SASE In Retail

The Changes That are Driving the Need for SASE

Retailers and hospitality providers are obsessed with providing an excellent customer experience. Connectivity is at the heart of this requirement, as retailers strive to constantly deliver a positive experience across channels (in-store and online) and geo-diverse locations. Retailers also provide connectivity-related amenities, like guest wi-fi, in stores.
In addition, retailers rely on speedy and secure connectivity for their business-critical systems. They need to perform actions like communications, checking inventory status and processing credit card transactions.
Over time, cyber threats have increased and network components are transitioning to the cloud

IT Challenges in the Retail Industry

Continuing to deliver a quality user experience, while also satisfying consumer demands and ensuring operations run smoothly, imposes multiple challenges for retailers:

  • Managing Connectivity and Security for Multiple Locations

    Retailers require high- performing and secure connectivity for multiple geo-diverse locations. They need to connect retail locations to each other and to a central data center. However, using legacy MPLS or VPNs, as has been common so far, is expensive, complicated, unreliable and insecure.

  • Reduce Costs and Increase Efficiency

    Retailers need to minimize their costs while increasing their productivity. But MPLS links are costly and VPN tunneling is complex. Alternatively, relying on the public Internet is inefficient and unreliable because ISPs prefer cost-savings over performance, which could result in packet loss, jitter or latency.

  • Administrative Overhead

    Whether delivering complimentary guest wi-fi or relying on critical business systems, retailers’ IT need to ensure high performance and security, otherwise the business will lose revenue. Procuring, managing and updating a tech stack that answers those needs is a huge hassle. In addition, the transition of data center services, like VoIP and PoS, to the cloud, requires IT to learn and manage a complete new set of tools.

Before and After Using Cato SASE Cloud

  • Before using Cato SASE Cloud

  • After using Cato SASE Cloud

Hear what our customers are saying about us

“Cato meets all the needs for retail locations, including easy management, deployment, and getting notifications of potential network problems. “All that makes it very easy to run your retail establishments,”

Steve Waibel

Director of IT of Brake Masters
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The Solution to Retail Challenges: SASE

  • Native SD-WAN (as part of SASE)

    SASE provides native SD-WAN as a built-in, by design, part of the solution. SD-WAN reduces costs and removes friction while providing retailers with reliable connectivity through commodity broadband links and 4G/5G wireless connectivity. Traffic is transmitted over a global private backbone while applying QoS bandwidth prioritization policies, TCP acceleration and packet-loss mitigation.

    From a security standpoint, security and zero-trust access policies are applied to traffic, guest wi-fi is filtered using SWG, IPS & NGAM protect from threats and DLP & CASB maintain data sovereignty and PCI compliance.

  • MPLS Migration

    SASE replaces expensive, rigid, and capacity-constrained MPLS networks or the unpredictable Internet, at a lower cost per megabit. Performance with SASE is optimized and throughput to on-premises and cloud applications is maximized.

  • Quick and Simple to Use and Deploy

    SASE connects multiple locations, of any size, with a single, easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy client or socket, and with no need for multiple appliances. Traffic is sent to the SASE network of cloud-native PoPs (Points of Presence), which can also be connected to public cloud providers with just a few clicks. The SASE network ensures maximum performance and uptime while applying the most advanced security policies and providing IT with visibility into network traffic.. This entire implementation is scalable, while being cost-efficient.

  • Removing complexity and costs

    SASE connects multiple locations, of any size, with a single, easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy client or socket, and with no need for multiple appliances. Traffic is sent to the SASE network of cloud-native PoPs (Points of Presence), which can also be connected to public cloud providers with just a few clicks. The SASE network ensures maximum performance and uptime while applying the most advanced security policies and providing IT with visibility into network traffic.. This entire implementation is scalable, while being cost-efficient.

The solution that the retail industry has been waiting for is here, Prepare to be amazed

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