Many enterprises today are exploring the benefits of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). SASE is a modern networking and security solution for enterprises that converges...
Are You Trapped in the Upside-Down World of Networking and Security? Many enterprises today are exploring the benefits of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). SASE is a modern networking and security solution for enterprises that converges SD-WAN and network security solutions like NGFW, IPS, and NGAM. SASE provides a single, unified and cloud-native network and security service that is adapted to current and future technology and business needs.
Despite the availability and increasing of SASE, some enterprises still maintain legacy appliances for their networking and security needs. Such businesses are trapped in an upside-down world that operates in technology silos and requires countless IT resources to deploy, manage, and maintain.
In this blog post, we will compare old-fashioned point solutions from the upside-down world to Cato’s modern SASE Cloud. We’ll examine the following five characteristics:
Network Devices
High Availability
Security Updates
The Hardware Refresh Cycle
TLS Inspection
To read more about each characteristic, you’re welcome to read the eBook SASE vs. the Upside Down World of Networking and Security this blog post is based on.
Characteristic #1: Network Devices
Let’s first compare network devices. Network devices are the physical appliances that enable connectivity and security in the network.
Network Devices in the Upside-down World:
Heavy duty
High touch
Difficult to maintain and monitor
Logistical and supply chain issues
Complex installation
Cato Socket in the SASE World:
Lightweight
Simple to use
Modern UX
No supply chain issues
Zero-touch deployment
Characteristic #2: High Availability
Next, let’s look at high availability. High availability is about ensuring the network is always accessible, regardless of outages, natural disasters, misconfigurations, or any other unforeseen event.
High Availability in the Upside-down World:
Costly to buy redundant hardware
Complex configurations
Scalability is limited to box capacity
Requires hours of management and troubleshooting
Prone to configuration errors
High Availability in SASE World:
Cost-effective
A frictionless process
Rapid deployment
Multi-layered redundancy
Highly scalable
Simplicity that reduces risk
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/sase-vs-the-upside-down-world-of-networking-and-security/"] SASE vs. the Upside Down World of Networking and Security | Download the eBook [/boxlink]
Characteristic #3: Security Updates
No comparison would be complete without addressing security. With so many cyberthreats, security is an integral part of any enterprise IT strategy. But IT’s task list is filled to the brim with multiple competing priorities. How can businesses ensure security tasks aren’t pushed to the bottom of the list?
Security Updates in the Upside-down World:
Cumbersome and complex
Time-consuming
Disruptive to the business
Requires manual intervention for “automated” tasks
Higher risk of failure
Security Updates in SSE 360 World:
100% automated
Hourly automatic updates from 250+ security feeds
Transparent to the user
Minimal false positives
IT and security have time to work on other business-critical projects
Characteristic #4: Hardware Refresh Cycle
When hardware becomes obsolete or can no longer satisfy technology or capacity requirements, it needs to be evaluated and upgraded. Otherwise, productivity will be impacted, security will be compromised, and business objectives will not be met. The Hardware Refresh Cycle in the Upside-down World:
A slow, time-consuming process
Dependent on the global supply chain
Can be blocked by budgets or politics
Requires extra IT resources
The Hardware Refresh Cycle in SASE World:
A one time process - SASE scales, is continuously updated and suitable for multiple use cases
Easily adopt new features
Unlimited on-demand scalability
Flexible, cost-effective pricing models and easy to demonstrate ROI
Reduces administrative overhead
Characteristic #5: TLS Inspection
Finally, TLS inspection prevents hackers from performing reconnaissance or progressing laterally by decrypting traffic, inspecting it and then re-encrypting it.
TLS Inspection in the Upside-down World:
Scoping, acquiring, deploying and configuring more hardware
Backhauling traffic for firewall inspection
Time-consuming
Increased certificate management
Requires higher throughput
TLS Inspection in SSE 360 World:
Wire speed performance
Consistent TLS inspection
Quick and easy setup
Simple deployment at scale
Minimal resources required
Getting Out of the Upside-Down World
With SASE, enterprises can ensure they are never trapped in an upside-down world of cumbersome legacy appliances. SASE provides business agility, on-demand scalability, and 360-degree security along with simplified management and maintenance for IT and security teams. The cloud-native SASE architecture connects and secures all resources and edges, anywhere in the world, based on identity-driven access.
To read more about the differences between legacy appliances and SASE (and how to rescue yourself) read the eBook SASE vs. the Upside Down World of Networking and Security.
Corporate IT infrastructure has become crucial to the success of the modern business. Disruption in the availability of corporate applications and services will impact employee...
The Value of Network Redundancy Corporate IT infrastructure has become crucial to the success of the modern business. Disruption in the availability of corporate applications and services will impact employee productivity and business profitability.
Companies are responsible for the resiliency of their own IT systems and this includes ensuring the constant availability of critical business applications for employees, customers, and partners. Network outages are possible; however, how rapidly the network recovers with minimal disruption to the business is what matters most.
Network redundancy is designed to limit the risk of a network outage halting business operations. Building resiliency and redundancy into the corporate network enables an organization to rapidly recover and maintain operations.
Impact of Network Redundancy
Network redundancy is designed to ensure that no single point of failure exists within an organization’s network infrastructure. This benefits the modern business in numerous ways:
Security: Network outages occur, and the impact can be measured in numerous ways, including the network security impact. Network outages caused by DDOS or other such attacks will have a significant impact on day-day business operations, affecting branch and remote workers, thus impacting some of their enterprise security protection. Such incidents are also used to launch stealth attacks on critical business systems to further damage business operations. Network redundancy improves security by providing alternate routes for impacted network traffic, thus reducing the chances of experiencing outages that place business resources and the network at risk.
Performance: If an organization is dependent on a single network link or carrier, then its network performance is only as good as that carrier’s network. If the provider suffers an outage or degraded performance, so does the company. Network redundancy can enable an organization to optimize its use of multiple network carriers to avoid outages or degraded service.
Reliability: The primary purpose of network redundancy is to eliminate single points of failure that can cause outages or degraded performance. Redundancy improves resiliency by limiting the potential impact if a system or service goes down.
How Redundancy in Cato’s Architecture Works
The Cato SASE Cloud is composed of a global network of points of presence (PoPs) that are connected via multiple Tier-1 network providers. When traffic enters the Cato SASE Cloud, a PoP performs security inspection, applies all policies, and optimally routes the traffic to the PoP nearest its destination.
The design of the Cato SASE Cloud provides multiple layers of redundancy to ensure consistent service availability. As a result, it is highly resilient against several types of failures, including:
Carrier Outage: The Cato SASE Cloud was designed using multiple tier-1 carriers to connect its PoPs and provide reliable, high-performance network connectivity. If a carrier’s service begins to degrade, the PoPs will automatically detect this and failover to an alternate carrier to maintain optimal performance and availability.
InterPoP Outage: The Cato SASE Cloud is composed of a network of PoPs in 75+ global locations. If a PoP experiences an outage, all services running inside this PoP will automatically failover to the nearest available PoP, and all traffic to that PoP will automatically reroute to the nearest available PoP.
Intra-PoP Outage: A PoP consists of a collection of Cato Single Pass Cloud Engines (SPACE) that powers the global, scalable, and highly resilient Cato SASE Cloud. Multiple SPACE instances run inside of multiple high powered compute nodes inside each PoP. If one SPACE instance fails, it will failover to another instance within the same compute node. If a compute node fails, all SPACE instances will failover to another compute node inside the same PoP.
Cato Sockets: Each Cato Socket has multiple WAN ports and can run in active/active/active mode. When deployed as redundant hardware, a socket’s traffic will failover to the redundant socket if it fails. And, in the event the Cato SASE Cloud experiences an unlikely complete outage, , Cato sockets can provide direct WAN connectivity over the public Internet.
Network outages can have a dramatic impact on an organization’s ability to conduct normal business. Cato’s network design protects against potentially catastrophic outages of the Cato SASE Cloud network.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/how-to-best-optimize-global-access-to-cloud-applications/"] How to Best Optimize Global Access to Cloud Applications | Download the eBook [/boxlink]
The Advantage of Cato’s Network Redundancy
Network redundancy is a significant consideration when comparing network options. Often, it was one of the main selling points for older network technologies like multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) and software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) solutions.
MPLS, SD-WAN, and the Cato SASE Cloud all achieve network resiliency in different ways.
MPLS: MPLS is known for its middle-mile resiliency and redundancy since traffic flows through the MPLS provider’s internal systems. However, the cost of MPLS circuits often makes redundant circuits for last-mile coverage cost-prohibitive.
SD-WAN: SD-WAN solutions are designed to optimally route traffic over the public Internet to provide improved performance and reliability at a fraction of the cost of MPLS. However, these solutions are limited by the performance and resiliency of the public Internet, making it challenging for them to meet the same SLAs as an MPLS solution.
Cato SASE Cloud: The Cato SASE Cloud provides high middle-mile performance and resiliency via a global network of PoPs with built-in redundancy and traffic optimization, and connected via tier-1 carriers. Cato Sockets have multiple WAN ports in active/active/active mode, allowing customers to connect multiple last-mile service providers, allowing them to implement inexpensive last-mile redundancy.
The Cato SASE Cloud offers better overall network resiliency than MPLS and SD-WAN, and it accomplishes this at a fraction of the price of MPLS.
Improve Company Productivity and Security with Cato
Corporate networks are rapidly expanding and becoming more dynamic. As more companies allow hybrid working options, they need to ensure that these employees have a reliable, secure, high-performance network experience no matter where they are connecting from.
The Cato SASE Cloud is a converged, cloud-native, global connected architecture that provides high-performance network connectivity with built-in multi-layer redundancy for all users, devices, and applications. This protects organizations against crippling network outages and ensures predictable network availability with a 99.999% SLA.
Building a highly resilient and redundant corporate network helps to improve company productivity and security. Learn more about enhancing your organization’s network resiliency by requesting a free demo of the Cato SASE Cloud today.
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is a new architecture that converges networking and security into cloud-native, globally available service offerings. Security inspection and policy enforcement...
Integrated vs. Converged SASE: Which One Ensures an Optimal Security Posture? SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is a new architecture that converges networking and security into cloud-native, globally available service offerings. Security inspection and policy enforcement is performed at the cloud edge, instead of backhauling all traffic to a centralized data center for inspection. This enables organizations to strengthen their security posture while ensuring high performance, scalability and a good user experience.
