You’ve been working from home for a few years now, enjoying the flexibility and comfort it offers. But imagine this: your manager announces that the company is shifting back to a pre-COVID working style, meaning you’ll need to return to the office. Who would be happy about this change? Surprisingly, among the few colleagues who might welcome the idea, the security team stands out.
Why? Because when everyone is working from the office, the threat landscape is much more contained and manageable. However, as the workforce becomes increasingly distributed, with employees logging in from various locations and devices, securing the organization becomes a far more complex challenge.
THE SHIFT TO REMOTE WORK
Home office, or working from home, is not a new phenomenon. Even before the pandemic, companies allowed employees to work outside the company premises occasionally. Some personnel chose to continue their tasks from home for various reasons (we won’t judge their work-life balance). Security teams could handle this scenario for several reasons.
Firstly, the extent to which teams used home office was not that high, making it manageable. Measures like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) were sufficient to ensure that remote connections remained secure. Employees would connect to the company network through VPNs, creating a secure tunnel for their data and maintaining the integrity of the corporate network.
Secondly, it was considered an acceptable risk. The limited time workers spent vulnerable to attacks was manageable. Security teams assessed that the likelihood of a significant breach during these sporadic remote working periods was low. With most employees working from secure office environments, the occasional remote connection posed a relatively low threat.
However, the landscape has drastically changed. The pandemic accelerated the shift towards remote and hybrid working models, making it a permanent fixture in many organizations. Suddenly, a significant portion of the workforce was outside the protective bubble of the corporate network. The traditional security measures which were once sufficient started to show their limitations. According to recent statistics, one in five workers are now working remotely in the US, a figure that has profound implications for work culture, productivity, and of course cybersecurity. This shift is challenging pre-existing norms and opening doors to new and context-aware security strategies.
Looking ahead, the future of remote work seems promising. According to Upwork, by 2025, an estimated 32.6 million Americans will be working remotely, which equates to about 22% of the workforce. This projection suggests a continuous, yet gradual, shift towards remote work arrangements.
THE RISE OF CLOUD COMPUTING
As the increasing trend of remote work presents a significant challenge to conventional firewall solutions, another trend has gone hand in hand with remote working: the rise of cloud computing. With cloud computing, companies have started enjoying the agility and scalability it brings. Traditional firewall appliances, with their limited capacity and lengthy deployment processes, struggle to keep pace with these advancements. Not only has the workforce become decentralized, but so has the data, spreading across various cloud environments globally. Additionally, companies now manage hundreds of networks spread across the world, further complicating security management. Each employee’s home has effectively turned into a company branch, requiring appropriate security measures to ensure the integrity and security of corporate data. This decentralization of both workforce and data underscores the need for a robust and well-functioning Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution to protect these distributed assets effectively. As we delve deeper, we will see why conventional SASE solutions often fail to meet these critical needs.
Security vendors recognized the need to address this completely new threat landscape environment. They tried to tackle the emerging problems with the same old solutions. As the saying goes, extraordinary times need extraordinary measures. However, many security companies merely attempted to solve the problem by creating better, faster, and stronger versions of old solutions, which were designed to overcome the security challenges of pre-COVID times. These revamped solutions were improvements, but they still operated on the same fundamental principles that were becoming increasingly obsolete in the face of modern threats and the radically changed work environment. Some companies even went as far as sending home routers to their employees to ensure a sufficient level of security was guaranteed. While these measures provided some immediate relief, they ultimately highlighted the inadequacy of relying on traditional methods to secure a modern, distributed workforce. This approach has proven insufficient for the dynamic and dispersed nature of today’s workforce and data distribution, necessitating a truly innovative shift in security strategy.
THE PROMISE OF SASE
This is where the concept of SASE comes into play. First introduced by Gartner analysts in 2019, SASE represents a transformative shift in network security architecture. Gartner recognized that the growing reliance on cloud services, the increased mobility of users, and the decentralization of data required a new approach—one that could combine networking and security functions into a single, cloud-native service model.
SASE was envisioned to address the complexities of modern IT environments by converging wide area networking (WAN) and network security services, such as secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers (CASB), firewalls, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA), into a unified, flexible, and scalable solution. This convergence allows organizations to deliver secure access to applications and data, regardless of where users, devices, or resources are located.
Gartner’s vision for SASE was driven by the understanding that the traditional perimeter-based security models were no longer sufficient in a world where the perimeter itself had become fluid and boundaryless. By integrating security and networking in the cloud, SASE promises to provide the agility, control, and protection needed in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.
THE REALITY OF SASE
As companies rushed to offer SASE solutions following the Gartner report, the mentality behind these offerings largely remained unchanged. Most conventional SASE solutions are simply improved versions of older approaches rather than true innovations.For example, Gartner’s SASE vision proposed increasing the number of Points of Presence (PoPs) to reduce latency and improve network performance. In response, many vendors have implemented this by opening more data centers. However, this isn't a breakthrough change that addresses the fundamental problems of the new security context. While the increase in PoPs may help to some extent, the underlying issue of latency remains largely unresolved. Despite these efforts, many organizations continue to experience performance bottlenecks, especially when users are far from the nearest PoP. The latency challenge persists, undermining the overall effectiveness of SASE in delivering seamless and responsive network access.
In fact, it introduces its own risks—new data centers can become single points of failure. For instance, in a real-life case, a company receiving security services from a SASE vendor lost internet connectivity when the SASE provider changed the PoP handling their internet traffic. The PoP change resulted in a new IP address, causing all connectivity to be lost for the company. This example highlights the vulnerability and potential disruption that can occur with these conventional SASE implementations. As companies become more dependent on the vendor's infrastructure, it is likely to cause severe problems that adversely impact business continuity. Such disruptions can lead to significant costs for companies, both in terms of reputation and finances, and may also create legal problems.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS AND HIDDEN CHALLENGES
Furthermore, the cost of implementing SASE solutions can become a substantial issue for companies. Since all internet traffic passes through the vendor's infrastructure in the cloud, the costs associated with this can be significant. Vendors typically reflect these costs to their customers in two ways: either by directly passing on the costs or by limiting internet bandwidth. The latter is particularly problematic in the digital age, where unrestricted internet access is crucial for business operations. Additionally, as highlighted in the report on egress fees by the Competition and Markets Authority, these costs are exacerbated when transferring data out of cloud environments, making it even more expensive for companies to manage their data and maintain flexibility in their operations. Such limitations not only hinder business efficiency but also raise the risk of incurring high costs related to egress fees, further complicating the financial and operational challenges companies face in this new security landscape.
While the concept of SASE marks a significant step forward, the current implementations often fall short of addressing the complex challenges presented by modern IT environments. The persistence of issues like latency, the risks associated with centralized Points of Presence (PoPs), and the financial burden of cloud-based traffic routing highlight the gaps that still exist. To truly secure the distributed workforce of the future, more innovation and novel approaches are needed. The industry must move beyond simply improving existing solutions and instead, embrace new paradigms that can effectively safeguard data and networks in an increasingly decentralized and dynamic world.
There is still much work to be done, and the journey toward a fully executed SASE vision is only just beginning.
