Your journey to SASE

The demand for anywhere, anytime access has grown as the workforce has become more distributed and cloud traffic continues to soar. How can IT leverage a simpler, more scalable method to securely connect users to the applications they need? By bringing network and security functions closer to users and devices, at the edge—and moving to a cloud-based, as-a-service model called secure access service edge (SASE).

Remote work accelerated in 2020 and with it, SASE adoption.

Gartner gave a name to an architecture that’s been in motion for years, heightened by a sudden shift to remote work. While the principles of SASE were in place well before 2020, the pandemic brought SASE to the forefront as remote access to applications and ‘work from anywhere’ became a top organizational priority.

SASE marks a shift from the data center as the center of the universe to a more cloud-centric model. Organizations now need the ability to pivot on a dime to enable secure connectivity for in-office, work from home, or anywhere in between.

Simply put, SASE is another way to describe your journey to the cloud.

“SASE enables companies to operate during times of disruption and provides highly secure, high-performance access to any application, regardless of user location.”

Gartner’s Initial Secure Access Service Edge Forecast
Joe Skorupa, Nat Smith 2020
- Gartner

SASE is a journey many had already begun, one that Cisco has been on for years.

The first thing to know about SASE is that it’s not a product, it’s an architecture.

And because everyone starts from a different place, transitioning your network to the cloud is a journey. Some move fast while others take more of a stair-step approach.

SASE is a relatively new name but not new for us at Cisco. We’ve already built the foundation for SASE with our cloud-based, scalable architecture.

And we have the most complete, end-to-end SASE solution today.

Did you know?

Gartner defines SASE through five primary services, each of which Cisco delivers today.

SD-WAN
Cloud access security broker
Secure web gateway
Cloud-delivered firewall
Zero Trust network access

With our platform you can accelerate your journey to the cloud.

Cisco’s 3 Cs for SASE:

Connect users and things to the applications they need

Control secure access from your data center to the cloud

Converge networking and security functions in a more integrated fashion

And integrate networking and security in minutes.

Our SD-WAN and cloud-native security deliver complete protection in one unified offer.

Integrate SD-WAN with built-in, cloud-native security in one click and provide secure access wherever users and applications reside.

Cisco integrates Umbrella with every WAN edge device, making it easy for you to securely connect users at the home or branch office.

Cisco Secure Access by Duo ensures users are who they say they are, and devices are healthy before establishing the connection.

Figure 1: Cisco SASE architecture.
IaaS – infrastructure as a service • PaaS – platform as a service • SaaS – software as a service