SASE Architecture Explained: Understanding the Components and Benefits 2024

In today’s rapidly evolving digital environment, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is revolutionizing the way businesses operate. The increase in user traffic towards cloud services, which has exceeded that of traditional data centers, has led organizations to adopt SASE as a modern solution.

SASE by definition is the framework that unifies an organization’s networking and security capabilities by moving the security focus from traffic flow to identity-driven security checks. The cloud has become a crucial platform for storing sensitive information, surpassing the corporate intranet as a more secure repository. SASE architecture and its contributing service components are crucial to understanding your company’s better security framework design.

Components of SASE

The SASE architecture basically refers to the network and security tools involved in its implementation across an organization’s IT infrastructure. In terms of its features and technologies, SASE may be split down into six main parts, whether they are actively involved in a connection when necessary (like an NGFW, SWG, or CASB) or are fundamental capabilities integral to the fabric of SASE (like SD-WAN and ZTNA). These SASE components are involved in creating and safeguarding the SDP.

SASE is a comprehensive system design security framework that comprises three main structural units that work together to ensure maximum security. They also eliminate the need for inspection engines in data centers. These three sub-architectures include:

1. Cloud-based security services
2. ZTNA
3. Network Services

Cloud-Based Security

This type of security constitutes the following:

• FWaaS, or “Firewall as a Service”

Cloud firewalls include limiting access, including advanced threat prevention, URL filtering, IPS, and DNS security. The firewall service allows you to replace actual firewall hardware with these services.

• SWG (Secure Web Gateway)

Secure web gateways (SWGs) restrict unsafe external devices from reaching your private network. It prevents your staff and clients from online threats such as harmful traffic, insecure sites, malware, viruses, and phishing scams.

• CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker)

By ensuring secure cloud applications and service usage, CASBs restrict data leaks, malware attacks, regulatory non-compliance, and a lack of visibility. They protect cloud applications whether they are in the public cloud (IaaS), a private cloud, or SaaS.

2. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)

ZTNA’s technologies and services enable safe, off-premises use of enterprise software. In a zero-trust paradigm, the least-privileged access is always allowed according to certain policies, and trust is never assumed. It allows users to connect to your network securely from afar without adding them to your internal network or publicizing your internal applications.

• SDP

The Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP) is the outermost SASE layer, and it consists of all the security and networking technologies needed to link the core entities safely. Instead of adhering to the rigid boundaries of conventional network architectures, which were aligned with fixed locations, geography, physical network zones, IP addressing, or buildings, the SDP follows the fluid relationships between essential entities.

The foundation of SDP is ZTNA. The core principle of Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is to perform identity and context-based authentication on every access request. Within a SASE architecture, ZTNA is responsible for user authentication to apps by employing sophisticated context and role-based identities in conjunction with Multi-factor Authentication (MFA).

3. Network Services

SASE is built to protect the company’s wide area network (WAN) and boost the efficiency of its decentralized networks. This is achieved by safeguarding temporary and mobile users and integrating the capabilities of a software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN).

• SD-WAN

SD-WAN refers to a “wide area network” that is software-defined.

With software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), an organization’s data can take the most direct route to and from the cloud, on-premises applications, and the rest of the network. It facilitates policy management across a wide range of locations and allows for the speedy rollout of new applications and services.

There are many benefits to integrating SD-WAN into SASE:

• Latency in a network can be reduced by using a path selection algorithm to prioritize routes with the least amount of delay. SD-WAN is able to optimize network performance because of its ability to monitor and optimize network routes.
• Users outside of the office who need access to company resources must be able to do so safely and securely through the use of application-based routing. Additionally, contractors may require access from unmanaged devices. Client and clientless devices can gain encrypted access to the SASE network and the requested resource using a Secure Remote Access solution.

Centralized Administration

Delivering uniform security across your business, regardless of where users connect from, is made much easier by managing all of the above from a single Post Office Protocol (POP). Centralization of policy control ensures patch management, change control, coordinating outage windows, and policy management.

Why SASE is a Big Deal?

Gone are the days when organizations used outdated security architecture mindsets to manage security. Security as a service (SASE) is an approach to network security that integrates many layers of protection (such as cloud access security brokers and anti-malware) with a wide area network (WAN), such as a software-defined WAN (SD-WAN). It makes sense to divide a big network into smaller pieces like this.

Traditional, monolithic cybersecurity architectures are solely meant to secure the network’s perimeter, but by breaking it down into microsegments, network security engineers can detect and contain incursions far more quickly and effectively.

How is SASE Transforming Business?

Here’s how SASE is transforming modern businesses:

• Cloud services are seeing greater user traffic than traditional data centers.
• Currently, more work is done online.
• Cloud services host more workloads than data centers do.
• SaaS apps have surpassed locally hosted frameworks in terms of effectiveness
• The cloud now stores more sensitive information than the corporate intranet.

Benefits of SASE

The effectiveness of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications has surpassed locally hosted frameworks due to the increased reliance on online operations and the exponential growth of cloud-hosted workloads.

Increased flexibility, simplified operations, scalability,  and strengthened protection are essential for a successful digital company transition. In this digital era, contemporary businesses are responsible for providing their customers with excellent service regardless of where they happen to be. Due to these changes, SASE is not a luxury anymore; instead, it’s a requirement.

The transformative role of SASE in modern businesses:

• Improved Security: SASE’s security model enables consistent policy enforcement irrespective of user location. It extends security beyond the network perimeter, allowing for the secure access of applications and data, even for remote users. With ZTNA, every access request is authenticated and authorized, adding an extra layer of security.
• Cost Efficiency: With SASE, businesses can realize significant cost savings as there’s no need to maintain multiple security solutions or manage costly on-premise hardware. It’s based on a cloud-native architecture, which can be easily scaled up or down according to business needs, leading to more efficient use of resources.
• Reduced Complexity: By integrating multiple network and security services into a single service, SASE helps reduce the complexity of managing different tools and platforms. This also leads to simplified management and operations.
• Better User Experience: The convergence of networking and security into a single cloud-based service can provide a better user experience. SD-WAN enables intelligent routing of traffic, reducing latency and improving the performance of cloud applications.
• Adaptability: In an era of rapid digital transformation, SASE offers a flexible and adaptable framework that can quickly respond to changes in business needs, security threats, and regulatory requirements.

SASE is a comprehensive, agile, and cloud-centric approach to networking and security that is transforming the way businesses operate in the modern digital landscape. It is becoming a necessity due to the increasing adoption of cloud services, mobile workforces, and the need for improved network performance and security.

Bottom Line

The SASE architecture mainly uses cloud resources with no specific hardware requirements. It is unique among secure networking systems since it is both secure and direct, unlike point solutions.

Instead of relying on the security measures at your data center, traffic from your users’ devices is reviewed at a nearby point of presence (the enforcement point) before being forwarded onward. As a result, it is the preferable method for safeguarding cloud-based information and distributed workforces.