Today we are getting a little SASE 😊 We are talking about the Secure Access Service Edge. Before I talk about the components of SASE, let's talk a little bit about what it is. It moves these secure access services to the edge, which I know sounds pretty obvious right, but what's the edge? You may have remote users working out of their homes, maybe they are not near an office location. SASE moves those services closer to the end user so that you can provide security but also offer a really good user experience.
So what are those services? And what do we need to move to the edge? Take a traditional VPN, as an example, VPN for a remote user they are going to connect to the network through VPN and traditionally that VPN appliance or the termination point would live in a data center centralized to that organization. If that data center is in California but the user's in maybe Texas or New York to connect that user all the way to California’s data center, there's a significant amount of latency. It would be much more effective to offer those firewalling services in New York if that user is in New York or in Texas if that user's in Texas. Traditionally in our networks, we did not have a function or a way to deliver that service out at the edge wherever those users are. That is the point behind this service (SASE) is that you've have lots of manufacturers now offering firewalling or VPN in the cloud which would allow us to give that to the users at the edge. What that means is, if I’m in New York and I want a VPN into our organization I can connect to the VPN, it's automatically going to terminate my connection in New York or very close to where I’m at in the most local pop. Then it's going to allow me to get all the services corporate services that I would normally get instead of going all the way to California and it would allow me to get them locally and my experience would be that much better.
In addition to that, if we're not talking about VPN, there are some security features that I mentioned before about firewall security or firewall in the cloud. With these users being connected, as an example at a Starbucks or just in a random hotel location, they're just connecting to the internet and doing their work and there's no way for the corporation to provide their corporate security policies to those users. So what SASE is doing is moving the firewall out to the edge as well and being able to inject firewall services so an organization can mitigate threats and move those services as close to the user as possible without injecting latency and making it a poor user experience. It makes sure that the user experience is good while also providing a certain level of protection. There are a number of services and ways to do this whether it's firewall security in the cloud or it's VPN services in the cloud or it's DNS services in the cloud. All of these technologies are delivered now at the edge to ensure your security policy is maintained but also still give the users that wonderful end user experience.
There's a lot more we could talk about in regard to SASE but that's just a high level understanding so you can go think if this is something you need for your organization and if there's something you would like to talk to us about or you want to talk more SASE, let us know we would love to help!
As always if you have any questions on getting a SASE policy set up for you and your business and would like to schedule a free consultation with us, please reach out to us at sales@lookingpoint.com and we’ll be happy to help!
If you want to hear even more about SASE, we talk to Cisco Technical Solutions Architect, Mark Kasper, who takes us through what SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is and why businesses should consider introducing this into their IT environment. Listen here!
Sean Barr, President