Why SASE Makes Zero Trust Work   

Gartner® predicted that by early this year, over 60% of organizations would be using zero trust as their starting point for security. And no wonder. Cloud migration, hybrid work, and persistent threats have turned security into a minefield, exposing the cracks in old castle and moat, perimeter-based security architectures.  

Zero Trust aligns with how and where we work today, shifting the perimeter to individual users, devices, and applications—wherever they are. It secures access from anywhere, but only to explicitly allowed business resources—protecting organizations by reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches in work environments outside office walls.  

As great as it is, it has some challenges. This blog post looks at why zero trust alone isn’t enough, headaches in deploying it, and—because we never leave a problem unsolved—how to fix it with SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). 

Zeroing in on zero trust 

Zero trust isn’t a security architecture or tool—it’s a framework that reshapes how we protect networks, manage access, and secure assets. It shifts security from an implicit trust model, where a user or device is trusted to roam freely once inside a network, to an identity-driven, data-centric one based on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” No user, device, or application—outside or even inside the organization—is automatically trusted.  

Zero trust continuously verifies identities, device security, and behaviors, only granting as-needed, session-based access to the right people, the right devices, at the right time, and for the right reasons. 

Zero trust doesn’t mean zero problems 

While it brings many benefits, one of the biggest hurdles with zero trust is maintaining a consistent user experience while seamlessly integrating it with existing security tools like SIEM, IAM, and EDR.  

Then there’s threat prevention—zero trust doesn’t stop threats like malware and zero-days. Because advanced threat prevention still relies on an organization’s existing security stack, this can create detection gaps and inconsistent enforcement for zero trust traffic. 

Performance is another hurdle. Most traffic is at the mercy of an unpredictable public Internet, and when you layer on encryption, authentication, and deep inspection, latency can spike—especially for real-time apps. Scalability, policy management, and cost add even more complexity.  

While no single challenge is a dealbreaker, together they will disrupt an organization’s zero trust strategy, making it difficult to fully realize its effectiveness. 

The right security architecture  

Zero trust secures access to resources and applications—it doesn’t address every security challenge, and the gaps left behind create risk. Deploying zero trust within the right security architecture solves for this. 

SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) converges networking and multiple security capabilities, including ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), in a single, global, cloud-native architecture. It simplifies security, providing robust threat prevention, consistent policy enforcement, improved performance for a better user experience, and protects business applications and data.

https://www.catonetworks.com/platform/universal-zero-trust-network-access-ztna/  

SASE delivers better zero trust outcomes 

Deploying zero trust within a SASE architecture extends its efficacy. SASE combines zero trust principles with advanced security capabilities: 

• Secure connectivity: Encrypted tunnels ensure in-transit protection for all resources 

• Dynamic policy enforcement: Real-time adaptation based on enterprise-defined criteria. 

• Identity-based access control: The core of zero trust 

• Least privileges and micro-segmentation: Limiting what resources can be accessed, reducing the attack surface and preventing lateral movement 

• Orchestration and automation: Ensuring enforcement policies address security posture changes and reduce blind spots. 

With SASE, these controls are applied consistently across an organization for efficient, headache-free operations. 

But not all SASE is the same 

A single-vendor SASE platform provides enterprises with the access capabilities they need: secure and optimal access for everyone, wherever they are. With full-stack security and single-pass inspection, organizations get a single contextual view of all traffic flows to ensure advanced threat protection for zero trust traffic. 

Zero trust doesn’t just apply to remote access. A single-vendor SASE platform provides a consistent user experience for office-based users and devices that need the same risk-based treatment as their remote counterparts. This is achieved through 3 things: 

1. Global connectivity for complete visibility and control 

A global private backbone, built from the ground up, to connect and secures all users, applications, and data—wherever they may be. In a single-vendor SASE platform, this private backbone enhances zero trust by enabling risk-based access, least privilege enforcement, segmentation, and threat prevention.  

With deep security visibility, malicious activities are flagged to accelerate threat remediation. This enhances the zero trust experience and provides consistent enforcement. 

2. Holistic threat prevention to reduce the attack surface 

Threat prevention and reducing the attack surface are core to zero trust. A single-vendor SASE platform enforces zero trust principles across all traffic flows, using advanced threat prevention to stop zero-day threats in real time, and data protection tools to implement identity-based access control policies.  

These security capabilities, combined with single-pass scanning provide a single context for all zero trust traffic. This enables simultaneous inspection and strengthens zero-trust policies resulting in risk-based access with consistent policy enforcement. 

3. Unified SASE Platform Management 

A single-vendor SASE platform simplifies security management with a single management dashboard. Data is collected in one place for easy analysis, and policy management is streamlined across all security functions. This reduces the chaos and operational burden of fragmented, multi-vendor security stacks, giving IT teams full visibility to stay ahead of threats 

Cato delivers zero trust security at scale 

Cato SASE Cloud is the first and only single-vendor SASE platform built from the ground up, converging networking, security, and access technologies into a private global cloud network. Its native capabilities work and evolve seamlessly together to provide a consistent and secure user experience—delivering advanced zero trust security. 

At the platform’s core is Cato’s Single Pass Cloud Engine (SPACE). Through SPACE, all security capabilities simultaneously process zero trust traffic flows to provide full visibility, control, and advanced threat prevention. SPACE applies network and security enrichment, real-time machine learning, and threat intelligence to provide a single context of all zero trust activity, ensuring universal policy enforcement and protection from zero-day threats across physical, remote, and cloud environments. 

Cato SASE Cloud makes zero trust deployment and management easy, delivering all the security capabilities organizations need—now and in the future. With single-pane-of-glass management and seamless policy enforcement, Cato ensures holistic, scalable, and adaptable zero trust security. All with zero complexity. 

Ready to learn more? Download the white paper this blog is based on.