I’m not big on acronyms or buzzwords. Like many executives, my eyes glaze over when I’m being prospected with an alphabet soup of technology terms I supposedly “need” to care about. So why, then, does the title of this article include Security Service Edge (SSE), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), and Zero Trust? Despite our justified disdain for acronyms, the ideas behind these terms hold genuine importance for business leaders.

The origins of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) can be traced back to 2019, when legacy network security systems were extensively used in workspaces. Gartner defined SASE as the combined deployment of cloud-based cybersecurity functions, including Firewall as a Service, a cloud access security broker (CASB), a secure web gateway (SWG), Zero Trust network access (ZTNA), and software-defined WAN (SD-WAN).