Gartner predicts, Over the next five years, the market for secure access service edge (SASE) will grow at a CAGR of 42%, reaching almost $11 billion by 2024.

Organizations today invested on multiple point network and security products and services across their remote offices, corporate backbone network, data centers and public clouds, while the users and applications are outside their physical corporate perimeter. This includes software defined WAN (SD WAN), WAN accelerators, Content delivery networks (CDN), Next generation firewalls (NGFW), Secure web gateways (SWG), Cloud security access brokers (CASB), Data loss prevention (DLP), DNS security, Virtual private networks (VPN) and many other technology components. The operational management complexity to maintain the multi vendor product require skilled professionals, streamlined processes, well documented standard operating procedures and integrated cross functional synergies between IT Network and Security operations team. Vendor management becomes another area of focus to renew the license, resolve technical and functional use-cases, troubleshoot to fix product issues and performing vendor governance. User persona’s are from corporate workforce, 3rd party contractors, partners and customers who access the network from anywhere and via any network. The productivity of the user’s will be challenged due to network latency, increased bandwidth usage of VPN, BYOD security, Compliance adherence and with multiple security agents in end user computing devices causing performance issues.

SASE (Security access service edge) concept is to have all the functional components of network and security required for enterprise available on cloud based services that are globally accessible for the digital business. The evolution of security access service edge solutions over the recent years are depicted in below image.

Many vendors have started adopting SASE based service offerings that has combination of technologies such as SD WAN, CASB, Software defined perimeter (SDP), Secure web gateway, Data loss prevention, SSL inspection, Secure remote access, Zero trust network access – all in the cloud. This simplifies the operational management with centralized configuration of security policies that are locally enforced based on the regional compliance requirements. The visibility and control of security management has moved towards granular security access with Zero trust principles. The cyber attack surface has reduced with ZTNA that adopts contextual security identity management for users and applications to have access to systems that are permissible and make other systems invisible.

IT security leaders should evaluate use-cases to prefer SASE based solutions while they’re renewing any of their existing network and security technology stack or making new investment decisions.