SASE? Turns out, we've been doing it all along.
Open Systems delivers an intelligent edge and cloud access platform as a service to solve the dynamic access needs of your digital business.
Network simplicity, security and performance
The transformation happening in today’s enterprises is driving the rapid adoption of a fundamentally different networking and security model. Secure access service edge (SASE) meets the expanded needs of digital businesses for dynamic access.
What exactly is SASE?
Gartner defines SASE as “an emerging offering combining comprehensive WAN capabilities with comprehensive network security functions (such as SWG, CASB, FWaaS and ZTNA) to support the dynamic, secure access needs of digital enterprises.” For us, this is nothing new. We’ve been delivering an intelligent edge and cloud access platform, as a service, to our happy customers for over a decade.
What pain points are driving SASE adoption?
Performance Issues
Today, more users, devices, applications, services, and data reside outside of an enterprise than inside. Increasingly, remote and mobile workforces rely on myriad devices – all needing access to data and applications and many looking to connect to enterprise networks from everywhere. This trend also puts sensitive data and core business applications outside the firewall – on everything from public clouds to mobile devices – where they can be easily lost or stolen.
Competing needs for usability & performance
Traditional hub-and-spoke network and security architectures were never designed for these types of dynamic, fluid, and distributed usage patterns. As a result, remote users often encounter performance issues due to network and service chain latencies. Developers may also have to wait days for IT to update firewall policies every time they bring up new apps in the cloud. This leaves teams under constant pressure to perform a delicate balancing act between providing security and business agility.
Lack of visibility
IT teams typically have little actionable visibility into what’s happening in their environments and are often forced to make potentially consequential decisions based on incomplete information. This means that they may implement security policies that are either too strict or too loose. And face challenges keeping those policies up to date.
How does SASE help?
SASE puts access to networking and security functions as close to the user as a cloud-based service. This approach relieves a number of problems, such as improving performance by eliminating the need to trombone network traffic through a gauntlet of network security devices in the data center miles away.
Specifically, SASE architecture offers a number of advantages:
• Tight integration of “comprehensive WAN” and “network security functions” to reduce the complexity and latency associated with loosely coupled point products
• Ubiquitous, well-peered cloud services (complemented by “thin branch” devices) greatly reduce end-to-end network latency
• Real-time, context-based policy capabilities help improve policy accuracy and efficacy
• Delivery of SASE as a service reduces operational overhead
Key benefits
Integrated network and security services, including SD-WAN, App Optimization, FW, SWG, CASB, and VPN; as well as Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) that are not part of SASE services as defined by Gartner today
Integrated services that can be delivered on-premises as well as in the major public clouds like Azure and AWS
Application and identity-aware, and integrates with cloud identity providers
World-class NOC and SOC services