Unfortunately, many vendors attempt to market loosely integrated products and partnerships as SASE. they find the fastest way to enter the SASE market is to virtualize existing hardware-based products and deploy them into public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP). and then enhance them with additional capabilities.
So, which approach is best? In this blog post we explore the two options, converged and integrated, and the differences between them. To learn more about which SASE vendor you should choose you can read the whitepaper this blog post is based on: “Integrated vs. Converged SASE: Why it Matters When Ensuring an Optimal Security Posture”.
Why Do Some SASE Vendors Offer an Integrated SASE Solution?
Integrating siloed point solutions is the fast track to entering the SASE market. But this type of solution is full of drawbacks. These include:
Increased Complexity - Integrated solutions add management layers, which reduces agility. Integration does not deliver the required SASE capabilities and requires more effort and risk from the customer. This is the opposite of what Gartner envisioned SASE to be.
Poor Performance - SASE solutions that rely on integration can’t provide a single-pass architecture. Single Pass is critical for SASE’s promise of high performance because all engines process and simultaneously applies policies to traffic flows at the cloud edge. Integrated solutions do not have this single-pass architecture, so they are vulnerable to higher latency issues.
Limited Vendor Control - Some vendors with an incomplete SASE solution will partner with other technology vendors to build their offerings. This means each vendor only controls and supports their product, and customers subsequently are left with multiple security technologies to deploy and manage. Because of the numerous risks this creates, including security blind spots, customers will not enjoy the full promise of SASE.
Security Gaps - Technology integration increases the chance of security events being ignored or overlooked. Because each product in an integrated architecture is configured to inspect certain activities within traffic flows, they view it in its own context. This leads to insufficient sharing of all necessary context, thus leaving networks exposed to security gaps.
Lack of Full Visibility - Integrated offerings tend to rely on multiple consoles and sources that prevent accurate correlation of network and security traffic flows and events. Because of this, customers do not have full visibility and context of these flows and will not have the same level of control that a converged SASE solution has.
What are the Benefits of Converged SASE?
Converged SASE is built from the ground up to deliver both security and networking capabilities. This benefits the customer in the following areas:
Rapid Deployment - Integrated solutions have longer deployments since they have multiple consoles and multiple policies that require extensive manual effort from the customer and this risks policy mismatches or other errors during the deployment. A converged architecture, on the other hand, simplifies deployments with a single management application for configuration and a single policy for all customer sites. This makes the deployment less complex, allowing quick and easy implementation.
Decreased Overhead - Converged SASE provides a single management application for management and reporting that decreases administrative overhead and simplifies investigation and troubleshooting.
Low Latency - A true single-pass architecture decreases latency by ensuring all security engines simultaneously inspects and applies policies on all traffic once at the cloud edge before forwarding on to its destination.
Cloud-Native Possibilities - Solutions that are born in the cloud are purpose-built for scalability, agility, flexibility, resilience and global performance. This is unlike cloud-delivered solutions that are virtual machines based on appliance-based products that are deployed in public cloud provider data centers,
No Hybrid or On-Premises Deployments - SASE was defined by Gartner as being delivered from a cloud-native platform. Vendors that offer hybrid or on-premises options are not cloud-native and customers should proceed with caution and remember the core requirements of SASE when considering those options.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/integrated-vs-converged-sase-why-it-matters-when-ensuring-an-optimal-security-posture/"] Integrated vs. Converged SASE: Why it Matters When Ensuring an Optimal Security Posture | Download the White Paper [/boxlink]
Integrated vs. Converged SASE
Which type of solution is best for modern enterprises? Here are the main functionalities offered by each type of solution:
Integrated SASE:
SD-WAN from partners
Multiple management consoles
Require VM deployment
Require tunnel configuration
Hosted in the public cloud
Separate authentication flows for security and access
Require SIEM for network and security event correlation
Hybrid deployment
Networking, security and remote access products are separate
Requires multiple products
Different PoPs offer different capabilities
Converged SASE:
Native SD-WAN
A single management application
Full mesh connectivity
Optional use of IPSEC tunnels
Optional export to SIEM
Better collaboration among converged technologies
Holistic security protections
All PoPs are fully capable
There is consistent policy enforcement
Which Vendor Should You Choose?
There is are fundamental differences in SASE capabilities between an integrated and a converged platform. This includes their ability to eliminate MPLS, simplify and optimize remote access, enable easy cloud migration, and securing branch and mobile users. SASE solutions are designed to address numerous customer use cases and solve multiple problems, and it is important for customers to conduct a thorough evaluation of both approaches to ensure their chosen platform meets their current and future business and technology needs.
Read more about how to choose a SASE vendor from the whitepaper.
Many organizations struggle with an array of security point products that create security gaps, alert overload, and inconsistent policy configuration and enforcement challenges. As a...
February 20, 2023
5m read
Security Convergence in the Cloud: Protect More, Worry Less Many organizations struggle with an array of security point products that create security gaps, alert overload, and inconsistent policy configuration and enforcement challenges. As a result, many companies realize the benefit of moving toward an enhanced security platform that combines multiple security technologies into a single solution.
There are two approaches to achieve this:
Integration: The security platform is built by connecting together several existing solutions to achieve the desired functionality.
Convergence: The security platform is built from the ground up, with a single software stack that natively integrates all of the desired security functionality.
Convergence and integration can both be used to build a security platform. However, the two approaches work very differently and produce different results.
Where Security Integration Falls Short
Integration is a common approach to building security platforms because a vendor may already have the required pieces in its product suite. By cobbling them together into a single offering, they build something that appears to solve the problems that companies face.
However, security platforms developed via integration have several common flaws, including:
Policy Mismatches: Individual security tools are designed to solve specific problems. By definition, policy mismatches can exist between these tools in an integrated security platform, so they may not work properly.
Blind Spots: Individual security tools don’t view traffic flow in the same context, so a security incident captured by one tool may not trigger on another tool. Further, these tools do not effectively share a similar context of traffic flow. This causes coverage blind sports which leave organizations exposed and at risk for cyber attacks.
Decreased Efficiency: Integrated security tools are built of solutions with a defined set of features. Cobbling multiple tools together may create inefficiencies where multiple tools perform the same function.
False Alarms: Context is essential to differentiate between true threats and false positives. An array of tools that all look at threats independently and then share information may generate false positives that a holistic platform would not.
Interoperability Challenges: Existing tools have different code bases and policy constructs that may create challenges when trying to integrate multiple tools. These challenges can impact security coverage, security enforcement consistency, and architecture scalability, just to name a few.
Integration can build an all-in-one security solution. However, these platforms are much more likely to have significant issues that won’t exist in a converged solution.
Cloud-Native Convergence is the Key to Improved Security
Cloud migration has a significant impact on corporate IT architecture and security. Cloud adoption increases the distribution and scalability of IT infrastructure and makes IT environments more complex. As a result, it is more difficult to secure these environments, especially when users are distributed as well. So, security convergence is essential for security teams to keep pace with their responsibilities.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/achieving-zero-trust-maturity-with-cato-sse-360/"] Achieving Zero Trust Maturity with Cato SSE 360 | Download the White Paper [/boxlink]
As corporate IT architecture expands to the cloud, an on-prem, perimeter-focused security architecture no longer makes sense. Optimizing network performance without compromising security requires moving security to where users and IT assets are: The cloud. Corporate systems hosted in the cloud take advantage of cloud scalability, which also places strain on their security infrastructure. As a result, corporate security must be not only cloud-delivered but cloud-native. This allows security to scale with the growth of the business.
Corporate environments are changing rapidly, and these changes make security more complex. Converged, cloud-native solutions are the key to improving the security of all aspects of an organization’s IT architecture.
Security Convergence with Cato SSE 360
Cato has long been committed to improving security through cloud-native convergence. Cato’s SASE Cloud and SSE 360 are cloud-native solutions that offer a range of converged security functions, including Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Cloud Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), and Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA).
Cato SSE 360’s converged security offers a range of benefits for organizations, including:
Improved Security Collaboration: As a converged security solution, Cato SSE 360’s security functions were designed to operate collectively. This means better collaboration between security technologies, which leads to tighter security coverage and improved outcomes.
Context Sharing: Different security technologies offer different insights for threat detection and classification. A converged security solution like Cato SSE 360 can share context more effectively because each technology has the same context, captured from the same traffic flow. This dramatically improves threat detection and response.
Faster Threat Response: Security convergence improves the quality of security data and enables SOC analysts to investigate and respond to incidents from a single solution. As a result, they can more quickly identify and remediate potential threats.
Reduced Blind Spots: Cato SSE 360 was designed as a single, converged security software stack from the beginning. This dramatically reduces blind spots when compared to solutions built from several integrated, standalone products.
More Efficient Operations: A converged security solution is more efficient because it eliminates redundant technologies. Additionally, it makes security operations centers (SOCs) more efficient by providing fewer, higher-quality alerts and enabling SOC analysts to more efficiently analyze and respond to potential threats.
360-Degree Security Coverage: Cato SSE 360 offers 360-degree security visibility and coverage.
Configurable Security: As a Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) solution, Cato SSE 360 provides the right amount of security when an organization needs it. Cloud scalability enables rapid expansion to address increase in capacity requirements as the company grows.
Defending the Modern Enterprise with Cato SSE 360
Cato SSE 360 protects the modern enterprise from cyber threats by offering the most comprehensive network security solution in a converged, cloud-native architecture. To learn more about how Cato SSE 360 can help improve your organization’s security, sign up for a free demo today.
Ransomware continues to be a prime cyber threat to organizations of all sizes. One thesis for this is that these attacks are easier and less...
February 16, 2023
5m read
A SASE Approach to Enterprise Ransomware Protection Ransomware continues to be a prime cyber threat to organizations of all sizes. One thesis for this is that these attacks are easier and less expensive to execute than ever before, while offering very high rates of return for cybercriminals. Since the 2017 WannaCry epidemic, the ransomware industry has evolved through several stages, including:
Large-Scale Campaigns: Ransomware attacks like WannaCry were designed to infect as many systems as possible. Each infection would demand a relatively small ransom, trying to make a profit via quantity over quality.
