Key Benefits and Best Practices of Zero Trust SASE

Organizations are striving to embrace modern digital business models. These models use advanced technologies to deliver unprecedented levels of engagement with customers, stakeholders, and employees. This shift (towards outcome-driven technology and digital transformation) allows businesses to provide globally available access to applications and services, ensuring a consistent and seamless experience regardless of where users connect or what devices they use. More broadly, this significant change is driven by the need for agility, efficiency, and the ability to quickly respond to market changes and customer demands.

Today, digital business models are enabling organizations to innovate and differentiate themselves in competitive markets.

For customers, this means access to services and products at any time and from anywhere, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
For stakeholders, digital transformation provides real-time insights into business performance, enabling better decision-making and strategic planning.
Employees benefit from increased flexibility and the ability to collaborate seamlessly across geographies, improving productivity and job satisfaction.

The widespread adoption of digital technologies, however, also brings significant challenges, particularly in the area of network security. As businesses become more reliant on distributed applications and services, the traditional notions of network security are no longer sufficient to protect sensitive data and ensure the integrity of business operations.

In this article, we make the clear and compelling case that: enterprises need to embrace Zero Trust SASE as the new standard in network security, leveraging its benefits and best practices to secure their digital future.

But first, we should ask: what are the challenges of traditional network security?

The Challenges of Traditional Network Security in a Distributed Environment

Traditional network security models were designed for a time when applications and users were primarily located within the confines of a corporate network. Security measures focused on perimeter defense, using firewalls and other security appliances to protect the network from external threats. This approach worked well when all users, devices, and applications were within a defined boundary.

However, the rise of cloud computing, mobile devices, and remote work has rendered traditional network security models obsolete. In a distributed environment, users and applications are no longer confined to a single location. Employees access corporate resources from various locations, using different devices, and often connecting through unsecured networks. Applications are hosted in multiple cloud environments, further complicating the security landscape.

This distributed nature of modern IT environments creates numerous security challenges. Traditional perimeter-based defenses are ineffective against threats that originate from within the network. Additionally, managing and securing multiple access points becomes increasingly complex, leading to potential vulnerabilities. As a result, organizations must rethink their approach to network security to address these challenges effectively.

The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Model

To address the limitations of traditional network security models, Gartner introduced the concept of Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). SASE is a revolutionary model that converges network and security functions into a unified, cloud-delivered service. It aims to provide secure and optimized access to applications and services, regardless of the user’s location or device.

The SASE model combines several key components, including secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security brokers (CASB), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and zero trust network access (ZTNA). By integrating these functions into a single platform, SASE delivers comprehensive security and networking capabilities that are scalable, flexible, and easier to manage.

One of the core principles of SASE is the concept of zero trust, which assumes that no user or device, whether inside or outside the network, should be trusted by default. Instead, all access requests must be authenticated, authorized, and continuously verified based on contextual information. This approach significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches, providing a higher level of security for distributed environments.

Zero Trust SASE

Zero Trust SASE is the next evolution in network security, combining the principles of zero trust with the comprehensive capabilities of the SASE model. It offers a holistic approach to securing modern digital enterprises by ensuring that security is enforced at every access point, regardless of where users and applications are located.

Zero Trust SASE aims to deliver a seamless and secure user experience by bringing security and policy enforcement closer to the user. This eliminates unnecessary backhaul and reduces latency, ensuring that users can access applications and services efficiently. Additionally, Zero Trust SASE provides inline inspection of encrypted traffic at scale, offering robust threat protection and data loss prevention.

What is Zero Trust SASE?

Zero Trust SASE is a security framework that integrates zero trust principles with the SASE model to provide a comprehensive, cloud-delivered security solution. The core idea behind Zero Trust SASE is to eliminate implicit trust and ensure that all access requests are continuously authenticated, authorized, and verified.

