4 Benefits of Consolidating with Secure Access Service Edge

In spring 2020, during the pandemic, organizations had to react quickly, resulting in the adoption of new technologies at an unprecedented pace to keep up with the demands of remote work. These organizations were faced with two choices: 1) implement more security tools to safeguard data and control access to the new technologies they deployed, or 2) abandon certain security safeguards so users could work from home efficiently.

Now that we’ve largely settled into a new normal, many organizations have made efforts to right the wrongs of the “reactive” past by consolidating their technologies; for instance, by standardizing on a single collaboration platform instead of supporting multiple solutions. These organizations should also consider consolidating their inbound and outbound security environments by moving to a secure access service edge (SASE), which converges networking and security into a single platform. Doing so can not only cut costs and reduce complexity but also boost security and make life easier for end users.

Many organizations are currently supporting multiple remote access solutions, including VPNs, zero-trust network access, proxy servers, cloud access security brokers and software-defined WAN, among other networking and security tools. Some organizations have even taken a build-your-own-SASE approach, but this model involves disparate solutions that all come with their own management burdens. This additional complexity fails to deliver on SASE’s promise, which is to simplify and deliver better security outcomes; rather, it leads to other issues, such as generating extra work for IT security teams, creating inconsistencies and preventing organizations from getting the most out of their security data.

Implementing a unified SASE platform can help IT teams address these complexity issues while streamlining issues of troubleshooting experience with users in remote environments.

We’re entering an era that Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora has called the “revenge of the CFO.” After the price-is-no-object technology investments of the pandemic era, many organizations are looking to rein in their spending, and one of the most effective ways to do so is to eliminate redundant solutions and extract greater value from their investments.

Costs can quickly rise in a best-of-breed point-product cybersecurity model, as each solution’s cost goes up with each renewal. By adopting a unified SASE platform instead, organizations can often lower their total cost of ownership by removing overlap, management complexity and supplemental security tools that are filling gaps left open by the security tools currently in place. Many organizations are now in the process of deciding whether to renew three-year contracts that they entered out of necessity in 2020, making this a perfect time to rationalize what they have against where they want to go — and trim their costs.

Moving to SASE can dramatically improve the day-to-day experience for end users. Part of this simply has to do with speed. For example, Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE applies security controls as close to users as possible, then puts them on a high-speed cloud network to their destination, helping to accelerate traffic and reduce latency without compromising security or performance.

Perhaps more important, a unified SASE platform ensures that users receive a consistent experience of what they are allowed to access, no matter where they are located. Unless designed by policy, it can be extremely aggravating for users trying to access systems from outside the office, only to find that they are blocked due to variance in another tech stack’s policy. With so many employees continuing to work from home, at least some of the time, consistency is crucial.

Some organizations that support numerous cybersecurity tools mistakenly believe that this will lead to a more robust environment. But when it comes to security, more isn’t always better. The unified nature of a SASE platform gives IT security teams a single dashboard to monitor, helping them to identify and shore up their cybersecurity vulnerabilities more quickly.

Security and IT professionals seem to be realizing this as well. Over the past year or so, I don’t think I’ve had a single conversation with a CISO who is looking to modernize his or her organization's security framework following a best-of-breed approach with point solutions. Instead, IT security leaders are looking for ways to boost their security through consolidation. Only the right SASE solution meets this objective.

Story by Jason Georgi