Targeted Attacks: Over time, ransomware campaigns have evolved to be extremely targeted attacks against particular organizations. In-depth research allows cybercriminals to identify how to maximize their profits for each infection.
Ransomware as a Service (RaaS): RaaS gangs distribute copies of their malware to affiliates for a cut of the profits of successful infections. This model increased the number of companies infected with high-quality ransomware.
Double Extortion: Double extortion ransomware both steals and encrypts sensitive and valuable data on an infected system. The threat of a data leak is used to increase the probability of a ransom payment.
Triple Extortion: Triple extortion expanded the impact of a ransomware attack from the infected organization to its customers. The ransomware operators demand payments from multiple organizations whose data is affected by the attack.
Ransomware has proven to be a highly effective and profitable cyber threat. Cybercriminals will continue to innovate and build on their success to improve attack profitability and the probability of ransom payments.
Common Attack Methods for Ransomware Attacks
Cybercriminals use various methods to deploy and execute ransomware, and the following are a small sample of the most common:
Vulnerability Exploits: Unpatched vulnerabilities are a very common method for delivering ransomware. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, cybercriminals can plant and execute the malware on a vulnerable system.
Phishing: Phishing attacks use social engineering to trick users into downloading and executing malware on their devices. The ransomware can be attached to the message or located on a phishing site indicated by a malicious link.
Compromised Credentials: User credentials can be guessed, compromised by phishing, or breached in other ways. Cybercriminals can use these credentials with the remote desktop protocol (RDP) or virtual private networks (VPNs) to access and deploy malware on systems.
Malicious Downloads: Phishing sites may offer ransomware files for download. These files could masquerade as legitimate software or exploit vulnerabilities in the user’s browser to download and execute themselves.
Stages of a Ransomware Attack
Ransomware follows many of the same steps as other types of malware. The main stages in an attack include the following:
Initial Infection: A ransomware attack starts with the malware gaining access to a target system. This can be accomplished via a variety of methods, such as phishing or the use of compromised credentials.
Command and Control: Once the ransomware achieves execution, it establishes a command and control (C2) channel with its operator. This allows the ransomware to send data to and receive instructions from its operator.
Lateral Movement: Ransomware rarely immediately lands on a device containing the high-value data that it plans to encrypt. After gaining a foothold on a corporate network, the malware will perform discovery and move laterally to gain the access and privileges needed to encrypt valuable and sensitive data.
Data Theft and Encryption: Once it gains the required access, the malware will begin encrypting data and deleting backups. It may also exfiltrate copies of the data to its operator via its C2 channel.
Ransom Note: Once data encryption has been completed, the malware will reveal its presence on the system by publishing a ransom note. If the ransom is then paid and the decryption key is provided, the ransomware would decrypt all of the files that were encrypted.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/ransomware-is-on-the-rise-catos-security-as-a-service-can-help/"] Ransomware is on the Rise – Cato’s Security as a Service can help | Download the eBook [/boxlink]
Ransomware Prevention Strategies
Once data theft and encryption have begun, an organization’s ransomware remediation options are limited. However, companies can take steps to reduce the probability of a ransomware infection, including the following:
Vulnerability Management: Regular vulnerability scanning and patching can help to close the security gaps exploited to deliver ransomware. Additionally, Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) solutions can block the attempted exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities.
Email Security: Another common method of delivering ransomware and other malware is phishing. Email security solutions can identify and block messages containing malicious attachments or links to phishing pages.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Compromised credentials can be used to access corporate systems and deliver malware via remote access solutions. Deploying strong MFA increases the difficulty of using compromised credentials.
Web Security: Ransomware can be downloaded intentionally or unintentionally from malicious sites. A secure web gateway (SWG) can block browsing to dangerous sites and malicious downloads.
Endpoint Security: Ransomware is malware that runs and encrypts files on an infected endpoint. Endpoint security solutions can identify and remediate ransomware infections.
Cato’s Approach to Enterprise Ransomware Protection
Using machine learning algorithms and the deep network insight of the Cato SASE Cloud, we’re able to detect and prevent the spread of ransomware across networks without having to deploy endpoint agents. Infected machines are identified and immediately isolated for remediation.
Cato has a rich multilayered malware mitigation strategy of disrupting attacks across the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Cato’s antimalware engine prevents the distribution of malware in general. Cato IPS detects anomalous behaviors used throughout the cyber kill chain. Cato also uses IPS and NextGen Anti-Malware to detect and prevent MITRE ATT&CK techniques used by common ransomware groups, which spot the attack before the impact phase. And, as part of this strategy, Cato security researchers follow the techniques used by ransomware groups, updating Cato’s defenses, and protecting enterprises against exploitation of known vulnerabilities in record time.
We use heuristic algorithms specifically designed to detect and interrupt ransomware. The machine-learning heuristic algorithms inspect live SMB traffic flows for a combination of network attributes including:
Blocking the delivery of known malware files.
Detecting command and control traffic and attempts at lateral movement.
Identifying access attempts for remote drives and folders.
Monitoring time intervals, such as encrypting drives in seconds.
Cato Networks provides detection and mitigation of ransomware attacks without deploying agents on endpoints. Learn more about Cato’s network-based ransomware protection.
SASE adoption requires business and technological planning. By properly preparing for the transition, you will be able to successfully move your business-critical networking and security...
February 16, 2023
3m read
6 Steps to SASE Adoption SASE adoption requires business and technological planning. By properly preparing for the transition, you will be able to successfully move your business-critical networking and security capabilities to a vendor-delivered service. You will also have the answers to any board and leadership questions.
What does a good SASE adoption plan look like? Below we list six steps that will take you from start to finish. By following them, you can ensure a frictionless transition. (Please note that some of these steps can be executed simultaneously). For more details about each step and how to execute them, read our complete guide, here.
Step 1: Preparation
The first step is to understand what problems you are trying to solve. Do you want to eliminate appliances? Migrate from MPLS to secure SD-WAN? Maybe you need to secure your hybrid cloud or multi-cloud? By determining your drivers you will be able to prioritize functions, allocate the required budget and evaluate vendors and architectures. Once you have your list of use cases, map out which capabilities you need for each one. This will help you identify the right vendor for you, since capabilities vary among them.
Finally, determine your required security coverage. It is recommended to choose a vendor with NGFW, SWG and NextGen anti-malware capabilities. Additional capabilities that will improve your security posture are IPS, DLP, CASB and zero-day/polymorphic threat prevention.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/how-to-adopt-sase-in-6-easy-steps/"] How to Adopt SASE in 6 Easy Steps | Download this eBook [/boxlink]
Step 2: Planning and Timeline
Once your use cases and required capabilities are mapped out, you can create a plan for implementing them. Adjust the plan to realistic timelines. Make sure to include considerations like contractual obligations, national holidays, how quickly you wish to deploy and the geographical dispersion of your network.
Step 3: RFI/RFP
Now that the groundwork is set, you can start evaluating vendors. Prepare an RFI or RFP that will help you determine which SASE provider provides the capabilities you need and at the cost you need.
Step 4: Budget and Board Approval
After planning, it’s also time to get leadership approval for the project. Be sure to include a complete business case that maps technical capabilities to drivers and cost savings. You can also add quantifiable metrics that are relevant to your specific business context.
Step 5: PoC
After slimming down your vendor list to one or two recommended ones, you can move forward with a proof of concept. Formulate a clear proof of concept plan in advance, to set clear expectations with vendors. It’s recommended to cap the PoC timeline at thirty days.
Make sure your PoC has the capabilities and the presence that matter to you, including geographical locations, performance and optimization, security coverage and platform cohesiveness.
Step 6: Implementation
You made it! You can now move forward with your front-runner vendor and complete the purchase process. Plan the implementation together with them, since you two are partners now, working together for future success.
Ready to Get Started?
SASE has eliminated the need to perform expensive, time-consuming hardware refreshes, while also ensuring seamless performance, feature enhancements and daily security updates. To learn more about how to get started, review the entire SASE adoption plan, here.
With the increased of cloud adoption has come an expansion of the corporate digital attack surface. Cyber criminals are constantly evolving their tools and techniques,...
The Future of Network Security: Cybersecurity Predictions for 2023 & Beyond With the increased of cloud adoption has come an expansion of the corporate digital attack surface. Cyber criminals are constantly evolving their tools and techniques, creating new threats, and pushing organizations to the brink.
As new trends emerge in both cyber attacks and defenses every year, we have decided to list our predictions for the top network security trends of 2023 and beyond.
#1. Zero Trust Becomes the Starting Point for Security
The goal of zero trust is to eliminate the main culprits of data breaches and other security incidents: implicit trust and excessive permissions. These play a major role in many cyberattacks as cyber criminals gain access to an organization’s network and systems, and expand that reach to exploit resources. Eliminating blind trust and limiting access with the least priviliges necessary to maintain productivity, makes this harder for an attacker to achieve.
Zero trust has gained more momentum in recent years and have become a realistic security focus. An effective zero trust strategy defines granular policies, enforces appropriate access permissions, and delivers more granular control of users on your network.
An effective Zero Trust strategy will protect organizations against many cyber threats, but it is far from a comprehensive solution. Ideally, companies will start with zero trust and then add additional controls to build a fully mature security program. Zero Trust is a journey, so having the right strategy will help smooth and expedite this journey, allowing it to move from a security goal to a security reality.
#2. Security Simplification Picks Up Steam
Every organization’s IT infrastructure and cybersecurity threat landscape is different; however, most companies will face similar challenges. Cyber criminals are more adept at targeting and exploiting weaknesses in networks and applications. SOC analysts suffer from alert overload due to high volumes of false positives. And the expansion of complex, multi-cloud environments introduce new security challenges and increased attack vectors.
Addressing these threats with an array of standalone products is unproductive, unscalable and is an ineffective approach to network security. As a result, companies will increasingly adopt security platforms that offer a converged set of security capabilities in a single architecture, enabling security teams to more effectively secure and protect complex infrastructures.
#3. Faster Adoption of SASE
Digital Transformation is forcing corporate networks to more rapidly evolve away from the complex, inflexible architectures of the past. Cloud adoption, work from anywhere (WFA), BYOD policies, and mobile devices are all making the corporate networking environment more complex and challenging to manage, optimize, secure and scale. Additionally, legacy perimeter-based security architectures have become unsustainable, forcing organizations to decide between reliable network connectivity and complete in-depth security.
