How Does SASE Improve User Experience?

Published on: January 29, 2024

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12 min read

Secure access service edges (SASE) satisfy the demands of both administrators and users in today's dispersed networks. Recent years have seen a significant evolution of the network edge. Naturally, everyone's intentions to shift dispersed services to the cloud were expedited by the epidemic. The edge is no longer the conventional border of campus and data center networks because of this explosion in edge usage. Wherever gadgets are, that's the new edge.

Due to a lack of knowledge on how to operationalize the alternative, many businesses continue to be focused on the conventional view of the edge as a perimeter. Because it increased control and visibility, centralized security was effective in the past. Data protection and assault defense have become simpler. For distant users, however, there was a performance and experience trade-off.

When businesses had few remote users to assist, that was less of a problem. It's a different story when scaling to accommodate thousands, or even hundreds, of pseudo-permanent microbranches and distant users. It can be effective to try to direct them all through a single control point, but doing so results in so many performance problems that this strategy can become unworkable.

With a secure access service edge (SASE) architecture, it is now feasible to centralize security policies and distribute the whole environment. Organizations move away from centralization with the help of SASE's capabilities without sacrificing security or efficiency.

The conventional network perimeter security paradigm is turned on its head by data-centric SASE. It provides a novel architecture that locates specifically tailored security assets closer to the current location of people, apps, and data -out on the internet- than they did ten years ago- within private networks. Organizations lose out on opportunities to defend people, data, and apps from sophisticated assaults that were previously exclusively available to nation-state actors when security assets are not placed appropriately.

However, data-centric SASE goes beyond basic security. Additionally, a strong SASE solution needs to be a devoted steward of the user experience. There have been two things that I have discussed with hundreds of customers: The primary responsibility is information security, with user experience preservation coming a close second. Consumers want low-friction solutions because they understand that the user experience can make or break a security solution. By its very nature, SASE should enhance the user experience over the corporate VPN once it is completely deployed. Although defeating the VPN in a performance competition is a low threshold, most of us would agree that it's a start. Therefore, it's helpful to consider what other elements affect the user experience.

In the rapidly changing context of digital transformation, where the user experience is crucial, SASE emerges as a transformational force. Its cloud-centric design, emphasis on user-centric rules, and seamless integration of edge computing transform how enterprises deliver safe access while maintaining performance. As a consequence, the network is not only safe but also provides a good and agile user experience that meets the requirements of the modern workplace. As companies face the difficulties of the digital era, SASE serves as a lighthouse, blazing a route where security and user experience coexist peacefully, enabling productivity, collaboration, and success.

There are a lot more subjects covered in this essay concerning SASE and the user experience, as well as how it enhances it. These are listed in the following order:

1. Optimized Cloud Application Performance
2. Improved User Authentication
3. Dynamic Scalability
4. Consistent Security Policies
5. User-Friendly Access
6. Global Access

SASE's features that improve user experience are outlined below:

Features	Explanation
Optimized Cloud Application Performance	By entering into agreements with carriers and peering partners, SASE providers optimize and route traffic via high-performance backbones.
Improved User Authentication	Because SASE offers identity-centric access and applies security policies based on user and device attributes, it naturally conforms to the zero trust principles. Therefore, regardless of where they are, only authorized users with reliable devices may access particular apps or data.
Dynamic Scalability	The cloud-based architecture of SASE solutions makes scaling them simple. These systems accommodate additional users and devices as businesses expand.
Consistent Security Policies	Secure Access Service Edge applies Zero Trust, streamlines administration, and enforces uniform standards to strengthen data security for branches and remote locations.
User-Friendly Access	Branch-edge devices combined with widely available, well-peered cloud services offer comprehensive visibility and significantly lower end-to-end network latency for a better end-user experience. Any organizational edge, including branch offices, on-site and cloud data centers, and even a single user or device, benefits from the consistent security and optimization provided by SASE.
Global Access	SASE provides low-latency networking and security features to all users and company locations via an expandable global cloud network.

Table 1. How SASE Improve User Experience

1. Optimized Cloud Application Performance

Approximately 60% of workers globally now work remotely, either full-time or part-time. To operate as effectively and productively as possible, these personnel require safe access to company information from anywhere and utilize a range of devices. Slow communication is caused by security solutions and remote access over established networks.

But now, consumers' data doesn't have to return all the way to the data center. This saves a lot of time because the traffic may now travel directly to a cloud-based software-as-a-service provider, for example. This is one of the main reasons why the move away from centralized security has been so strong in recent months, since it drastically increases performance.

SASE's cloud-native design makes it possible for staff members to safely access the company's network from anywhere. This is accomplished by combining security services with SD-WAN, enabling smooth and safe remote access.

