As many enterprises embrace digital transformation and make significant investments in their shift to the cloud, the challenge now becomes how to fully leverage and realize a cloud-first SASE architecture for security and scalability. Even as more and more data and workloads spread among remote users and cloud services, application traffic and security policy enforcement should not be backhauled to data center before being forwarded to the cloud, instead it should be applied to wherever users are located. Then, add on the abundance of mobile and IoT devices across corporations, which only further increased exposure to security breaches.  

Enterprises must consider both SD-WAN and security transformation as they construct a SASE architecture to increase efficiency, enhance quality experience, and maintain a competitive edge. Using an advanced SASE architecture, enterprises can be assured of direct, secure access to applications and services across multi-cloud environments regardless of location or devices used to access them.  

Adopting a Cloud-first Security Architecture  

A SASE architecture provides a more secure and flexible way to connect by performing advanced security inspections directly in the cloud. An SD-WAN platform can automatically identify and classify applications and intelligently steer application traffic based on its destination and security policy requirements, thus eliminating latency and seamless delivery of trusted SaaS and cloud applications. This application awareness can also provide the ability to send internet-bound traffic first to a cloud-delivered security vendor for advanced inspection before forwarding to a SaaS provider.  

SASE makes the initial assumption that no user can be trusted by default and supports least privileged access through Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA) capabilities, along with additional enhanced cloud-delivered network security functions such as secure web gateway, cloud access security broker (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP), Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) to support the dynamic secure access needs of digital transformation.  

Driving Enterprise Agility with SASE 

The shift to remote working and organizations that depend on business-critical applications in the cloud will continue post-pandemic, and enterprises require business agility to support application growth, network agility, and simplified branch implementations without compromising security. An advanced SD-WAN edge platform, with SASE architecture, would support enterprises in WAN optimization, segmentation, application visibility and control, in a single centrally managed unified platform. This next-generation approach is essential for effectively defending current highly dynamic environments and providing consistent enforcement for future parameters while weaving security deep within the network. With a continuously evolving threat landscape, enterprises must also retain the agility to quickly and cost-effectively adopt new security solutions as they come to market.  

SD-WAN is a critical foundational component of a SASE architecture, together with cloud-delivered security strategies, ensures consistent policy enforcement and access control for users, devices, applications, and IoT.  

Check out Lanner 10GbE SASE solutions for more detail.