As a result, companies will more quickly adopt solutions designed specifically for these modern networks. Such modern networks require a converged, cloud-delivered architecture that is reliable and resilient and grows as their business grows; This can only be achieved with Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).
#4. Expansion of Targeted Ransomware Attacks
Ransomware has proven to be an extremely profitable enterprise for cyber criminals. The secrets sauce of ransomware success is the in-depth research on attack targets - identifying the best attack vector, the most valued resources to attack, and the maximum amount a victim might be willing to pay. So considering that some countries are already in recession and many organizations are pressing to optimmize costs to remain profitable, cyber criminals will identify the weaker, more vulnerable targets and push them to the edge.
In recent years, we have seen healthcare, financial service, and more recently, manufacturing as prime targets for ransomware attacks. We expect to see these and more as attacks expand, exponentially, in 2023 and beyond.
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#5. Growing Importance of API Security
Modern applications are designed around APIs, and as such, application security practices depend, tremendously, on API security practices. APIs are designed to allow other programs to automatically request or submit data or perform other actions.
The design of APIs makes them an ideal target for certain types of automated attacks such as credential stuffing, vulnerability scanning, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and others. As cybercriminals increasingly target these APIs, implementing defenses against API-specific attack vectors becomes more crucial for business success.
#6. IoT Will See More Cyberattacks
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are experiencing tremendous growth. The expansion of 5G networks provides fast, high-performance network connectivity, making it possible to deploy these devices everywhere. As these devices mature, they will increasingly be used to collect, process, and store sensitive business data.
However, these devices, while increasingly valuable to many organizations, are at high risk for attack or compromise. A huge threat to IoT devices is that they are always available, making them ideal targets continuous attacks. Often, these devices have weak passwords, unpatched vulnerabilities, and other security issues. As they are increasingly deployed on corporate networks and entrusted with sensitive and valuable data, cyberattacks against them will continue to increase.
#7. Cyberattacks Will Increasingly Become Uninsurable
Cybersecurity insurance is one of the primary ways that organizations manage cybersecurity risk. For some it has also become their default cybersecurity strategy. When these companies suffer a ransomware attack, they expect their insurance provider to pay all costs, including the ransom and the costs of recovery and notifications.
However, the surge in expensive ransomware attacks has caused some insurance providers to explore options in their coverage schemes. This includes placing more requirements on customers to demonstrate improved cyber defenses and compliance with security standards as conditions for acquiring and maintaining an insurance policy. The end result may be limiting coverage parameters, and if attacks continue to grow more common and expensive — which they likely will — eliminating coverage all together.
#8. Cyber Resilience Becomes an Executive Priority
Cybercriminals are increasingly moving toward attacks focused on business disruption. Ransomware attacks deny access to critical company resources. Other notable attacks render corporate systems inaccessible to legitimate users. As a result, companies are compromised as cybercriminals threaten their ability to operate and maintain profitability.
The growing threat of cyberattacks to the business will make cyber resilience a priority for C-level executives. If cyberattacks can bring down the business, investing in preventive solutions that can manage or mitigate these risks makes good strategic and financial sense.
What These Predictions Mean for Enterprises
In 2023, the evolution of the cybersecurity landscape will drive the evolution of corporate security platforms. Legacy security architectures will need to be replaced with solutions designed for the modern, more dynamic IT architecture and rapidly evolving cyber threats.
The Cato SASE Cloud and SSE 360 solutions helps companies implement security architectures that offer holistic, 360-degree protections against the latest cyber threats. To learn how Cato can help your organization improve its network performance and security, sign up for a demo today.
The manufacturing industry is constantly evolving. The revolution known as Industry 4.0 is introducing new technologies and innovations that are accelerating digitization and improving efficiency...
How SASE is Transforming the Manufacturing Industry The manufacturing industry is constantly evolving. The revolution known as Industry 4.0 is introducing new technologies and innovations that are accelerating digitization and improving efficiency and productivity. One of these new innovations technologies is SASE (Secure Access Service Edge).
What is SASE?
SASE is an enterprise networking and security category that converges network and security technologies into a single, cloud-native service. Converged functionalities include SD-WAN, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), cloud-access security broker (CASB), DLP and secure web gateway (SWG).
SASE reduces the risk of cybersecurity breaches and enables global access to applications and systems. It also provides enterprises and plants with the ability to remove the cost and overhead incurred when maintaining complex and fragmented infrastructure made of point solutions. As a result, SASE is gaining momentum across multiple industries, including manufacturing.
[boxlink link="https://catonetworks.easywebinar.live/registration-sase-value-and-promise-in-manufacturing"] SASE’s Value in Manufacturing | Go to Webinar [/boxlink]
How Manufacturers Benefit from SASE
Manufacturers can replace their legacy networking solutions, like MPLS, with SASE, to benefit from the capabilities SASE provides. Main benefits include:
Global connectivity: SASE provides the ability to securely connect tens of thousands of employees across dozens of plants around the globe to SaaS and on-premises applications. SASE can connect any network: the internet, MPLS, cellular networks and more.
Remote access: SASE supports the shift of workers to home offices by enabling a hybrid work environment.
Cloud connectivity: SASE enables users to access any production applications that migrated from on-prem to the cloud, while still supporting on-premises infrastructure.
Flexibility: SASE provides the infrastructure that enables producing innovative new products and reinventing outdated manufacturing processes.
Speed and performance: SASE enables manufacturers to increase bandwidth. Some manufacturers have been able to achieve 3x their previous WAN bandwidth.
Cost reduction: Some manufacturers have saved up to 30% annually by transitioning to SASE. In addition, SASE frees up employees to focus more on strategic projects that can benefit the business.
Smooth transition: SASE can be deployed quickly which makes the process nearly hassle-free.
Improved user experience and collaboration: SASE improves employee satisfaction and productivity by enhancing connectivity speed and performance.
Enhanced security: SASE enables faster detection, identification, response and remediation of cybersecurity incidents.
Spotlight: O-I Glass
O-I Glass, an Ohio-based glass bottles manufacturer, deployed Cato’s SASE Cloud solution as a replacement to their previous MPLS solution. By transitioning to SASE, O-I Glass was able to provide faster, more secure and higher performing access to their 25,000 employees spread across 70 plants in 19 countries. SASE also supports their employees’ secure connectivity when they work from home. The transition itself took six months and the estimated cost savings are 20% to 30% compared to their previous solutions.
By implementing SASE, O-I Glass was also able to deploy innovative methods for improving the manufacturing process. They introduced HoloLens, the Microsoft augmented reality/mixed reality system. These headsets are helping their engineers collaborate. When wearing them, engineers located in different continents can see what the other is seeing, without requiring trans-atlantic flights. Before SASE, their infrastructure could not support such use. In addition, SASE supports their future plans for a modular glass production line as well as plans for plant maintenance and training.
To learn more about SASE and manufacturing, listen to the podcast episode “How to implement SASE in manufacturing: A discussion with PlayPower”.
Your SSE project is coming up. As an IT professional, you will soon need to organize the requirements for your enterprise’s security transformation journey. To...
The SSE RFP/RFI Template (or how to evaluate SSE Vendors) Your SSE project is coming up. As an IT professional, you will soon need to organize the requirements for your enterprise's security transformation journey. To assist with this task, we’ve created a complimentary RFP template for your use. This template will help you ensure your current and future security threats are addressed and that your key business objectives are met.
The RFP template comprises four sections:
Business and IT overview: Your business, project objectives, geographies, network resources, security stack, and more.
Solution architecture: The architectural elements of the solution, how they operate, where they are situated, scaling abilities, failure resolution capabilities, and more.
Solution capabilities: The functionalities provided by the solution.
Support and services: The vendor’s support structure and available managed services.
You can find the complete template, with more details and guidance, here.
Please note, the template covers core SSE requirements alongside extended capabilities like FWaaS, NGAM, IPS and global private backbone. These additions will give you flexibility to expand into these projects in the future. So, let’s examine each one of these sections briefly.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/resources/ensuring-success-with-sse-rfp-rfi-template/"] SEE RFI/RFP Made Easy | Get the Template [/boxlink]
Business and IT Overview
In this section, you will describe your company, including elements like your business and technical goals, other strategic IT projects you are managing, the project scope, your current security architecture and technologies, datacenters geographies, your cloud providers, and more.
This section is intended to provide the vendor context about your business. Therefore, it is recommended to elaborate as much as you can.
Solution Architecture
This section allows the vendor to describe the solution’s architecture and how its services are delivered. In addition, you will get answers to questions about the solution’s architecture strategy. For example, what is their approach to consolidating security capabilities? How is high availability and resiliency provided? How easy is it to scale? These are a few of the many questions this section will help answer.
Solution Capabilities
This section requires the vendor to describe their SSE security capabilities. These include SWG, ZTNA CASB and DLP, and security management analytics and reporting. Additional requested information can include advanced threat prevention, threat detection and response, east-west security, policy management and enforcement, and non-web port traffic protection.
Support and Services
This section will enable you to understand the vendor’s support and managed services. You will get answers to support availability, SLAs, professional services and managed services options.
In addition to these four sections, the template also provides a fifth section about future expansion options. This forward-looking section helps you understand how easy it will be to transition to SASE, if required. From our experience, for many organizations this is the next step after basic SSE. This section will provide you with information about the migration process, configuration complexity, which technologies are required, and more.
How to Use the RFP Template
The RFP template can help choose the right SSE vendor for your current and future network security needs. To review and start using the entire template, click here.
Making the Paradigm Shift A paradigm shift away from traditional network and security architectures towards a more flexible and highly scalable cloud-native SASE Cloud architecture...
December 28, 2022
7m read
A CxO’s Guide: Tough Questions to Ask When Moving to SASE Making the Paradigm Shift
A paradigm shift away from traditional network and security architectures towards a more flexible and highly scalable cloud-native SASE Cloud architecture can be stomach-churning for many CxOs today. However, taking a holistic view of the drivers of this shift will help put things into perspective. Realizing desired outcomes like the reallocation of resources to more strategic initiatives, agility, speed, and scalability can bring about child-like anticipation of how this new world of SASE will feel.
