What is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?

Modern IT networks must increasingly account for users and devices connecting from a dispersed hybrid environment. As a result, secure user access and endpoint security have become an essential area of concern when IT administration designs a network.

Secure access service edge (SASE) is a cybersecurity and networking framework that enables the integration of networking security functions and wide-area network (WAN) capabilities when architecting networks. IT administrators can use SASE to provide security functions for users and devices across their networks without increasing workloads to administer the networks.

In this article, we’ll explore how SASE benefits organizations with remote workers or those undergoing digital transformation through on-demand availability of software and components. These changes mean ever-evolving requirements for businesses to keep up.

Understanding SASE

SASE is a framework for designing and implementing networks that integrate security functions and WAN capabilities, ensuring organizations can consistently deliver security and user experience across diverse cloud environments. SASE gives organizations the scalability and flexibility they need to adapt to sophisticated threats in the cybersecurity landscape, especially as their IT setup evolves beyond the traditional.

Cloud and remote work are the norm in today’s workplace, forcing organizations to ensure secure remote access at scale. SASE architecture uses software-based networking and cloud security to deploy rapidly and globally.

As organizations adopt the cloud, managing multiple networks and security solutions across locations becomes complex. This complexity can lead to security vulnerabilities and the inconsistent application of security policy. 

Using the SASE framework, you can consolidate your networking functionality to ensure consistent patterns for networking and security across your organization. For more information about modern user authentication approaches, read about Zero Trust vs. SASE.

Core components of SASE

SD-WAN

The software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is a core component of the SASE framework. Within the SASE architecture, SD-WAN is the networking layer that efficiently and securely connects users, devices, and remote sites to services. Administrators can quickly implement routing optimizations through the SD-WAN interface to improve networking performance or deploy changes for security services.

Security functions

Secure web gateways (SWG) protect users and applications from web-based threats by enforcing policy compliance and blocking potential security threats from the web. The SWG monitors for concerns, such as malware and significant data transfers outside the network, before altering and blocking these actions on your organization's network.

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) is a security framework that operates on the principle of "never trust, always verify." Unlike traditional frameworks that assume everything inside an organization's network is trustworthy, ZTNA treats every access attempt as potentially risky. This way of working with security is ideal for implementing the SASE framework across distributed networks. CrowdStrike SWG works in harmony with ZTNA from Cloudflare.

Firewalls are a core network component, providing a secure point for ingress and egress traffic. Organizations can perform packet and content filtering within their network through this function. A firewall as a service (FWaaS) provides firewall functions on demand via the cloud. The scalability and flexibility of FWaaS align closely with SASE.

If you run applications in the cloud directly, a cloud access security broker (CASB) can provide further visibility into your application data. You can enforce security policies remotely for cloud services at runtime through the broker, ensuring all services remain secure after deployment.

How SASE works

The SASE framework delivers its networking and security functions through on-demand and deployable services. With a focus on cloud services, the framework allows organizations to deploy these services as close as possible to end users and devices, using cloud providers’ edge locations.

With SASE, distributed networking infrastructure requires resources to have remote communication capabilities through APIs and integrations. These management interfaces can then use a unified management layer to apply security policies consistently across all devices and locations.

Data flows within a SASE-architected network can quickly be inspected and routed efficiently across your distributed network. By controlling the data flow in your network, SASE ensures the secure and optimized deployment of services to meet the needs of new users, services, and connected devices.

Benefits of SASE

The SASE framework allows organizations to manage and implement security at scale. SASE uses unified security policies across networking components that may be dispersed across different devices or locations. Consistent enforcement means every network endpoint remains secure as organizations adjust users, locations, and devices according to their needs.

As a core component of the SASE framework, SD-WAN makes networking components easily manageable in a dispersed environment and optimizes networking traffic to meet requirements. This optimization reduces latency and improves application performance by placing networking components near consumers of commonly used security functions like firewall filtering and authentication.

Finally, the SASE framework's usage of SD-WAN provides a standard management layer for networking with centralized management of networking capabilities. The security function offers better control and easier network monitoring, a dramatic improvement over individual sites and their quirks. By treating networking like software, the SASE framework reduces complexity compared to traditional solutions for scaling cloud networks.

Key use cases for SASE

The SASE framework provides a scalable way to manage a remote workforce, including users and devices, ensuring services are accessed securely. SASE frameworks ensure consistent application of security policies regardless of connection location. The delivery of SASE allows for scalability to edge locations to serve your users with high performance and security.

Some organizations may have multiple locations with remote equipment and office users that need secure connectivity to other business systems and adequate monitoring for suspicious activity. The SASE framework and its usage of SD-WAN to define networking and security components ensures that even off-site locations and branch offices can have the same IT infrastructure and security policy enforcement as the rest of your network.

Organizations undergoing digital transformation are a key case for implementing the SASE framework. During this journey, organizations may find themselves with hybrid networks between on-prem and cloud while migrating resources. With the framework's software-defined networking components, organizations build modern and agile IT infrastructure that can evolve with the business and integrate new service providers as needed.

CrowdStrike secures your enterprise to the edge

The SASE framework emphasizes software-defined networking, integration between service-based networking components, and security functions to help organizations achieve uniform network service without sacrificing security.

The CrowdStrike platform offers a scalable implementation of critical services when implementing the SASE framework.

• Endpoint detection and response (EDR) ensures endpoint device security, providing visibility and protection against detected threats.

• The Falcon Zero Trust Assessment works with zero-trust policies and verifies users before granting access to services.

• Identity threat detection and response bolster your security against identity-based threats and anomalous activities.

• For organizations running cloud workloads, Falcon Cloud Security provides development teams with security integrated directly into development pipelines and environments.

Request a 15-day free trial of CrowdStrike to see how the SASE framework can be used in your organization.