This lessens the congestion and delays that come with routing traffic over a connection that is having performance problems or high usage while backhauling internet traffic across MPLS connections.

Latency-optimized routing improves the performance of services and applications; this is especially useful for latency-sensitive VoIP, video, and collaborative applications. Through the high-performance backbones they have negotiated with carriers and peering partners, SASE providers optimize and route traffic. Implementing a single-pass design for all security tasks inside a single PoP increases performance by preventing needless routing. SASE may, depending on how it is implemented, decrease the number of applications and agents needed for a device to just one app while still giving the user a consistent experience no matter where they are or what they are accessing.

SASE essentially provides security in a distributed paradigm by allowing administrators to continue enforcing policy-based control while simultaneously enabling users' connectivity in the most direct and effective manner feasible.

2. Improved User Authentication

Because the conventional network border is losing its significance, your company is implementing a zero-trust security paradigm that demands authentication from any person and device trying to access resources.

Because SASE offers identity-centric access and applies security policies based on user and device attributes, it naturally conforms to the zero trust principles. Therefore, regardless of where they are, only authorized users with reliable devices may access particular apps or data.

The first significant change in SASE's approach to access control is its first description of what an identity is. Although users, groups, and role assignments still fall under the more conventional definition of identity, all edge locations, dispersed WAN branches, and network sources are regarded as identities. Secure access decisions in a company with a cloud emphasis should be based on the identification of the entity making the connection. This might comprise, for instance, users, gadgets, branch offices, Internet of Things devices, and edge computing sites.

The key component of SASE identity access policies continues to be the identities of the users, groups, devices, and services that are in use. It's interesting to note that SASE identity policies are changing to incorporate more pertinent identity context sources that influence policy choices and implementation. The identity's location, the time of day, the security assessment of the device, and trust validation are a few examples of these. SASE identification policies take into account how sensitive the applications and data entities they are attempting to access are. These elements assist companies in creating and improving a least-privilege access strategy that is more progressive and allows for more tightly enforced access management. Organizations will be able to regulate resource interactions based on a wider range of pertinent factors, such as entity identification, application access, and the sensitivity of the data being accessed, thanks to SASE identity policies.

Additionally, safeguarding confidential information is a top priority for your company, so you must monitor and manage the content that enters and leaves your network.

The cloud-based design immediately integrates security services, including content inspection, real-time URL filtering, and protection against data loss. Policies that prohibit the unlawful transmission of private information can be enforced, and material can be checked for viruses and other dangers.

3. Dynamic Scalability

It becomes easy to scale the business WAN out to more user devices and locations, which is absolutely necessary in this day and age where remote and hybrid working remain popular.

Network configurations and geographies change from week to week as a result of the introduction of new services, the expansion of user communities, or changes in the percentage of remote and on-premise users. SASE enables network flexibility and grows easily as needed.

In this method, SASE Solutions' cloud-based design allows for simple scalability. These systems can handle more users and devices as organizations grow.

SD-WAN solutions and SASE eliminate the need for network infrastructure by extending a secure network to all assets that do not have physical data centers or servers. Hardware changes require less time, and network administrators adjust quickly as conditions change. It is necessary for companies to easily and reliably add branch offices to the current SASE system.

SASE contributes to bandwidth reduction by securely and immediately routing internet-bound traffic to the internet from the edge, bypassing a centralized data center. Additionally, you may set a priority list for important services and apps to ensure that the appropriate bandwidth is allocated to the relevant network traffic. Additionally, you may grow your network and security services in accordance with demand because SASE is cloud-native.

4. Consistent Security Policies

The IT infrastructure of your company is more vulnerable to attack when your workforce is scattered since many users are now situated beyond the conventional network perimeter. Actually, compared to 40% the previous year, at least 75% of ransomware assaults and breaches that Unit 42's incident response team handled in 2022 were caused by attack-surface exposures.

Secure access service edge (SASE), which combines zero-trust network access, other cloud security characteristics, and the networking capabilities of a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) is the answer to these new difficulties.

SASE simplifies dispersed network access management while enabling you to update your company's network security.

Because it tackles performance and security issues, the SASE model is essential for businesses using SaaS and public cloud services. The secure access service edge outperforms conventional data center techniques by optimizing bandwidth and ensuring dynamic security using next-generation SD-WAN. An improved user experience is ensured by the use of digital experience monitoring.

It simplifies vendor administration and lowers network and security costs. Secure Access Service Edge applies Zero Trust, streamlines administration, and enforces uniform standards to strengthen data security for branches and remote locations. This guarantees the security of data and applications regardless of where they are housed, in SaaS apps, public cloud services, or private cloud data centers.