Before CxOs achieve technology nirvana, however, they must take a few logical steps, and asking tough questions to understand the problem statements and desired outcomes is an important part of this. To better frame this picture, we’ve discussed this with a few of our customers to understand their thought processes during their SASE journey.
Define The Problem Statement
Organizations arrive at SASE decisions from different vectors. For some, it’s as easy as upgrading their WAN connectivity and adding better security. For others, it is exploiting a refresh cycle to explore “what’s next”. Whatever the drivers, understanding the true problems is essential for proper outcomes.
A simple problem statement might be, “Our network is a mess, so we need a different approach to this refresh cycle. Do we have the talent to pull it off?” This identifies two problems to solve: network performance and reliability, and the skillset deficit. Another problem statement might be, “Our current tools are too expensive to maintain, and we need more value for the money we spend.” This implies that managing network and security tools, equals more time spent on mundane support tasks than strategic projects.
While these statements are rather generic, they are no less real-world for most CxOs. Identifying the true problem statement can be exhaustive; however, this is the first step toward understanding the right questions to ask.
“The steep learning curve on our firewalls meant we were not getting value on the high costs we were paying. We needed a simpler, well-designed solution that our teams could more easily learn and manage.”
~ Joel Lee, CIO @ an Asia-Based Construction Firm
Ask The Tough Questions
Determining which questions are relevant enough to influence a buying decision and asking them can also be exhausting. Not all tough questions are relevant questions, and vice versa. Additionally, all questions must derive from the problem statements specific to your business situation. The following were the top questions our CxOs tend to ask:
1. Does this fit our use cases, and what do we need to validate?
“What problems are we trying to solve, and how should we approach this?” By asking this question of their teams, CxOs are basically asking what is not working, why it’s not working, and what success looks like when it is working. On the surface, it seems easy to answer; however, when digging deeper, many organizations find this to be a daunting question because the answer is sometimes a moving target and is almost always subjective.
2. Do we have the right skills?
When moving to a 100% cloud-delivered SASE solution, it is logical to question the level of cloud expertise required. However, a major relief for CxOs is realizing that their teams could easily be trained for a SASE Cloud solution. Additionally, they realize their teams have more time to expand other technical skills that benefit the broader organization. This allowed them to re-frame the question to, “what additional skills can we learn to build a more agile and dynamic IT organization?”
3. SD-WAN makes sense, but SASE? How will all security services be delivered without an on-prem device? What are the penalties/risks if done solely in the cloud?
Traditional appliances fit nicely inside the IT happy place – an on-prem appliance with all configurations close by. So, can we really move all policy enforcement to the cloud? Can a single security policy really give us in-depth threat protection? These questions try to make sense of SASE, highlighted by a fear of the architectural unknown. However, existing complexity is why these CxOs wanted to inject sanity and simplification into their operations. Security-as-a-Service delivered as part of a SASE Cloud made sense for them, knowing they get the right amount of security when needed.
4. What will the deployment journey be like, and how simple will it be?
Traditional infrastructure deployments require appliances everywhere, months and months of deployment and troubleshooting, multiple configurations, and various other risks that may not align with business objectives. This is a common mindset when pursuing SASE, and CxOs want to understand the overall logistics – “Will our network routing be the same? Will our current network settings be obsolete? Where will security sit? How will segmentation work? Is it compatible with my clouds, and how will they connect? Who supports this and how?” This is just a tiny subset of items to understand, intending to set proper expectations.
5. What are the quantitative and qualitative compromises?
CxOs need to understand how to prioritize and find compromises where needed. Traditional costs often exceed the monetary value and can veer into architecture and resource value. So, an effective approach proposed was using the 80/20 rule on compromises – what are my must-have, should-have, and could-have items or features? Answering this begins with knowing where the 80/20 split is. For example, if the solution solves 80% of your problems and leaves 20% unsolved, what is the must-have, should-have, and could-have of the remaining 20%?
How do you determine which is which?
How would you solve the must-haves differently inside the same architecture?
How will you adapt if an architectural could-have unexpectedly evolves into a must-have?
6. How do we get buy-in from the board?
SASE is just as much a strategic conversation as it is an architectural one. How a CxO approaches this – what technical and business use cases they map to, and their risk-mitigation strategy – will determine their overall level of success. So, gaining board-level buy-in was a critical part of their process. There were various resources that helped with these conversations, including ROI models. CxOs can also consult our blog, Talk SASE To Your Board, as another valuable resource that may assist in these conversations.
“What does this convergence look like, and how do we align architecturally to this new model?”
~ Head of IT Infrastructure @ a Global Financial Services Firm
Mitigate Internal Resistance
Any new project that requires a major paradigm shift will generate resistance from business and IT teams. Surprisingly, our panel experienced very little resistance when presenting SASE to their teams. Each anticipated potential resistance to budgets, architecture change, resource allocations, etc. They determined what could and could not be done within those constraints and addressed them far in advance. This helped mitigate any potential resistance and allowed them to ease all concerns about their decision.
[boxlink link="https://www.catonetworks.com/news/cato-has-been-recognized-as-representative-vendor-in-2022-gartner-market-guide-for-single-vendor-sase/?utm_medium=blog_top_cta&utm_campaign=gartner_market_guide_news"] Cato Networks Has Been Recognized as a Representative Vendor in the 2022 Gartner® Market Guide for Single-Vendor SASE | Read now [/boxlink]
What Other CxOs Can Learn
Transitioning to SASE requires time and planning, like any other architecture project. Keys to making this successful include understanding your problem statement, identifying your outcomes, and learning from your peers. This last point is key because SASE projects, while relatively new, are becoming more mainstream, and the following advice should make any SASE journey much smoother.
Planning Your Project
Have a clear vision and seek upfront input from business and technical teams
Have a clear understanding of your “as-is” and “to-be” architecture
Don’t jump on the bandwagon – know your requirements and desired outcomes
Conduct Thorough Research
Do a detailed analysis of the problem, then do your market research
Understand Gartner’s hype cycle, roadmaps, predictions, etc.
Never stop researching solutions until your goals are finalized
You may discover something you needed that you did not realize - extended value
Evaluate The Solution and Vendor
Develop a scoring mechanism to evaluate vendor technology and performance
Understand your compliance requirements (NIST, PCI-DSS, ISO, GDPR, etc.) and how the solution will enable this
Examine their approach to delivering your outcomes, and pay attention to onboarding, training, and ongoing support
Be Confident in Your Decision
Don’t focus solely on costs
Examine the true value of the solution
Understand the extended costs of each solution – SLAs, ongoing maintenance, patching, fixing, scalability, refresh cycles, etc.
Be honest with yourself and your vendor and remain focused on your outcomes.
This approach benefitted our CxOs and guided them toward the Cato SASE Cloud solution.
“Know what you want to achieve upfront, then stay focused but flexible. Pay attention to skills and capacity requirements.”
~ Stuart Hebron, Group CIO, Tes
Make the SASE Decision
SASE is the ultimate business and technology transformation, and embarking upon this journey is an important step that every decision-maker will, understandably, have questions about. Are we compromising on anything? What risks might we face? Do we have the right skill set internally? Is it financially feasible? These are just a few of the key questions CxOs will pose when pursuing SASE. Asking them will provoke critical thinking and more holistic planning that includes all elements of IT and the broader organization. In the end, asking these questions will lead you to the obvious conclusion – a digital transformation platform like the Cato SASE Cloud solution is the best approach to prepare you for continuous business transformation without limitations.
For more advice on deciding which solution is right for your organization, please read this article on evaluating SASE capabilities.
The Role of the CISO Post-Pandemic The world has evolved… Prior to recent global events, many organizations viewed digital transformation as a slow-moving journey that...
A CISO’s Guide: Avoiding the Common Pitfalls of Zero Trust Deployments The Role of the CISO Post-Pandemic
The world has evolved... Prior to recent global events, many organizations viewed digital transformation as a slow-moving journey that would be achieved gradually over time. However, Covid turned this completely on its ear, forcing most organizations to accelerate that journey from 2-3 years down to 2-3 months, and doing so without a well-thought-out strategy. Couple this with the rapid rise of Work-From-Anywhere (WFA) and CISOs have realized their traditional security architectures, specifically VPNs, are no longer adequate to ensure only authorized users have access to critical resources.
Collectively, this has made the role of CISO ever more important because, as a result of this accelerated journey, we now have applications everywhere, people everywhere, leading to increased cyber threats everywhere. The role of CISO has one core imperative: mapping out the company’s security priorities and strategy, then executing this flawlessly to ensure the strongest possible security posture to protect access to critical data.
Zero Trust Is Just a Starting Point
This is why Zero Trust has now become top-of-mind for all CISOs. The concept of Zero Trust has been around for more than a decade since first being introduced. Zero Trust mandates that all edges, internal or external, cloud, branch or data center, to be authenticated, authorized and validated before granting or maintaining access to critical data. In short, Zero Trust is a framework for building holistic security for the modern digital infrastructure and associated data. Considering cyber threats continue to rapidly expand, and chasing down data breeches have become a daily activity, Zero Trust is uniquely equipped to address the modern digital business architecture: WFA workers, supply chains, hybrid cloud, and evolving threats.
It must be noted that Zero Trust is not a single product solution, and CISOs would be well advised to consult the three main standards (Forrester ZTX, Gartner Carta, NIST SP-800-207) as guidance for developing their Zero Trust strategy. Of the three, to date, NIST SP-800-207 as pictured below, is the most widely adopted framework.
Figure 1.
In general, the NIST model is a discussion of 2 key functions:
Data plane – this is the collector of data from numerous sources. These sources can be application data, user device information, user identity information, etc. Control plane – this is the brains of the model as this is responsible for making decisions upon what is considered good, bad, or requiring further clarification.
Together, the control plane and data plane collaborate to determine whether a user should be granted access permissions at any point in time to the resource for which they are requesting. Critical for this to be viable, effective, and scalable, is the context that informs decisions to be made around access and security. As each business varies in its data flows and security concerns, this context consists of data feeds, as depicted in figure 1, that includes compliance data, log data, threat intelligence feeds and user and application data, as well as other data sources captured across the network. The more context you have, the better decisions your Zero Trust deployment will make.
