volume and nature of network traffic. This explosion in the amount of data and the number of locations has significantly increased the attack surface. Networking traffic flows are shifting from data center backhaul to cloud direct. Traffic inspection is moving from on-premises security appliances to cloud-delivered security services.

As such, enterprises are rethinking their existing network and security architectures as they look toward a comprehensive overhaul and digital transformation.

Benefits of SASE

Implementation of a SASE model for the enterprise brings significant benefits to simplified management, security, network performance, user experience, and budgets.

Simplified Management: A single user interface providing simplified configuration, provisioning, real-time monitoring, fault management, and granular visibility for networking and security components.

Security: Implementation and enforcement of policy are unified while being brought closer to users and applications. Regardless of location, the same tools and practices are used. End-to-end encryption allows for a heightened compliance level, while cloud-scale security capabilities enhance detection and remediation of even advanced threats. Security policy can follow users as they move between locations and devices to assure consistent implementation and enforcement while corporate resources are protected through ZTNA.

Network Performance: SD-WAN technology is used to deliver latency-optimized connectivity both through efficient path selection and optimized traffic processing. Elimination of hair pinning and streamlining of data inspection tasks further reduces the network’s impact on application performance.

User Experience: The channeled nature of SASE connectivity reduces the number of endpoint agents needed. Equivalent security controls can be applied without regard for user location or device access, creating a more transparent, less intrusive experience.

Budget: SD-WAN already offered the opportunity for dramatic cost reductions over traditional circuits (e.g., MPLS expenses).Cloud-based security services offer cost-efficient approaches for scaling and bursting based on usage while providing flexibility to shift based on technical requirements.

For More information, check out the latest book on “Journey into the world of SASE” http://tinyurl.com/VMwareSASEbook

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Rohan Naggi

Product Manager, Author, Podcaster, Man on Mission-Work Hard & Live the Best Life