In the world of information technology, these past few years have accelerated the pace of digital transformation from a crawl to a sprint. In the face of this rapid acceleration, security has risen to the forefront of many digital transformation strategies. Gartner’s Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model – which combines security and networking solutions into a converged, cloud-native architecture – is positioned to help propel your digital transformation forward in a secure and sustainable way.
In this blog, we’ll dive into the specific ways that tailoring your digital transformation strategy to help your enterprise embark on its SASE journey can strengthen security while simplifying delivery and management. And if you’re ready to learn more about achieving SASE, check out our ebook Investing in a long-term security strategy: The 3 keys to achieving SASE.
Why Your Digital Transformation Strategy Should Factor In SASE
In previous posts, we’ve explored the way that the modern workplace has shifted to “branches of one,” a setup where each user is treated as a hub requiring their own secure access to the internet, applications, and data. For an IT team, this means that a digital transformation strategy will often include investing in cloud technologies that power collaboration and connectivity.
Increasingly, however, the risks created by the rapid adoption of new cloud technologies have prompted many C-Suite executives to consider security as a foundational part of any digital transformation strategy. This is where secure access service edge comes in. Not only does the SASE model seamlessly integrate security into your networking framework – making connectivity secure regardless of where employees work – but it also allows enterprises to streamline business practices by unifying security functionality into a single interface.
Improving Security for the Sake of Resiliency
A core requirement of any security solution is to, well, secure. The security solution(s) built into your digital transformation strategy must protect users from cyber threats anywhere, from the data center to the cloud and beyond. This helps to make an enterprise more resilient, even as a digital transformation drives the adoption of new technologies to improve collaboration or open new revenue streams.
In a SASE system, ironclad security is a seamless experience for users regardless of where they are. Thanks to its reliably high performance, cybersecurity becomes invisible. This makes a SASE model the new high-water mark for cybersecurity, since the right solution allows IT or SecOps teams to make security:
Stronger
The security components of a SASE solution bring together multiple layers of protection, allowing you to present a unified front against cyber threats. The richer array of protection can be deployed exactly how and where you want it.
What’s more, a multi-function solution gives you the flexibility to choose the specific security functionality in use at any given time. This allows you to tailor your digital transformation strategy to meet your security needs today, tomorrow, and two years from now. For example, you can get up and running with DNS-layer security quickly and plan on adding Secure Web Gateway (SWG) or Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) functionality further down the line.
Smoother
Conventional cybersecurity solutions require backhauling traffic to the data center or headquarters. This can create a choke point, slowing network speeds to a crawl and threatens to break down the uninterrupted flow of communications and data access that a dispersed, modern business requires.
The security components of a SASE solution are designed to be cloud native. This allows your team to bring cybersecurity directly to users, which makes for faster and more reliable performance. It also makes for happier users who don’t feel as though they’re consistently fighting against the company’s cybersecurity solutions just to get their jobs done.
Spread Out
Because a SASE solution is delivered from the cloud, your team can extend protection to wherever users work, from edge to edge – roaming, remote, and branch. This is why a SASE solution is a natural part of a digital transformation strategy. As organizations invest in technology that allows employees to work effectively in both fully remote and hybrid environments, any security solutions need to ensure a consistent level of protection for all users regardless of where they are.
What’s more, the security components of a SASE solution extend visibility along with protection. This allows your team to monitor internet activity everywhere, staying on top of cloud applications that users are utilizing and blocking apps or sites that may pose a risk.
SASE Helps Keep Security Simple
Enhancing protection is an important consideration for IT teams creating a digital transformation strategy. But streamlining the use of a cybersecurity stack matters too – it frees up the bandwidth of a security team, allowing them to spend less time sorting through redundant notifications and more time designing and executing strategies that allow for business expansion.
A key advantage of a SASE solution is its ability to simplify the way you provide protection. By converging multiple cybersecurity and networking functions into a single cloud-delivered solution, you can secure every user, device, and location – faster, easier, and at any scale. With SASE, virtually every security process is streamlined and allows you to do more with fewer resources.
When your digital transformation strategy aligns with a SASE model, your security team can:
- Instantly Deploy Everywhere – Manually installing individual cybersecurity solutions at every office, branch, and location on your network takes time and effort. The benefits of cloud-native, cloud-delivered solutions include the ability to introduce strategic cybersecurity functionality everywhere at once, from the cloud to thousands of users in a matter of minutes.
- Simplify Management – The cloud security components of a SASE solution can be integrated, orchestrated, maintained, monitored, and managed from one centralized hub. This means that your team can control policies and configurations across all users or generate reports that speak to every service, app, threat, and endpoint.
- Respond to Incidents Faster – Data, alerts, and threat intelligence get aggregated from across cybersecurity solutions and delivered to a single dashboard with SASE. This makes it easier to spot cyberattacks, efficiently investigate issues, and quickly implement the right solutions.
What’s more, SASE solutions are designed to easily grow and evolve. No digital transformation occurs overnight, and SASE allows your IT team to build out your security stack as needed without causing an additional headache. Working with a single vendor means that you won’t need to worry about integrating new solutions or juggling different overlapping contracts.
The Benefits of Starting Your SASE Security Journey With Cisco Umbrella
Are you ready to start executing your digital transformation strategy? Cisco Umbrella can help you build out your security stack on your SASE journey. Simple to deploy, manage, and scale, Cisco Umbrella arms your team with a complete suite of leading security solutions that integrates seamlessly with SD-WAN functionality provided by Cisco Meraki and Viptela. This gives your team the tools necessary for providing powerful protection to every user and device on your network, regardless of where they are.
Cisco Umbrella brings together the functionality of several different kinds of cybersecurity solutions, including:
- Secure web gateway (SWG)
- Cloud access security broker (CASB)
- DNS-layer security
- Cloud-delivered firewall
- Remote browser isolation (RBI)
- Data loss prevention (DLP)
This allows you to reduce the time, money, and resources required to introduce protection, integrate new services, monitor and manage policies, and investigate and remediate incidents. It’s a major step forward in the pursuit of simplicity and security.
If you want to learn more about Cisco’s unique approach to SASE, check out our ebook: Investing in a long-term security strategy: The 3 keys to achieving SASE. And if you’re ready to jump-start your digital transformation by investigating a next-gen security solution, schedule a free Cisco Umbrella demonstration.