The 5 Most Common Pitfalls in Zero Trust Projects
The concept of Zero Trust is often misunderstood, potentially resulting in misaligned strategies that don’t meet the organization’s needs. Gartner defines Zero Trust as a ‘mindset that defines key security objectives’ while removing implicit trust in IT architectures. This implies that today’s CISOs would be well-advised to pursue their Zero Trust strategy thoughtfully, to ensure they avoid common pitfalls that impede most security initiatives.
Pitfall 1: Failing to Apply the Key Tenants of Zero Trust
Zero Trust came to life as a resolution for overly permissive access rights that created broad security risks throughout networks. The concept of implicit deny is perceived as the catch all terminology for a better security architecture, assuming it to be the fix-all for all things security. Considering this, it may be easy for CISOs to inadvertently disregard the core purpose of Zero Trust and overlook some key architectural tenants that influence Zero Trust architectures.
While each of the Zero Trust frameworks call out a number of architectural attributes of Zero Trust, for the purpose of this section, we will highlight a few that we feel should not be overlooked.
Dynamic policy determines access to resources – dynamic polices focus on the behavioral characteristics of both the user and devices when determining whether access will be granted or denied. A subset of these characteristics can include location, device posture, data analytics and usage patterns. For example, is the user in a restricted location, or are user and device credentials being used correctly? Any of these should determine whether access should be granted and at what level.
Continuous monitoring and evaluation – no user or device should blindly be trusted for access to network or application resources. Zero Trust dictates that the state of both the resource and the entity requesting access to be continually monitored and evaluated. Those deemed to be risky should be treated accordingly, whether it is limited access or no access.
Segmentation & Least Privileges – Zero Trust should eliminate blind trust and by extension, blanket access to targeted resources from all employees, contractors, supply chain partners, etc. and from all locations. And when access is granted, only the minimal amount of access required to ensure productivity should be granted. This ensures the damage is limited should there be a breach of some kind.
Context Automation – For Zero Trust to deliver the desired impact, organizations need to collect lot of data and contextualize this. This context is the key as without context, well-informed decisions for user or device access cannot be made. The more context, the better the decisions being made.
Cato SASE Cloud Approach: The Cato SASE Cloud takes a risk-based approach to Zero Trust, combining Client Connectivity & Device Posture capabilities with more holistic threat preventions techniques. Because we have full visibility of all data flows across the network, we utilize this, as well as threat intelligence feeds and user and device behavioral attributes to pre-assess all users and devices prior granting access onto the network. This in-depth level of context allows us to determine their client connectivity criteria and device suitability for network access, as well as continually monitor and assess both the user and device throughout their life on the network. Additionally, we use AI & Machine Learning algorithms to continually mine the network for indications of malware or other advanced threats and will proactively block these threats to minimize the potential damage inflicted upon the network.
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Pitfall 2: Treating Zero Trust a Like a Traditional VPN
When deploying Zero Trust, many organizations tend to rely on legacy security processes that are no longer applicable or select the shiny new toy that equates to a less viable solution. In 2021, Gartner noted that some organizations reported initially configuring their Zero Trust deployments to grant full access to all applications, which ironically, mirrored their VPN configuration. One of the intrinsic shortcomings of traditional VPNs, beyond the connectivity issue, is the challenge of least privilege user access to critical applications once a user has been authenticated to the network. Traditional VPNs cannot provide partial or specific access to selected applications or resources. So, deploying Zero Trust like their old VPN leaves us to wonder what problems they are truly solving, if any.
CISOs must remember that existing security architectures are based on the concept of implicit trust, which leads to unknown, yet ever-increasing risk to modern enterprise environments. The ultimate goal of Zero Trust is to ensure that users and their devices prove they can be trusted with access to critical resources. Hence, the ultimate goal for any CISO in creating a Zero Trust strategy is to reduce the risk posed by users and devices, and in the event of a successful breach, limit the spread and impact of the attack.
Cato SASE Cloud Approach: Cato Networks realizes that existing VPN architectures are too inadequate to provide the depth of access protections for critical enterprise resources. The Cato approach to Zero Trust invokes consistent policy enforcement everywhere to ensures least privilege access to all enterprise & cloud resources, while also taking a holistic approach to preventing cyber threats. We consume terabytes of data across our entire SASE Cloud backbone, and this informs how we apply additional protections once users and devices are on the network.
Pitfall 3: Not understanding the true impact on the user, IT and Security
Unfortunately for many CISOs, IT and Security departments do not always operate with aligned priorities and desired outcomes. IT departments may have critical projects they deem to have a higher priority than Security. Security teams, being tasked with strengthening the organization’s security posture may view Zero Trust as the only priority. In such cases of mis-aligned priorities, Zero Trust efforts may result in incomplete or mis-configured deployments, expanding security gaps and increasing blind spots. And let’s not forget the end user. When IT organizations finally makes significant changes to networks, security, or other systems, if priorities aren’t aligned, the end results will produce adverse user outcomes.
When it comes to Zero Trust, CISOs must ensure they are mapping out the journey. In doing so, IT and Security teams should establish a “Hippocratic Oath” of “first, do no harm”, similar to that of the medical community. This could make it easier to map the journey to Zero Trust where the solution is simple to deploy, easy to manage, easily scales at the speed of the business, and provides positive outcomes for all parties impacted. Critical to this is the user – Zero Trust must not impede their ability to get things done.
Cato SASE Cloud Approach: At Cato Networks, our entire approach to Zero Trust is to ensure the most holistic user experience with zero impact on productivity. Often when deploying or upgrading to new security technologies, security teams will inadvertently have policy mis-matches that result in inconsistent policy enforcement in certain segments of the network. Zero Trust, if not implemented correctly, increases the risk level for negative user experiences, which will reflect poorly upon the CISO and their teams. With the Cato SASE Cloud, Zero Trust & Client Access policies are applied once and enforced everywhere. This ensures specific and consistent policy treatment for all users and devices based upon identity and user and devices access criteria.
"The hallmark of Zero Trust is Simplicity"John Kindervag
Pitfall 4: Inadequately Scoping Common Use Cases
CISOs are so inundated with everyday security concerns that identifying all possible use cases for their Zero Trust initiative, while seemingly straight-forward, could be easily overlooked. It is easy to drill down into the core requirements of Zero Trust, approaching from a broad enterprise perspective, yet neglect smaller details that might derail their project. While there are numerous use cases and each would depend on the individual organization, this document calls out (3) use cases that, if not properly planned for, will impact all non-HQ based or non-company users.
Multi-branch facilities – It is common that today’s enterprises will comprise of a single headquarter with multiple global locations. More commonly, these global locations exist in a shared space arrangement whereby the physical network and connectivity is independent of the company. In such cases, these employees still require access to enterprise applications or other resources at the HQ or company data center. In other cases, a user may be a road warrior, using unmanaged personal devices, or be located in restricted locations. Given this, great care and consideration must be given in determining if, when and how to grant access to necessary resources while denying access or restricting actions to more sensitive resources.
Multi-cloud environments – More enterprises are utilizing multi-cloud providers to host their applications and data. There are occasions whereby the application and data source exist in different clouds. Ideally, these cloud environments should connect directly to each other to ensure the best performance.
Contractors and 3rd party partners – Contractors and 3rd party supply chain partners requiring access to your network and enterprise resources is very common these days. Often these entities will use unmanaged devices and/or connect from untrusted locations. Access can be granted on a limited basis, allowing these users and devices only to non-critical services.
CISOs must factor in these and other company specific use cases to ensure their Zero Trust project does not inadvertently alienate important non-company individuals.
Cato SASE Cloud Approach: At Cato Networks, we acknowledge that use cases are customer, industry, and sometimes, location dependent. And when Zero Trust is introduced, the risk of inadvertently neglecting one or more critical use cases is magnified. For this reason, we built our architecture to accommodate, not only the most common use cases, but also obscure and evolving use cases as well. The combination of our converged architecture, global private backbone, single policy management, and virtual cloud sockets ensure we provide customers with the most accommodating, yet most robust and complete Zero Trust platform possible.
Pitfall 5: Not having realistic ROI expectations
ROI, for many IT-related initiatives is rather difficult to measure, and many CISOs often find themselves twisted on how to demonstrate this to ensure company-wide acceptance. Three questions around ROI that are traditionally difficult to answer are:
What should we expect?
When should we expect it?
How would we know?
Like many things technology-related, CISOs are hesitant to link security investments to financial metrics. However, delaying a Zero Trust deployment can yield increased costs, or negative ROI over time that can be measured in increased data breaches, persistent security blind spots, inappropriate access to critical resources, and misuse of user and resource privileges, just to name a few.
CISOs can address these ROI concerns through a number of strategies that extend beyond simple acquisition costs and into the broader operational costs. With the right strategy and solution approach, a CISO can uncover the broader strategic benefits of Zero Trust on financial performance to realize it as an ROI-enabler.
Cato SASE Cloud Approach: It is easy to appreciate the challenge of achieving ROI from Security projects. As mentioned, CISOs like CIOs are hesitant to link security investments to financial metrics. However, with an appropriate Zero Trust strategy, organizations will assure themselves enormous savings in IT effort and vendor support. Organizations deploying a Zero Trust solution based off a converged, cloud-native, global backboned SASE Cloud like Cato can expect more efficient cost structures while achieving greater performance. By converging critical security functions, including Zero Trust, into a single software stack within the Cato SASE Cloud, organizations are able to immediately retire expensive, non-scalable, maintenance-intensive VPN equipment. This approach delivers ease of deployment and simplistic management, while drastically reducing maintenance overhead and IT support costs.
Achieving Your Organization’s Zero Trust Goals with Cato SASE Cloud
Justifying a security transformation from implicit trust to Zero Trust is becoming easier and easier. However, determining the right approach to achieving an organization’s Zero Trust goals can be daunting. It is challenging when factoring in the broad paradigm shift in how we view user and device access, as well as numerous use case considerations with unique characteristics. Zero Trust Network Access is an identity-driven default-deny approach to security that greatly improves your security posture. Even if a malicious user compromises a network asset, ZTNA can limit the potential damage. Furthermore, the Cato SASE Cloud’s security services can establish an immediate baseline of normal network behavior, which enables a more proactive approach to network security in general and threat detection in particular. With a solid baseline, malicious behavior is easier to detect, contain, and prevent.
