what-is-sase

SASE Unplugged – What is it all about?

If you’ve been in a meeting, scrolled through LinkedIn, or opened your inbox in the last 12 months, chances are you’ve tripped over the term SASE (Secure Access Service Edge). It’s the kind of acronym that makes you nod politely while secretly panic-googling under the desk. Admit it, you do that. We ALL do that!

So, let’s strip away the hype and unpack SASE a bit.

At its heart, SASE is a response to the changing work environment. It’s about giving your people secure, fast, consistent access to the apps and data they need, wherever they are – Martini style – any time, any place, anywhere (if you get that reference, I hope you have your pension in good shape by now.) Whether they are in their home office, on a customer site, on a train with patchy Wi-Fi or in a coffee shop where the latte art and raspberry pie is considerably better than the security.

It used to be enough to secure everything by throwing up a digital castle wall. You know, firewalls, VPNs, the works. If you were “inside” the perimeter, you were trusted. That worked when everyone was sitting politely inside the same office building and connected to the LAN by a comforting wire. But today? Not so much. Businesses are hybrid, apps are in the cloud, users are everywhere and the old impenetrable castle wall is starting to resemble a tasty but hole-pocked Swiss Cheese.

That’s where SASE comes in. Instead of protecting the perimeter (because there really isn’t one anymore), it protects the user. It does this by blending together a bunch of security and networking functions you might already know:

SD-WAN – so traffic takes the smartest, most optimised route across your network.
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) – because “never trust, always verify” is the new mantra.
CASB – keeping a watchful eye on the increasing proliferation of cloud apps.
Secure Web Gateway (SWG) – filtering out the dodgy stuff online.
Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) – similar firewall to before but now delivered from the cloud.

The magic is in the integration. Much like Unified Communications did for Collaboration in the middle ‘00s, if you build your framework right, you get one coherent service instead of innumerable siloed services fighting for attention. Cisco, Fortinet, Sophos and others are packaging this up in ways that are (relatively) painless to adopt and arguably a single vendor solution is the cleanest, but in reality, you will probably start from where you are and iterate.

But here’s the real point, and it’s the one your CFO actually cares about: SASE isn’t about technology for technology’s sake. It’s about outcomes. Lower hardware costs. Better user experience. Reduced cyber risk. Easier compliance. Predictable OpEx. And maybe even fewer angry calls to IT from people stuck trying to log into the old VPN.

Of course, it’s not simple plug-and-play (very little is). You need a strategy, senior buy-in and collaboration between the network and security teams (yes, they have to play nice, and the best of luck with that). Some platforms promise a single pane of glass, other solutions are more of a patchwork quilt. Like anything worthwhile, it’s a journey.

So, if someone corners you at the next networking event and asks what this sassy thing is all about, you can now smile knowingly and say: It’s about securing access from the user out, not the data centre in.

And if you still want the acronym unpacked further? Well, then be sure to check out the first episode of our Cyber Unplugged Podcast!