Connect everyone with one easy-to-use product that makes the Zero Trust policy come true: great idea, obviously. But in reality, matching two existing technologies is an unbelievably complicated process. It requires a lot of deep knowledge and time to make the ultimate product. A lot of companies took giant steps in order to live up to this new standard. The ones that specialized in roaming user connection developed additional products that took care of branch office connectivity too. SD-WAN developers tried to make their roaming connectivity fully SASE compliant. And vendors who offered both solutions tried to merge the two interfaces. But does it really make sense to combine interfaces for tools that only partially overlap in terms of features? For the security part: absolutely. For the connectivity part: not so much, as SDWAN and SSE/VPN can hardly be reconciled. Therefore the SASE concept, while looking perfectly logical at first glance, may not be as relevant as we want. It doesn’t help if vendors create products that comply with the definition, but are definitely not the magic bullet - yet.
But what if your organization can’t sit around and wait a few years until the perfect solution has materialized? Well, don’t worry about that too much. The ‘SASE-like’ solutions on the market today may not be perfect yet, but they’ll often do the trick. It all depends on what your organization needs. Do you need to connect a growing number of roaming users, or should you focus on connecting branch offices instead? If you say ‘both’: sure, it can be done, with as much security as you like, but not with the ultimate user-friendly interface that’s inherent in SASE.
Bottom line: don’t be confused with all the SASE solutions out there. But don’t pull your Zero Trust card either when you’re looking into them. With the correct analysis and guidance, you’ll find a solution that guarantees both happy employees and IT managers.