As organizations have accelerated their plans to better enable dispersed workforces in a post-pandemic reality, many technology decision-makers are broadly rethinking their network architectures. Inevitably their discussions lead to comparisons and debates over both software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and secure access service edge (SASE) technologies.
Whether organizations call it digital transformation or just using technology to create opportunities for new, easier ways to work, one thing is certain. Businesses increasingly need to find simpler ways to securely build and manage new kinds of connections that support an era of: This is exactly the drive behind the latest collaboration between the cybersecurity and networking experts at AT&T and Cisco.
Here’s the reality: hybrid and remote work are here to stay. This means access to your corporate data can now come from anywhere, on any device and any network. In order to tackle this new norm, Gartner has defined a new cybersecurity framework called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).
We are going through a period of huge security and networking upheaval. Transformation projects are afoot in the vast majority of organisations and architectural ideologies are shifting towards SASE and Zero Trust. We are all seeing and experiencing this first hand, but anecdotal tales of how organisations are handling these changes are inconsistent. Some are seeing security teams expanding, while others are decentralising the team and distributing security expertise across project taskforces.
A few months ago, I wrote a blog on “SASE as a Service” that described how managed services providers (MSPs) can be a catalyzing force for transforming to SASE and bridging the gap between networking and security teams. Since then, AT&T has released a series of managed SASE offers that bring together intelligent networking and cloud-based security in support of our customers.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), also known as Cloud Security Gateways, were created to address the increasing cloud security problems facing organizations as cloud and application usage increased over the last decade.
