Author: Sanjay Poddar

Unified Security Policies

• Centralized management: SASE supports the enforcement of security policies and their management throughout the entire network.
• Policy consistency: The policies are consistent and are managed from a single console, which eases the management and allows organizations to ensure the policy is consistent across their on-premises, cloud, and remote environments.

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)

• Identity-centric security: SASE is designed based on Zero Trust principles, to provide access to users and devices regardless of where a user is connected from.
• Least privilege access: ZTNA can be used to provide a user with limited access based on their profile, which immensely mitigates the risk associated with lateral attacks.

Integrated Threat Protection

• Secure Web Gateway (SWG): A Secure Web Gateway (SWG) is an advanced web security service that blocks malicious websites and malware while controlling and monitoring web usage and access.
• Cloud-Based Security Broker (CASB): It provides cloud application protection through the policy enforcement of security policies, compliance, and activity monitoring.
• Firewall as a service: Works in the cloud but provides firewall functionality as a cloud service, offering various protection choices and use cases for remote and mobile users.
• Advanced threat protection: Some other features of SASE solutions are sandboxing, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and advanced malware protection in detecting and blocking sophisticated threats.

End-To-End Encryption

• Secure connectivity: SASE's protection architecture ensures data transmitted across the network is encrypted and protected from snooping and tampering.
• SSL/TLS inspection: Provides deep inspection by decrypting and re-encrypting sessions for analyzing and detecting threats in SSL/TLS sessions.

Continuous Monitoring and Analytics

• Real-time threat detection: SASE enables real-time monitoring of network traffic and user behavior to recognize and mitigate any anomalies or threats.
• Behavioral analytics: With the advancements in AI and Machine Learning, SASE leverages these systems to understand patterns in traffic in order to detect abnormalities that might pose a threat to security, deterring and blocking the occurrence of such threats proactively.

Scalable Security

• Cloud-native architecture: SASE implements the enormous scalability of cloud-driven services, which can grow with the demands and needs of the organization while driving the security and protection of the organization’s users and data without compromising the performance of the network and user experience.
• Elastic security resources: Allocation of security resources to dynamically meet the growing demand and assure the security services can respond to changing traffic and user loads.

Simplified Security Management

• Single management console: It enables a single point of management with a single user interface for security policy handling, resulting in a decrease in the complexities related to handling multiple solutions and security vendors.
• Automated security updates: SASE solutions are generally embedded to automatically update security features and threat intelligence to ensure protection from the latest threats on the network.

Enhanced Visibility

• Comprehensive insights: Provides visibility into all traffic, including that from remote users and cloud applications, allowing for better monitoring and control.
• Detailed reporting: Generated reports and analytics for various security events and incidents to assist organizations in their effort to identify and eliminate vulnerabilities and threats.

Minimized Attack Surface

• Micro-segmentation: Dividing the network to create smaller and isolated segments minimizes the possibility of attacks and limits potential breaches.
• Remote and mobile security: Enterprise-class security is made available to users over their remote and mobile devices so that they are fully protected, irrespective of location.

Compliance and Data Protection

• Regulatory compliance: Organizations can adhere to compliance requirements by applying security policies and utilizing the availability of detailed logs and reports.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): A security measure to protect sensitive data and to ensure it is never leaked.

SASE combines these security capabilities into one framework, thereby increasing organizational security postures and managing modern, distributed IT environments. Thus, SASE is a solution that can effectively address challenges such as the shift to cloud services and remote work.