"The Zero Trust is a security model based on the principle of maintaining strict access controls and not trusting anyone by default; a holistic approach to network security, that incorporates a number of different principles and technologies.” Ludmila Morozova-Buss
The Cato SASE Cloud was designed for the modern digital enterprise. Our cloud-native architecture converges security features such as Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), SWG, NGFW, IPS, CASB, and DLP, as well as networking services such as SD-WAN and WAN Optimization across a global private backbone with a 99.999% uptime SLA. As a result, Cato is the only vendor currently capable of delivering seamless ZTNA on a true SASE platform for optimized performance, security, and scalability.
Zero Trust is a small part of SASE. The Cato SASE Cloud restricts access of all edges – site, mobile users and devices, and cloud resources – in accordance with Zero Trust principles. Click here to understand more about Cato Networks’ approach to Zero Trust.
We are witnessing a tremendous shift in mindset regarding technology’s relationship to the business. As IT leaders learned during Covid, business challenges are IT challenges,...
Solving Real-World Challenges – Your Pathway to SASE We are witnessing a tremendous shift in mindset regarding technology’s relationship to the business. As IT leaders learned during Covid, business challenges are IT challenges, and IT challenges are business challenges. As digitization continues to advance, these leaders continue to face an array of challenges, and the solutions they choose will determine their success or failure.
This article provides IT and security professionals with actionable ideas for selecting a robust platform for digital transformation to address the network and security challenges that adversely impact their business.
We cover:
Real-world challenges in need of solutionsThe Cato SASE ApproachSASE ComparisonsKey questions to ask yourself when looking for a solutionMapping Your Journey
Real-world Challenges Breeds New Networking and Security Considerations
Global Business Expansion Creates New Connectivity Requirements
We are a global business society that is constantly expanding, whether organically into new markets or through mergers and acquisitions into new business lines. Whatever the impetus, there are real challenges these organizations will face. Adding new locations, for example, requires planning for global and local connectivity, which could be very inconsistent, depending upon the region.
In the case of mergers, we must deal with inconsistent or incompatible networks architectures, while factoring in the unreliable nature of global connectivity over a public internet. And let’s not forget inconsistent security policies that add to your headaches.
And finally, we must consider how all this affects migrating new users and apps onto your core network, as well as ensuring access and security policies are correct. Not impossible, but this could take weeks or months to achieve.
All this results in unexpected consequences.
Core Challenges:
Rapid site deploymentInconsistent connectivityPublic Internet Transport
On-premise to Cloud Migration Spurs Capacity Constraints
Most obstacles in cloud adoption are related to basic performance aspects, such as availability, capacity, latency and scalability. Many organizations neglect to consider bandwidth and capacity requirements of cloud applications. These applications should deliver similar or better performance as legacy on-premise. However, with the rush to adapt to the new Covid-normal, many are finding this is far from reality.
Scalability is also an issue with cloud deployments. As businesses continue to grow and expand, the greater the need for a cloud network that scales at the speed of their business, and doesn’t restrict the business with its technical limitations.
All together, these are real issues IT teams continue to face today, and until now, saw little to no relief in sight.
Core Challenges:
Capacity planning and cost managementPoor app performanceScalability
Expanding Cyber Threat Landscape
Every year, like clockwork, we witness numerous global companies attacked by cyber criminals at least once per day. Many have had sensitive data stolen and publicly leaked. The pandemic only exacerbated this, pushing more employees further from the enterprise security perimeter. The growth in Work-From-Anywhere (WFA) introduced more remote worker security challenges than many expected, and not many were truly prepared.
Additionally, as more organizations move their apps to cloud, providing security for these apps, as well as safe use of 3rd party SaaS apps, became an even stickier point for today’s enterprises. This, along with securing remote workers, is pushing IT leaders to face the harsh reality of their current cyber defense short-comings.
As these businesses attempt some form of return to normal, it’s clear we may never make it back to traditional full-time office setup. WFA, as well as increased cloud usage, is here to stay, meaning the threats to the business will only increase. This means the potential costs of cyber breaches will follow suit.
Core Challenges:
Expanding cyber threat landscapeSecuring Work-from-anywhere (WFA)Improper employee usage
The Cato SASE Approach to Rapid Digital Transformation
It’s easy for most organizations to take a traditional approach to these challenges by looking for point solutions or creative chaining of technologies to create a bundled solution. While this provides an initial “feel-good” moment, this complex approach, invariably, creates more problems than it solves.
Cato addresses these challenges through simplicity, and accomplish this through our converged, cloud-native approach. The Cato SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) Cloud converges core capabilities of networking, security and access management into a single software stack that delivers optimized cloud access, predictable performance, and unified policy management. Our SASE Cloud also provides complete visibility to inspect all traffic flows and provide advanced, holistic threat protection and consistent policy enforcement across a global private backbone.
Cato addresses the challenges of global connectivity with our global private backbone, providing resiliency and performance SLA guarantees. Our cloud acceleration and optimization address the performance challenges faced when migrating enterprise apps to a cloud data center. And we address the security challenges with advanced, holistic security tools like NGFW, SWG, NextGen Anti-Malware, IPS, CASB and DLP.
The Cato SASE Cloud enables enterprises to more rapidly and securely deliver new products and services to market, and more quickly respond to changes in business and technology dynamics that impacts their competitiveness.
What is SASE and its Core Requirements?
When deciding on SASE solutions, it is helpful to understand the core requirements as specified by Gartner and compare the various vendors in the market. For SASE to deliver on the promise of infrastructure simplicity, end-end optimization and limitless scalability, it must adhere to certain requirements: Converged, Cloud-native, Global, All Edges and Unified Management.
Converged – A single software stack that combines network, security, and access management as one. This eliminates multiple layers of complexity. There is no need to stitch together bundles of disparate technologies. No need for multiple configuration tools to configure these different technologies. Convergence leads to simplistic architecture, easier management, and lower overall costs to the business.Cloud-Native – Built in the cloud for the cloud. Unlike appliances and virtualized solutions based upon appliances, being cloud-native enables vendor to deliver more flexibility in deployment and scale easier and faster when customers require more capacity.Global – Having a global presence means a network of PoPs everywhere, connected via a global private backbone. This means the network is everywhere the customer business is, delivering guaranteed performance and optimization for all traffic, consistent policy enforcement globally, network resilience to keep the business running.All Edges – Consistently and seamlessly delivering services to all edges (branch, endpoint, data center, cloud) without complex configuration or integration.Unified – A single, unified management console to provision and manage all services. No need to build dashboards to communicate with multiple technologies to manage the deployment .
These are non-negotiable requirements that only a true Cloud-Native SASE solution can deliver. Appendix A highlights how the Cato SASE Cloud compares to appliance-based solutions.
7 Questions You Must Ask Before Selecting Your Next Solution
To solve these issues, here are some key questions to ask yourself and your team. This will help you find the right solution to alleviate these challenges.
1. What real problems are we trying to solve?
Identify what technical challenges are inhibiting you from delivering the best app, networking, and security experience for the business. Discover which projects are on hold because your infrastructure can’t accommodate them. The answers will provide you with insights into the actual problems you need to solve.
2. Which solution solves this, while scaling at the speed of our business?
The natural response when encountering point-problems, is to find a point-solution. When doing so, ask yourself which solution delivers a more holistic approach to all your concerns (from question 1) while also providing a platform that scales at the speed of your business.
3. How can we ensure cost-effective, business continuity?
Business continuity is non-negotiable, so when searching for a solution, ensure you find one that provides a resilient architecture that keeps your business running, no matter what happens.
4. With limited resources, how fast can we deploy new sites?
Your solution shouldn’t just look good on paper, it needs to work well in practice. You can’t wait two, three or six months to launch new branches. Find a solution that enables rapid, zero-touch deployment, with minimal impact on your teams.
5. How can we build and maintain a consistent policy structure?
Multiple configuration tools can create policy mismatches, which in turns, creates gaps and puts your critical applications at risk. To reduce this risk, find a solution that addresses configuration inconsistencies.
6. What’s the right amount of security?
Security is an imperative, so most businesses try to implement multiple solutions with lots of cool-sounding features to make themselves feel secure. Unfortunately, multiple point solutions create security blind spots. Additionally, about 80%-90% of “cool” security features are never used. Achieve more with less by finding a solution that improves your security posture, independent from the size of your corporation or the size of your IT team
7. What’s our best option for global connectivity?
Connectivity can make or break your business. Find a solution that provides increased capacity, guaranteed performance, and a global private backbone. Don’t settle for less.
Mapping Your SASE Journey in 4 Easy Steps
Now that you understand the networking and security challenges adversely affecting your business and their proposed solutions, now it’s time to map out your SASE journey. Doing this can be easier than you might think.
1. Prioritize:
After you’ve answered the above questions, it’s now time to prioritize and create your migration plan. You may have one problem to solve, and in this case it’s easy. But most will have several, so once determined and prioritized, it’s time to plan and put it into action. Of course, Cato and our partners can assist, and even recommend a migration plan.
2. Solve the problem:
This is wholly up to the organization. Some may prefer to tackle low-hanging fruit projects to build confidence in the teams. In this case, easy problems may go first. But others believe in “Go Big or Go Home”, so they may start with the most critical problems first. It’s basically up to the organization to define.
3. Observe:
Observe the “wow” moments of that problem being solved. Whether performance, enhanced security, global connectivity, and so on – observe and enjoy. Then move onto the next problem or project.
4. Repeat and observe.
It’s a straight-forward journey, and a well-defined plan makes it all flow smoothly.
Does Your Solution Allow You to Plan for the Future?
Solving problems the legacy way is how we acquired the complexity beast we have today. So, it’s time we change the game and become more strategic about addressing our IT challenges.
The Cato SASE Cloud does this by converging all the capabilities organizations need today into a single platform, while future-proofing their businesses for whatever is next. In contrast, a non-SASE approach forces you to spend time and resources evaluating, acquiring, and integrating multiple technologies to address each requirement.
Taking a platform approach to your transformation journey will address the challenges of today and prepare you for the opportunities of tomorrow. Taking a Cato SASE approach will enable your network to scale at the speed of your business.