The key principles of Zero Trust SASE include:

Verify Every Access Request: Every access request, regardless of the user’s location or device, must be authenticated and authorized based on contextual information. This includes verifying the user’s identity, device health, and other factors before granting access.
Least Privilege Access: Users are granted the minimum level of access necessary to perform their tasks. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access and limits the potential impact of a security breach.
Continuous Monitoring and Verification: Access is continuously monitored and re-evaluated based on changes in context, such as user behavior, location, and device state. This ensures that security policies are dynamically enforced.
Micro-Segmentation: The network is segmented into smaller, isolated segments to prevent lateral movement of threats. This limits the spread of attacks and protects sensitive data.
Comprehensive Security Coverage: Zero Trust SASE integrates multiple security functions, including SWG, CASB, FWaaS, and ZTNA, into a single, unified platform. This provides comprehensive protection against a wide range of threats.

Importance of Zero Trust in the Context of SASE

The integration of zero trust principles within the SASE framework is crucial for addressing the security challenges of modern digital environments. Traditional network security models are based on the assumption that users and devices within the corporate network can be trusted. However, this assumption is no longer valid in a distributed environment where users access resources from various locations and devices.

Zero trust eliminates implicit trust by requiring continuous verification of all access requests. This approach ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive resources, regardless of their location or device. By integrating zero trust with SASE, organizations can enforce security policies consistently across all access points, providing a higher level of security for distributed environments.

Moreover, Zero Trust SASE enhances the user experience by bringing security and policy enforcement closer to the user. This reduces latency and improves performance, ensuring that users can access applications and services efficiently. Additionally, the integration of multiple security functions into a single platform simplifies management and reduces IT complexity, making it easier for organizations to maintain a robust security posture.

In other words, Zero Trust SASE represents the future of network security, offering a comprehensive and scalable solution for securing modern digital enterprises. By integrating zero trust principles with the SASE model, organizations can achieve a higher level of security, enhance the user experience, and reduce operational costs and complexity. As digital transformation continues to reshape the business landscape, adopting Zero Trust SASE will continue to be essential for maintaining a robust and resilient security posture.

Key Benefits of Zero Trust SASE

1. Enhanced User Experience

As companies bring more users, applications, and devices online, user experience becomes more important. Zero Trust SASE improves user experience by bringing security and policy enforcement closer to the user, eliminating unnecessary backhaul, and ensuring consistent access to applications and services.

Proximity of Security and Policy to the User

One of the core benefits of Zero Trust SASE is the proximity of security and policy enforcement to the user. Traditional network security models often route traffic through centralized data centers for inspection and policy enforcement, leading to increased latency and degraded user experience. With Zero Trust SASE, security and policy enforcement are distributed across a global network of cloud-based nodes. This means that user traffic is inspected and policies are applied as close to the user as possible, reducing latency and improving performance.

For example, a user in Asia accessing a corporate application hosted in the United States would traditionally have their traffic routed through a central data center in the United States for inspection, causing significant latency. With Zero Trust SASE, the user’s traffic can be inspected at a local node in Asia, reducing latency and providing a faster, more responsive experience.

Elimination of Unnecessary Backhaul

Backhaul refers to the practice of routing user traffic through centralized data centers for inspection and policy enforcement. This approach can lead to significant inefficiencies and degraded user experience, particularly for remote and mobile users. Zero Trust SASE eliminates unnecessary backhaul by performing security inspections and policy enforcement at the edge of the network, close to the user.

By eliminating backhaul, Zero Trust SASE reduces the distance that traffic needs to travel, leading to lower latency and improved performance. This is particularly important for remote and mobile users who may be connecting from various locations around the world. By ensuring that traffic is inspected and policies are enforced at the nearest edge node, Zero Trust SASE provides a more efficient and responsive user experience.

Consistent Access to Applications and Services

Consistency is crucial for maintaining a positive user experience. Zero Trust SASE ensures consistent access to applications and services regardless of the user’s location or device. By leveraging a globally distributed network of cloud-based nodes, Zero Trust SASE provides reliable and consistent connectivity, ensuring that users can access the resources they need without interruption.

This consistency is particularly important for organizations with a global presence or a remote workforce. Employees need to access corporate resources from various locations and devices, and any disruption in access can significantly impact productivity. Zero Trust SASE ensures that users have consistent and reliable access to applications and services, improving productivity and user satisfaction.

