Where is the future of network security heading and how is SASE affecting it?

Network security is any activity designed to protect the usability and integrity of your network and data. Network security combines multiple layers of defenses at the edge and in the network. Each network security layer implements policies and controls. Authorized users gain access to network resources, but malicious actors are blocked from carrying out exploits and threats.

The future of network security will focus on preventing the current and future threats that the internet brings.

What is the most common future of network security problems or trends that threaten your IT infrastructure?

• Internet of Things (IoT)

Aside from BYOD policies, businesses are also allowing employees to bring their wearables like smartwatches, fitness trackers, and entertainment devices. This is to empower employees and to promote work-life balance.

The problem, however, is these IoT devices have a lot of vulnerabilities. They do not have the same security measures as laptops, computers, and even smartphones and tablets. When employees connect their IoT devices to the company network the can also serve as an open gateway for hackers to exploit.

•  Bring Your Own Device (BYOD):

To increase productivity, businesses started to implement BYOD or bring your own device policies. This allows employees to bring their own devices to the workplace. The premise is that even outside the workplace, it encourages employees to work even when they are away from the office.

The problem occurs, however, when the devices connect to the Internet outside the workplace. These networks do not have the same security measures and could infect the devices with viruses, malware, and ransomware among other things. That could affect the device’s performance and even breach local data.

• Secure access service edge, or SASE

SASE is the convergence of wide-area networking or WAN, SASE capabilities are delivered as a service based upon the identity of the entity, real-time context, enterprise security/compliance policies, and continuous assessment of risk/trust throughout the sessions. Identities of entities can be associated with people, groups of people (branch offices), devices, applications, services, IoT systems or edge computing locations.”

SASE plays a vital role in protecting your IT infrastructure security. Here are some of the benefits of SASE:

• Improved cloud security posture
  

  SASE offerings will provide centralized and cloud-based policy management with distributed enforcement points logically close to the entity. This means that any access session can be inspected by the same centralized policy regardless of the entity’s location and can identify sensitive data and malware. SASE will also provide an end-to-end encryption mechanism with integrated web application and API protection (WAAP) services. Strict access controls will be applied using the Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) model.

• Simplified management

  One of the main SASE benefits is that, unlike point solutions, cost and complexity do not grow at the same rate as the network. Case-in-point: managing SD-WAN, SWG, NGFW, and VPN appliances across multiple locations within an enterprise network requires significantly more IT labor than a single location. However, with SASE management complexity doesn’t grow in lockstep with the network because a single cloud-based management application can provide control of the entire service, and IT doesn’t need to worry about maintenance tasks like patching or hardware replacements
  
• Improved network performance
  

  In addition to the SD-WAN benefits and SASE worldwide latency-optimized provider networks, the integrated security service approach may boost the network performance as user sessions are inspected only once before security engines are operated in parallel with a scale-out approach. This will introduce lower network latency than traditional network security architectures such as security service chaining.

• Improved user experience (UX)
  

  SASE offerings will reduce the number of agents on user devices and edge network appliances at a branch. It will provide transparency and make it easier for users regardless of their location and the location where the data is accessed. Security policies will be applied to user sessions without any user interaction.