Appendix A – SASE Core Requirements Comparison Chart
Gartner SASE Requirements Cato Appliance Solutions Cato SASE Advantage for Customers Converged Yes One single software stack with the network and security as one NO A mixed collection of appliances that are stitched together. Network and security simplicity and uniformity in policy enforcement can only be achieved through convergence. Cloud-Native Yes Built as a distributed cloud-native service from scratch, with no appliance baggage NO Use virtualized hardware placed in the cloud Easy and inexpensive to scale when increased capacity is required. Customers can scale and grow at the speed of their business, and not be limited by the complexity of a stale network. Global Yes 75+ PoPs available located near every major business center. Each has an independent expansion plan. Limited Relying on IaaS for hosting PoPs limits availability and degrades performance. Growth depends on IaaS plans, not the SASE vendor's Cato’s global private backbone delivers performance guarantees, resiliency and policy consistency between sites across the WAN and cloud. All Edges Yes Designed with light edge connectors (SD-WAN, SDP, Cloud) with a cloud first architecture to deliver same service to all edges Limited Delivering services to different edges requires a different portfolio solution. So, this is only achieved by stitching together portfolio products Connecting and servicing all edges (branch, endpoint, data center, cloud) does not require complex configuration or integration Management Unified One console to control all SD-WAN, security, remote access, and networking policies with full analytics and visibility. Self-service or managed service No Multiple configuration interfaces to navigate A single policy management app eliminates configuration gaps by ensuring consistent policy configurations & enforcement across the entire network.
About Cato Networks
Cato is the world's first SASE platform, converging SD-WAN and network security into a global cloud-native service. Cato optimizes and secures application access for all users and locations. Using Cato SASE Cloud, customers easily migrate from MPLS to SD-WAN, improve connectivity to on-premises and cloud applications, enable secure brach Internet access everywhere, and seamlessly integrate cloud data centers and remote users into the network with a zero-trust architecture. With Cato, your network and business are ready for whatever's next.
For any questions about the ideas suggested in this article, and if you have some more of your own, feel free to contact us at: catonetworks.com/contact-us/
Introduction: Discussing Transformation with the Board Technology is a strategic requirement for every global organization and its board of directors, regardless of industry. No one...
Talking SASE to Your Board: A CIO’s Guide to Getting to ‘Yes’ Introduction: Discussing Transformation with the Board
Technology is a strategic requirement for every global organization and its board of directors, regardless of industry. No one is immune from the machinations of technological evolution and the associated disruption that follows. As a result, we can no longer separate business strategy from technology strategy, forcing corporate boards to converge their decision-making processes around a strategic agenda of innovation and risk-mitigation. So, CIOs must take an innovative approach when discussing any transformational change with the board.
How to Position Network Transformation to the Board
Network transformation is a game-changing strategy that helps drive business growth and market acquisition. So, if not positioned effectively to address board-level concerns, it will impact the long-term ability to execute and advance business objectives. When addressing the board, CIOs must position such technology strategies with critical board-level concerns in mind and discuss them in the context of:
Can this strategy help us improve IT responsiveness and ability to support business growth?
What value will the business realize through this initiative?
What is the security impact of this strategy on our critical applications?
How would this strategy enable IT organizations to better mitigate increasing security risk?
What would be the short- and long-term financial impact of this initiative?
What is the impact of our current and next-gen IT talent?
Core to discussing these strategies is articulating the necessity of simplification, optimization, and risk-mitigation in delivering business outcomes through network transformation. And this is where Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) becomes that strategic conversation for board-level engagement.
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SASE is the network transformation strategy that addresses board-level concerns around risk, growth, and financial flexibility. SASE converges networking and security capabilities into a single high-performing cloud-native architecture that allows organizations to scale core business operations through efficiency and performance, while extending consistency in policy and protections. So, presenting a SASE strategy to the board requires CIOs to be crisp and clear when highlighting key business benefits.
[caption id="attachment_25242" align="alignnone" width="724"] Figure 1[/caption]
A Conversational Guide to Engaging the Board on SASE
In February 2019, Deloitte defined a 3-dimension conversation model for CIOs when engaging technology boards. This engagement model defines the thought processes of board members when evaluating technology initiatives for sustaining business growth and maximizing balance sheets.
[caption id="attachment_25244" align="alignnone" width="724"] Figure 2[/caption]
To influence the board’s decision-making process, CIOs can lean on this model to guide their discussion of SASE’s positive impact on business growth and sustainability. While SASE may not speak specifically to each sub-dimension of the Deloitte model, the core focus on Strategy, Risk and Financial Performance can be adapted as a conversation guide when discussing SASE and Network Transformation.
Highlight the Strategic Value of SASE
Disruptive technology drives business growth and market share acquisition. However, CIOs should emphasize SASE not as a disruptive technology, rather as a disruptive approach to existing technologies. When positioning SASE to boards, CIOs should emphasize the strategic potential of SASE’s disruptive approach to simplifying network operations, which by extension, accelerates business growth.
CIOs must articulate the strategic business benefits of converging networking and security functions into a single cloud-native software stack with unlimited scalability to support business growth. An obvious benefit is how SASE accelerates and optimizes access to critical applications, enhancing the collection, analysis, and securing of data, while improving user experiences and efficiency. Another benefit is how SASE eliminates scaling challenges when more capacity is required to service business growth and expansion.
An imperative for CIOs is to highlight use cases where SASE proves its strategic value across the entire enterprise. Successful SASE implementations makes it easier to pursue Cloud Migration, Work-From-Home (WFH), UCaaS, and Global Expansion projects, just to name a few. Through these, we observe how SASE not only eliminates networking and security headaches, but it also streamlines the efforts of IT teams, allowing them to place more focus on these strategic initiatives. SASE has now become that true platform for digital transformation and an enabler of business growth.
In short, CIOs must emphasize how SASE enables the network to scale at the speed of business, instead of the business being limited by the rigid, inflexibility of the network. This approach allows CIOs to demonstrate SASE’s strategic value to the overall business by removing technical challenges that limit growth.
Conversation Tips
SASE as a disruptive approach to simplifying network operations
SASE as a “Growth Enabler” – optimized access improves business operations
Unlimited scalability at the speed of business
[caption id="attachment_25250" align="alignnone" width="724"] Figure 3[/caption]
Present the Risk-mitigation Value of SASE
No one is immune to cyber risk, and boards will naturally question cyber readiness for critical projects that support business growth. Typically, discussions around risk are fragmented along network support for new initiatives, and security risk to data and privacy. This overlooks the obvious linkage between the two, but SASE allows CIOs to blend these conversations to address critical board-level concerns.
Considering this, presenting the risk-mitigation value of SASE requires CIOs to address a key imperative of most boards – SASE must help overcome increased complexity and mitigate cyber risks today and well into the future.
Years of acquiring point products to solve point problems have bloated technology environments, resulting in security blind spots, increased complexity, and unmanageable risk. SASE proves its risk mitigation value by simplifying protection schemes, increasing visibility, improving threat detection and response, unifying security policies, and facilitating easier auditing. CIOs must also emphasize SASE’s simplistic Zero-Trust access approach to critical applications, delivering consistent policy enforcement across the entire network.
Finally, CIO’s must outline how SASE enable organizations to meet regulatory and compliance mandates and policies. This conversational approach re-enforces SASE’s risk-mitigation value and alleviates one of the biggest board-level concerns – the risk of ransomware and business disruption.
Conversation Tips
Highlight cyber risks without SASE –complexity, blind spots, and reputation loss
Risk Mitigation value – holistic data protection schemes
True SASE is a platform that enables compliance mandates
[caption id="attachment_25252" align="alignnone" width="724"] Figure 4[/caption]
Discuss SASE as a Financial Performance Enabler
Boards are laser-focused on the long-term financial performance goals of the business. The board needs to understand how network transformation will improve their balance sheets and customer retention. While many CIOs hesitate to link technology investments to financial performance metrics, articulating the positive impact of SASE on financial performance can position it as an ROI-enabler.
In our whitepaper, “ROI of Doing Nothing”, we highlight the long-term financial impact of delaying network transformation with SASE. Becoming a Stage 1 company – transition early to anticipate challenges vs. being a Stage 2 company – delay results in increased requirements and subsequent costs, comes down to the overall financial burden organizations are prepared to withstand. CIOs must promote the positive ROI of SASE in securing the long-term financial structure of the business.
When evaluating the feasibility of network transformation with SASE, CIOs must speak to the business and talent efficiencies to be gained. Today, most enterprises exhaust considerable resources running and maintaining inefficient infrastructures. This often produces outages across the network, which impacts operations across the entire business. The financial impact of this is not only measured in maintenance contracts and renewal/upgrade fees, but also in application availability, performance, and scalability.
SASE reduces costs by retiring expensive and inefficient systems, and this also directly impacts their IT talent performance. Similar to the strategic value, less time spent on mundane technical support activities enables IT teams to direct their support efforts towards strategic, revenue-generating initiatives. This increases revenue generated per-head, thus improving the operational cost model.
Highlighting key performance metrics related to revenue and ROI will gain broad consensus for SASE projects. Mapping key performance requirements into business ROI gained via SASE, demonstrates how it not only transforms networking and security, but also overall IT and business operations that impact the bottom-line.
Conversation Tips
SASE as an ROI enabler – lower TCO
Delaying SASE – impacts long-term cost structures
IT support for revenue-generating initiatives
[caption id="attachment_25254" align="alignnone" width="724"] Figure 5[/caption]
A SASE Engagement Model Allows for CIO-Board Partnership
Justifying network transformation can be challenging considering it requires a paradigm shift towards a new way of viewing IT operations and its impact on the broader business. By following a simple board-level engagement model focusing on Strategy, Risk and Performance, CIOs can build a more compelling discussion on the numerous advantages in SASE that extend far beyond simple network and security efficiencies. It is important to develop that CIO-Board partnership that explores these through a business outcome lens. SASE pursued with strategic business enablement in mind alleviates the key board-level concerns, while empowering CIOs to deliver the resilient, cost-effective converged platform that enables optimal IT operations, mitigates risk, and produces long-term ROI.
Engaging the board on new technology approaches such as SASE does not have to be scary. SASE provides a new way to envision the Digital Infrastructure of the Future, and highlighting the main concerns of most board members, is the most direct approach to discuss this topic. This writing provides a simple guide for mapping board-level concerns to the intrinsic advantages of SASE, while providing a roadmap to realizing the key benefits.
To learn more about how CIO’s succeed in this digital era, download our “First 100 Days as a CIO” guide.