2. Reduced Risk

One of the primary objectives of Zero Trust SASE is to reduce the risk of cyber threats and data breaches. By leveraging advanced security capabilities such as inline inspection of encrypted traffic, effective threat protection, data loss prevention, and AI-powered adaptive risk engines, Zero Trust SASE provides robust security for modern digital enterprises.

Inline Inspection of Encrypted Traffic at Scale

In today’s digital environment, the majority of network traffic is encrypted. While encryption is essential for protecting data in transit, it also poses a challenge for traditional security solutions, which may struggle to inspect encrypted traffic effectively. Zero Trust SASE addresses this challenge by providing inline inspection of encrypted traffic at scale.

By decrypting and inspecting encrypted traffic in real-time, Zero Trust SASE can identify and mitigate threats that may be hidden within encrypted data streams. This capability is crucial for detecting and preventing advanced threats such as malware, ransomware, and data exfiltration attempts. By providing comprehensive visibility into encrypted traffic, Zero Trust SASE ensures that no threats go undetected.

Effective Threat Protection and Data Loss Prevention

Zero Trust SASE leverages advanced threat protection and data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities to safeguard sensitive data and prevent cyber threats. These capabilities include signature-based detection, behavior-based analysis, machine learning, and threat intelligence feeds.

Threat protection capabilities enable Zero Trust SASE to identify and block known and unknown threats in real-time. By continuously monitoring network traffic and analyzing patterns of behavior, Zero Trust SASE can detect and respond to malicious activities before they can cause harm. Data loss prevention capabilities ensure that sensitive data is protected from unauthorized access and exfiltration. By applying granular policies based on data classification and context, Zero Trust SASE prevents sensitive information from leaving the organization.

AI-Powered Adaptive Risk Engine

An AI-powered adaptive risk engine is a critical component of Zero Trust SASE. This engine continuously analyzes a wide range of contextual factors, such as user behavior, device health, location, and access patterns, to assess the risk associated with each access request.

The adaptive risk engine uses machine learning algorithms to identify anomalies and potential threats in real-time. By continuously learning from new data and adapting to changing conditions, the risk engine can provide dynamic and context-aware security decisions. This capability ensures that access requests are only granted if they meet the organization’s security policies and risk thresholds, reducing the likelihood of unauthorized access and data breaches.

3. Cost and Complexity Reduction

Implementing and maintaining traditional network security solutions can be costly and complex. Zero Trust SASE simplifies IT services, provides automated cloud-delivered security, and offers scalability and ease of deployment and management, resulting in significant cost and complexity reduction.

Simplification of IT Services

Zero Trust SASE consolidates multiple security functions into a single, unified platform, simplifying IT services and reducing the need for disparate security solutions. This consolidation includes secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security brokers (CASB), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and zero trust network access (ZTNA).

By providing a comprehensive set of security capabilities within a single platform, Zero Trust SASE eliminates the need for organizations to deploy and manage multiple security appliances and software solutions. This simplification reduces the administrative burden on IT teams, allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives. Additionally, it ensures consistent security policies and enforcement across the entire network, improving overall security posture.

Automated, Cloud-Delivered Service

Zero Trust SASE is delivered as a cloud-based service, providing automated and streamlined security operations. The cloud-delivered nature of Zero Trust SASE allows for rapid deployment and scaling, without the need for extensive on-premises infrastructure.

The automation capabilities of Zero Trust SASE enable organizations to implement and enforce security policies with minimal manual intervention. This includes automated threat detection and response, policy updates, and compliance reporting. By automating routine security tasks, Zero Trust SASE reduces the risk of human error and ensures that security policies are consistently applied across the network.

Scalability and Ease of Deployment and Management

Scalability is a critical factor for modern digital enterprises, particularly as they grow and expand their operations. Zero Trust SASE provides a highly scalable security solution that can adapt to the changing needs of the organization.

The cloud-native architecture of Zero Trust SASE allows organizations to scale their security infrastructure on demand, without the need for additional hardware or complex configurations. This scalability ensures that security capabilities can keep pace with the organization’s growth and evolving threat landscape.

