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Modern enterprise complexity is challenging cybersecurity programs. With the widespread adoption of cloud services and remote work, and the broadening distribution of applications and employees away from traditional corporate locations, organizations require a more flexible and scalable approach to network security. SASE technology can help address these issues, making SASE adoption a goal for many organizations worldwide. But adoption paths can vary widely.
To get an understanding of those adoption paths, and the challenges along the way, the Enterprise Strategy Group surveyed nearly 400 IT and cybersecurity professionals to learn of their experiences. Each survey respondent is in some way responsible for evaluating, purchasing, or managing network security technology products and services.
One popular strategy is to ease into SASE by starting with security service edge (SSE), a building block of SASE which integrates security capabilities directly into the network edge, close to where users or devices connect. Starting with SSE necessitates having an SSE provider with a smooth migration path to SASE. Relying on multiple vendors leads to integration challenges and deployment issues.
The survey report, SSE Leads the Way to SASE, outlines the experiences of these security adopters of SSE/SASE. The full report is available free for download. Meanwhile, we’ll summarize the highlights here.
Modernization Is Driving SASE Adoption
At its core, SASE is about the convergence of network and security technology. But even more so, it’s about modernizing technologies to better meet the needs of today’s distributed enterprise environment.
Asked what’s driving their interest in SASE, respondents’ most common response given is supporting network edge transformation (30%). This makes sense, considering the network edge is no longer contained to branch offices. Other leading drivers include improving security effectiveness (29%), reducing security risk (28%), and supporting hybrid work models (27%).
There are numerous use cases for SASE
The respondents list a wide variety of initial use cases for SASE adoption—everything from modernizing secure application access to supporting zero-trust initiatives. One-quarter of all respondents cite aligning network and security policies for applications and services as their top use case. Nearly as many also cite reducing/eliminating internet-facing attack surface for network and application resources and improving remote user security.
The report groups the wide variety of use cases into higher level themes such as improving operational efficiency, supporting flexible work models, and enabling more consistent security.
Enterprise Strategy Group Report: SSE Leads the Way to SASE | Get the ReportSecurity Teams Face Numerous Challenges
One-third of respondents say that an increase in the threat landscape has the biggest impact on their work. This is certainly true as organizations’ attack surfaces now extend from the user device to the cloud.
The Internet of Things and users’ unmanaged devices pose significant challenges, as 31% of respondents say that securely connecting IoT devices in our environment is a big issue, while 29% say it’s tough to securely enable the use of unmanaged devices in our environment.
31% of respondents are challenged by having the right level of security knowledge, skills, and expertise to fight the good fight.
Overall, 98% of respondents cite a challenge of some sort in terms of securing remote user access to corporate applications and resources. More than one-third of respondents say their top remote access issue is providing secure access for BYOD devices. Others are vexed by the cost, poor security, and limited scalability of VPN infrastructure. What’s more, security professionals must deal with poor or unsatisfactory user experiences when having to connect remotely.
Companies Ease into SASE with SSE
To tame the security issues, respondents want a modern approach that provides consistent, distributed enforcement for users wherever they are, as well as a zero-trust approach to application access, and centralized policy management. These are all characteristics of SSE, the security component of SASE. Nearly three-quarters of respondents are taking the path of deploying SSE first before further delving into SASE.
SSE is not without its challenges, for example, supporting multiple architectures for different types of traffic, and ensuring that user experience is not impacted. Ensuring that traffic is properly inspected via proxy, firewall, or content analysis and in locations as close to the user as possible is critical to a successful implementation.
ESG’s report outlines the important attributes security professionals consider when selecting an SSE solution. Top of mind is having hybrid options to connect on-premises and cloud solutions to help transition to fully cloud-delivered over time.
Respondents Outline Their Core Security Functions of SSE
While organizations intend to eventually have a comprehensive security stack in their SSE, the top functions they are starting with are: secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), virtual private network (VPN), SSL decryption, firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), data loss prevention (DLP), digital experience management (DEM), and next-generation firewall (NGFW).
Turning SSE into SASE is the Goal
While SSE gets companies their security stack, SASE provides the full convergence of security and networking. And although enterprise IT buyers like the idea of multi-sourcing, the reality is that those who have gone the route of multi-vendor SASE have not necessarily done so by choice. A significant number of respondents say they simply feel stuck with being multi-vendor due to lock-in from recent technology purchases, or because of established relationships.
Despite the multi-vendor approach some companies will take, many of the specific reasons respondents cite for their interest in SSE would be best addressed by a single-vendor approach. Among them are: improving integration of security controls for more efficient management, ensuring consistent enforcement and protection across distributed environments, and improving integration with data protection for more efficient management and operations—all of which can come about more easily by working with just one SSE/SASE vendor. It eliminates the time and cost of integration among vendor offerings and the “finger pointing” when something goes wrong.
Even Companies in Early Stages are Realizing Benefits
Most respondents remain in the early stages of their SSE journey. However, early adopters are experiencing success that should help others see the benefits of the architecture. For example, 60% say that cybersecurity has become somewhat or much easier than it was two years ago.
Those who have started the SASE journey have realized benefits, too. Nearly two-thirds report reduced costs across either security solutions, network solutions, security operations, or network operations. Similarly, 62% cite efficiency benefits of some kind, such as faster problem resolution, ease of management, faster onboarding, or reduction in complexity. Proof points like these should pique the interest of any organization thinking about SASE and SSE. View the full survey report, SSE Leads the Way to SASE, here.