Part 3: 3 Advantages SASE Brings to your Multicloud Access Strategy

Removing Complexity in an Evolving Multicloud Environment 

With the need to balance security, privacy, and productivity in an environment made up of multiple cloud-based apps and services, it may be time to consider a SASE architecture.

If you’re reading this article, it’s likely because you have a material portion of your workforce needing to access the corporate environment remotely. On average, nearly 70% of employees are working remotely (or have done so at some point) during the pandemic, making the need to connect them to the internal and cloud-based resources they need imperative.

With businesses today looking beyond the simple need for connectivity, the answer needs to have some semblance of improving access, user performance, and security. Most businesses (93%) connect the remote parts of their workforce to the corporate environment via a virtual private network (VPN).  But the answer to a businesses’ need to reach those desired levels of accessibility and performance while improving their cybersecurity stance isn’t found in a simple connectivity technology that is decades old. 

In this third blog in a 5-part series on removing complexity in an evolving multicloud environment, we’re going to take a look at why you may want to ditch legacy connectivity methods – such as a VPN – in favour of modern connectivity architectures, such as a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE).

SASE pushes your security requirements to the edge of your network, effectively creating a bubble with all of your sites, home workers and cloud platforms inside and secured from the edge. This removes the requirement for VPN’s and the traditional central breakout.

1. The Connection is Actually Secure

VPNs do leverage encryption to secure the communications across them, but they should be seen as a privacy solution and not a security solution. The reason? The don’t improve the security of your environment; only the communications channel itself. A threat actor can take advantage of an established VPN connection – all without the business knowing. Conversely, SASE employs layers of security that scrutinise the connect request, the user making the request, the device being used, the resource to be accessed, and in some cases, the ongoing activity – all to ensure that when the connection is made, it’s truly the sanctioned employee that is making the request and utilising the access.

2. User Performance is Improved

Ensuring the security of your network is of utmost importance. But all those security checks can add to latency and result in slow performance. SASE helps to optimise the performance of your remote users by carrying out all security checks and policy enforcement in one motion, by allowing remote users to connect directly and securely to the cloud based resource it reduces the number of hops required and by extension reducing latency and increasing user experience. Also, by enabling users to connect directly to resource in the cloud there’s less demand on the central internet breakout required with a traditional VPN.

3. The Business is Enabled

Unlike VPN, SASE actually helps the business achieve its goals around security and scalability. SASE enforces the same policy-based secure access, regardless of where users, devices, applications, workloads, or data reside. And using a cloud-delivered approach, SASE helps the business scale its cloud and digital transformation objectives without the concern that the SASE solution itself adds to the complexity of your multicloud environment while simplifying the access to a growing number of cloud-based workloads, applications, and resources.

Gaining the Cloud Advantage with SASE

The legacy method of using a VPN to connect remote users to a complex mix of internal and cloud-based resources no longer meets the changing needs of an evolving business. What’s needed is an architecture that enhances the desired security to keep the overall environment safe from inappropriate access, while simultaneously increasing the accessibility to it by a remote workforce. 

Click here to learn more about Multicloud Connectivity.