Additionally, Zero Trust SASE offers ease of deployment and management. The centralized management console provides a single pane of glass for configuring and monitoring security policies, simplifying the management of security operations. This ease of deployment and management reduces the time and resources required to implement and maintain a robust security posture.

4. Optimal Performance and Reliability

Zero Trust SASE is designed to provide optimal performance and reliability for users, workloads, and business partners. By leveraging a globally distributed platform and peering with hundreds of partners in major internet exchanges, Zero Trust SASE ensures high availability and performance.

Global Distribution of the Platform

The global distribution of the Zero Trust SASE platform ensures that security and policy enforcement are available at locations close to users, applications, and data. This distributed architecture reduces latency and ensures that users can access resources quickly and efficiently.

The distributed nature of Zero Trust SASE also provides redundancy and resilience. In the event of a failure at one node, traffic can be rerouted to other nodes in the network, ensuring continuous availability and minimizing downtime. This high availability is critical for maintaining business continuity and ensuring that users have uninterrupted access to applications and services.

Peering with Hundreds of Partners in Major Internet Exchanges

Zero Trust SASE enhances performance and reliability by peering with hundreds of partners in major internet exchanges around the world. These peering relationships enable Zero Trust SASE to optimize traffic routing and reduce latency, ensuring a fast and responsive user experience.

By peering with major cloud service providers, content delivery networks (CDNs), and internet service providers (ISPs), Zero Trust SASE can provide direct and efficient paths for user traffic. This optimization is particularly important for applications that require low latency and high performance, such as video conferencing, online collaboration tools, and real-time data analytics.

Improved User, Workload, and Business Partner Experience

The performance and reliability benefits of Zero Trust SASE extend to users, workloads, and business partners. By ensuring fast and reliable access to applications and services, Zero Trust SASE enhances the overall user experience and improves productivity.

For workloads hosted in the cloud or across multiple data centers, Zero Trust SASE provides consistent and optimized connectivity, ensuring that applications perform reliably and efficiently. This is particularly important for business-critical applications that require high availability and performance.

Business partners also benefit from the enhanced performance and reliability provided by Zero Trust SASE. By ensuring secure and optimized access to shared resources and collaboration tools, Zero Trust SASE enables seamless and efficient business operations, strengthening partnerships and improving overall business outcomes.

5. Zero Trust Networking

Zero Trust SASE redefines networking by providing secure connections for users, sites, and clouds without the need for routed overlays or VPNs. It ensures authenticated access to applications without exposing the network and eliminates the attack surface by hiding source identities.

Secure Connections for Users, Sites, and Clouds Without Routed Overlays or VPNs

Traditional networking models often rely on routed overlays or virtual private networks (VPNs) to connect users and sites. While effective to some extent, these approaches can introduce complexity, latency, and potential security vulnerabilities. Zero Trust SASE eliminates the need for routed overlays and VPNs by providing secure connections through a cloud-native architecture.

By leveraging a globally distributed network of cloud-based nodes, Zero Trust SASE establishes secure connections between users, sites, and clouds without the need for complex routing configurations or VPN tunnels. This simplifies network architecture, reduces latency, and enhances security by ensuring that traffic is always inspected and protected, regardless of its source or destination.

Authenticated Access to Applications Without Network Exposure

Zero Trust SASE ensures that access to applications is authenticated without exposing the underlying network. Traditional network security models often rely on perimeter-based defenses, which can leave the internal network vulnerable to lateral movement and attacks if an attacker breaches the perimeter.

With Zero Trust SASE, access to applications is granted based on user identity, device health, and contextual factors, without exposing the internal network. This approach minimizes the risk of unauthorized access and lateral movement, ensuring that applications are protected even if an attacker gains access to the network.

By requiring authentication for every access request and continuously monitoring for anomalies, Zero Trust SASE ensures that only authorized users and devices can access applications, reducing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access.

Zero Attack Surface by Hiding Source Identities

A fundamental principle of Zero Trust is to minimize the attack surface by obfuscating (or hiding) source identities and ensuring that applications and services are not directly exposed to the internet. Zero Trust SASE achieves this by using techniques such as identity-based access control, micro-segmentation, and dynamic policy enforcement.

