History taught us that whistleblowers can expose the darkest secrets and wrongdoing of global enterprises, governments and public services; even prime ministers and presidents. Whistleblowers usually have a deep sense of justice and responsibility that drives them to favor the good of the many over their own. Often, their contribution is really appreciated only in hindsight.
Enterprises often find themselves tethered to complex and inflexible network architectures that impede their journey towards business agility and operational efficiency. Secure Access Service Edge, or SASE, a term coined by Gartner in 2019, defines a newer framework that converges enterprise networking and security point solutions into a single, secure, cloud-native, and globally distributed solution that secures all edges.
My new favorite company took center stage in iconic New York Times Square today with a multi-story high 3D visualization of our revolutionary secure access service edge (SASE) platform. It’s positively mesmerizing, take a look: The move signals a seismic shift happening across enterprises, the need to have an IT infrastructure that can easily adapt to anything at any time, and the transformative power of Cato’s networking and security platform.
The nature of the modern digital business is constantly and rapidly evolving, requiring network and security architectures to move at the same speed. Moving at the speed of business demands a new architecture that is agile, flexible, highly scalable, and very secure to keep pace with dynamic business changes. In short, this requires SASE.
It’s been a long journey toward securing and optimizing the enterprise branch, from the days of rigid MPLS networks to the agile era of SD-WAN. Now comes the next stage of that journey: Secure access service edge (SASE), which, when architected correctly, converges the most important network and security capabilities into a single cloud-delivered service. Before we talk about how, though, let’s examine why SASE’s moment is now.
Modern enterprise complexity is challenging cybersecurity programs. With the widespread adoption of cloud services and remote work, and the broadening distribution of applications and employees away from traditional corporate locations, organizations require a more flexible and scalable approach to network security. SASE technology can help address these issues, making SASE adoption a goal for many organizations worldwide. But adoption paths can vary widely.