By hiding source identities, Zero Trust SASE makes it difficult for attackers to identify and target specific users or devices. This approach reduces the risk of targeted attacks, such as phishing and spear-phishing, and limits the potential impact of a security breach.

Additionally, micro-segmentation ensures that network traffic is segmented based on identity and context, preventing unauthorized lateral movement within the network. This segmentation further reduces the attack surface and limits the potential damage caused by a compromised user or device.

To recap, Zero Trust SASE represents a paradigm shift in network security, providing a comprehensive and integrated solution that enhances user experience, reduces risk, simplifies IT services, and ensures optimal performance and reliability. By bringing security and policy enforcement closer to the user, eliminating unnecessary backhaul, and ensuring consistent access to applications and services, Zero Trust SASE delivers a superior user experience.

The simplification of IT services, automated cloud-delivered security, and scalability of Zero Trust SASE reduce cost and complexity, making it an attractive solution for modern digital enterprises. The global distribution of the Zero Trust SASE platform, peering with major partners, and the elimination of routed overlays and VPNs ensure optimal performance and reliability for users, workloads, and business partners. Additionally, the principles of Zero Trust networking, including secure connections, authenticated access, and a zero attack surface, redefine network security for the digital age.

By adopting Zero Trust SASE, organizations can achieve a higher level of security, efficiency, and user satisfaction across their complex security networks.

Best Practices for Implementing Zero Trust SASE

Implementing Zero Trust Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) effectively requires a strategic approach and adherence to best practices. These practices ensure that the implementation not only meets the security requirements of the organization but also enhances the user experience and operational efficiency. Let’s outline the best practices for adopting Zero Trust SASE, focusing on adopting a cloud-first architecture, ensuring full inline SSL inspection at scale, optimizing application peering and traffic routing, implementing Zero Trust SD-WAN, and maintaining a zero attack surface.

1. Adopting a Cloud-First Architecture

A cloud-first architecture is foundational for Zero Trust SASE, as it leverages the scalability, flexibility, and global reach of cloud platforms. Adopting a cloud-first approach involves accelerating cloud adoption, removing network and security friction, and ensuring a frictionless and transparent user experience.

Accelerating Cloud Adoption

To fully realize the benefits of Zero Trust SASE, organizations should prioritize the migration of their applications, data, and services to the cloud. This involves:

Assessing Cloud Readiness: Evaluate existing applications and infrastructure to determine their suitability for cloud migration. Identify any dependencies or constraints that may impact the migration process.
Strategic Planning: Develop a comprehensive cloud adoption strategy that includes a roadmap for migrating applications and services to the cloud. Prioritize high-impact applications and services that will benefit most from the cloud’s scalability and flexibility.
Cloud-Native Development: Encourage the development of new applications and services using cloud-native principles and architectures. This ensures that they are optimized for cloud environments and can fully leverage cloud capabilities.
Training and Enablement: Provide training and resources to IT and development teams to ensure they have the skills and knowledge needed to manage and operate cloud-based applications and services effectively.

Removing Network and Security Friction

To facilitate a smooth transition to a cloud-first architecture, it’s essential to remove network and security friction that can impede cloud adoption:

Simplifying Network Architecture: Streamline network architecture by eliminating unnecessary complexity and reducing reliance on traditional on-premises network infrastructure. This includes transitioning from MPLS to SD-WAN for more flexible and efficient connectivity.
Integrating Security into the Cloud: Embed security into the cloud architecture by adopting cloud-native security solutions. These solutions should provide comprehensive protection across all cloud environments and seamlessly integrate with existing security frameworks.
Automating Security Policies: Leverage automation to enforce security policies consistently across the cloud environment. Automated policy enforcement reduces the risk of human error and ensures that security policies are applied uniformly.

Ensuring a Frictionless and Transparent User Experience

A successful cloud-first architecture should provide a seamless and transparent user experience:

Optimizing Performance: Use cloud-native optimization techniques to ensure that applications and services perform efficiently in the cloud. This includes optimizing data transfer, reducing latency, and ensuring high availability.
User-Centric Design: Design cloud-based applications and services with the end-user experience in mind. Ensure that they are intuitive, easy to use, and provide a consistent experience across all devices and locations.
Monitoring and Feedback: Continuously monitor user experience and gather feedback to identify and address any issues or areas for improvement. Use this feedback to make iterative improvements to the cloud architecture.

2. Ensuring Full Inline SSL Inspection at Scale

The increasing use of encrypted traffic necessitates comprehensive SSL inspection to maintain security. Ensuring full inline SSL inspection at scale is crucial for effective threat detection and data protection.

Importance of Inspecting Encrypted Traffic

Inspecting encrypted traffic is vital for several reasons:

Visibility: Encrypted traffic can conceal malicious activities, making it difficult to detect threats. SSL inspection provides visibility into encrypted traffic, allowing security solutions to identify and mitigate threats effectively.
Compliance: Many regulatory frameworks and compliance standards require the inspection of encrypted traffic to ensure data protection and prevent data breaches. SSL inspection helps organizations meet these requirements.
Data Protection: SSL inspection ensures that sensitive data is not exfiltrated through encrypted channels. It allows security solutions to detect and block data exfiltration attempts.

AI-Powered Proxy-Based Architecture for Scalability

To perform SSL inspection at scale, organizations should adopt an AI-powered proxy-based architecture:

Scalable Infrastructure: Deploy a scalable proxy-based infrastructure that can handle the decryption, inspection, and re-encryption of large volumes of encrypted traffic without impacting performance.
AI-Driven Analysis: Use AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze decrypted traffic and identify potential threats. AI-driven analysis enhances threat detection accuracy and reduces false positives.
Performance Optimization: Optimize the performance of SSL inspection by leveraging hardware acceleration and load balancing techniques. Ensure that the inspection process does not introduce significant latency or degrade user experience.

3. Optimizing Application Peering and Traffic Routing

Effective application peering and traffic routing are critical for ensuring optimal performance and user experience. This involves global peering with leading application and service providers and enhancing user experience through optimized routing.

Global Peering with Leading Application and Service Providers

To optimize traffic routing and performance, organizations should establish global peering relationships with leading application and service providers:

Direct Peering: Establish direct peering connections with major cloud service providers, content delivery networks (CDNs), and internet service providers (ISPs). Direct peering reduces the number of hops and minimizes latency.
Distributed Network: Leverage a globally distributed network of edge nodes to ensure that user traffic is routed efficiently and reaches its destination quickly. This distribution enhances performance and reliability.
Performance Monitoring: Continuously monitor network performance and traffic patterns to identify and address any bottlenecks or issues. Use performance data to optimize peering arrangements and routing policies.

Enhancing User Experience Through Optimized Routing

Optimized traffic routing is essential for providing a high-quality user experience:

Dynamic Routing: Implement dynamic routing protocols that can adapt to changing network conditions and optimize traffic paths in real-time. This ensures that traffic is always routed through the most efficient path.
Latency Reduction: Focus on reducing latency by minimizing the distance that traffic needs to travel and avoiding congested network paths. Use techniques such as local breakout to direct traffic to the nearest exit point.
Redundancy and Failover: Ensure redundancy and failover capabilities to maintain high availability and reliability. Implement multiple peering connections and redundant paths to handle traffic in case of network failures.

4. Implementing Zero Trust SD-WAN

Zero Trust SD-WAN plays a crucial role in securely connecting branches, factories, and data centers while providing access only to authorized applications and avoiding implicit trust and routed overlays.

Securely Connecting Branches, Factories, and Data Centers

Zero Trust SD-WAN ensures secure and efficient connectivity between geographically dispersed locations:

Encryption: Use strong encryption protocols to secure data in transit between branches, factories, and data centers. This prevents unauthorized access and ensures data integrity.
Segmentation: Implement network segmentation to isolate different segments of the network and prevent lateral movement of threats. This enhances security and limits the impact of potential breaches.
Policy Enforcement: Enforce consistent security policies across all locations to ensure that security controls are applied uniformly. Use centralized management to simplify policy configuration and enforcement.

Providing Access Only to Authorized Applications

Zero Trust SD-WAN ensures that users and devices can only access authorized applications and resources:

Identity-Based Access: Use identity-based access controls to grant access based on user and device identities. This ensures that only authenticated and authorized users can access applications.
Contextual Policies: Implement contextual access policies that take into account factors such as user location, device health, and time of access. This provides an additional layer of security and reduces the risk of unauthorized access.
Micro-Segmentation: Use micro-segmentation to control access at a granular level. This allows for precise control over which users and devices can access specific applications and resources.

Avoiding Implicit Trust and Routed Overlays

Zero Trust SD-WAN eliminates implicit trust and avoids the use of routed overlays:

Zero Trust Principles: Adopt Zero Trust principles to ensure that no user or device is trusted by default. Continuously verify the identity and security posture of users and devices before granting access.
Direct Connectivity: Use direct connectivity methods to establish secure connections between locations without relying on routed overlays. This reduces complexity and enhances security.
Continuous Monitoring: Continuously monitor network traffic and user behavior to detect and respond to anomalies. Use real-time analytics to identify and mitigate potential threats.

5. Maintaining a Zero Attack Surface

Maintaining a zero attack surface is essential for minimizing the risk of cyber threats. This involves hiding source identities and preventing the exposure of the corporate network to the internet.

Hiding Source Identities

Hiding source identities is a key strategy for reducing the attack surface:

Identity Obfuscation: Use techniques such as network address translation (NAT) and proxy servers to obfuscate source identities. This makes it difficult for attackers to identify and target specific users or devices.
Access Control: Implement strict access controls to ensure that only authorized users and devices can access sensitive resources. Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) to enhance security.
Anonymization: Anonymize user and device information where possible to protect privacy and reduce the risk of targeted attacks.

Preventing Exposure of the Corporate Network to the Internet

Preventing the exposure of the corporate network to the internet is crucial for maintaining a zero attack surface:

Firewall Protection: Utilize robust firewall solutions to block unauthorized inbound and outbound traffic. Establishing granular firewall policies allows for precise control over access to specific applications and resources, minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
Private Network Access: Ensure secure private network access for remote users and devices by deploying Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or zero trust network access (ZTNA) solutions. These technologies authenticate users and encrypt data, enabling secure access to corporate resources without exposing the network to the internet.
Network Segmentation: Implement network segmentation to divide the network into separate segments, isolating different parts of the network from each other. This limits the lateral movement of threats within the network, reducing the impact of potential breaches and enhancing overall security.

Key Takeaways

Zero Trust Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) represents a truly innovative approach to network security and access management, offering a wide array of benefits and best practices for modern enterprises.

By enhancing user experience through the proximity of security and policy, eliminating unnecessary backhaul, and providing consistent access to applications and services, Zero Trust SASE enables organizations to operate more efficiently and securely in today’s distributed environment. The reduced risk, achieved through inline inspection of encrypted traffic at scale, effective threat protection, and data loss prevention, further solidifies its appeal.

Cost and complexity reduction are key advantages — as Zero Trust SASE simplifies IT services, offers an automated, cloud-delivered service, and ensures scalability and ease of deployment and management. Optimal performance and reliability are ensured through the global distribution of the platform, peering with major internet exchanges, and an improved user, workload, and business partner experience.

The adoption of Zero Trust SASE aligns with a cloud-first architecture, accelerating cloud adoption, removing network and security friction, and ensuring a frictionless and transparent user experience. Full inline SSL inspection at scale is critical for inspecting encrypted traffic, while optimizing application peering and traffic routing enhances the user experience.

Implementing Zero Trust SD-WAN securely connects branches, factories, and data centers, providing access only to authorized applications and avoiding implicit trust and routed overlays. Maintaining a zero attack surface by hiding source identities and preventing exposure of the corporate network to the internet is essential for robust security.

In summary, Zero Trust SASE offers a transformative potential for modern enterprises, providing a comprehensive solution to the complex challenges of network security and access management. Its adoption is not just a technological upgrade but a strategic move towards enhancing security and efficiency in the digital age.

It’s time for enterprises to embrace Zero Trust SASE as the new standard in network security, leveraging its benefits and best practices to secure their digital future.