SASE aids with visibility, which has frequently been a problem for businesses attempting to implement dispersed security. Performance problems drive users to abandon conventional VPNs, giving the company less visibility and control over its endpoints. SASE restores that visibility by effectively sending traffic through a cloud proxy.

SASE offers insight into hybrid business network infrastructures that link people everywhere, public and private clouds, data centers, headquarters, branches, and distant sites.

Depending on a variety of circumstances, including network congestion, network routing optimizations can assist in determining the quickest network path. By securely routing data via a global edge network where traffic is handled as close to the user as possible, SASE helps lower end-user latency.

Equal support is provided for all edges, including users' mobile devices, cloud data centers, physical locations, and edge computing, with all capabilities being located at the local PoP as opposed to the edge location. A branch office's SD-WAN, a VPN client, clientless Web access for mobile users, numerous cloud tunnels, or direct cloud connections within a global data center are some examples of edge connections to the local PoP. SASE is transparent to the user as a client that launches at startup and then establishes a connection with cloud security services. It essentially places everyone behind a massive firewall, complete with all the bells and whistles that the security stack has to offer, but it does so by improving speed by connecting the user to a local service.

Administrators can then apply the security posture they have established at the intent level to all users, wherever they may be.

Additionally, SASE eliminates the need for specialized on-premises security infrastructure by delivering security services from the cloud to provide uniform protection for all branch offices.

5. User-Friendly Access

Secure Access Service Edge applies Zero Trust, streamlines administration, and enforces uniform standards to strengthen data security for branches and remote locations. This guarantees the security of data and applications regardless of where they are housed -in SaaS apps, public cloud services, or private cloud data centers. When working from home or branch offices, digital experience monitoring (DEM) streamlines processes and maximizes user experiences without requiring complicated gear and software installations.

Branch-edge devices combined with widely available, well-peered cloud services offer comprehensive visibility and significantly lower end-to-end network latency for a better end-user experience.

Any organizational edge, including branch offices, on-site and cloud data centers, and even a single user or device, may benefit from the consistent security and optimization provided by SASE.

6. Global Access

SASE provides low-latency networking and security features to all users and company locations via an expandable global cloud network. Unlike access that is largely centered on the corporate data center, a SASE architecture is designed to offer consistent, quick, and secure access to any resource from any organization at any place.

With the best possible experience across all edges, SASE's globally distributed PoPs ensure that all networking and security capabilities are available everywhere. The SASE cloud must be spread globally to ensure that all networking and security capabilities are accessible from anywhere and that all edges receive the best possible experience. Consequently, Gartner observes that in order to provide low-latency services to corporate edges, companies need to increase their footprint.

Security teams can view all aspects of network activity, including people, data, and apps, from a single pane of glass thanks to support for universal access to any resource from anywhere and consistent functionality.

Cloud-native SASE is self-maintaining, stretchy, and self-healing. SASE is provided as a worldwide cloud service that quickly adjusts to changing business requirements and makes all network and security features accessible from any location.

In conclusion, a globally dispersed network of PoPs provides low-latency WAN and security capabilities to company offices, cloud apps, and mobile users anywhere they may be. SASE PoPs need to be larger and more distributed than those provided by standard public cloud providers in order to deliver low latency at any location. Additionally, SASE providers need to have a large number of peering agreements.

Why is Improving User Experience Important?

User experience (UX) is the whole experience a user gets when interacting with a product or service. This encompasses anything from the usability of a website or app to the efficiency of customer service and the quality of a product's packaging. UX is vital for businesses since it directly influences how people perceive a firm and its products. A great user experience boosts client happiness and loyalty, eventually driving business development. A poor user experience, on the other hand, might drive consumers away and have a negative influence on a company's profitability.

Creating a great user experience entails knowing consumers' requirements and preferences and customizing products and services accordingly. This is exactly what SASE does.

Staying ahead of the competition in the rapidly evolving and fast-paced world of modern digital organizations necessitates not just the deployment of cutting-edge technology but also an emphasis on automation and providing a smooth user experience. Automation and user-centric solutions become critical as organizations depend more and more on Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) to support their operations.

What are the Benefits of Improving User Experience through SASE?

User experience (UX) services are now essential to the success of mobile apps and websites. If your UX design isn't well thought out, prospective clients leave before you get a chance to demonstrate to them how excellent your business, service, or item is. You can drive more consumers through the checkout process and boost sales by enhancing the user experience. Thus, consider this: Is the SASE user experience up-to-date with the modern digital environment?

Businesses that are effective at enhancing the user experience on their website or mobile app make it more appealing for customers to engage with their brand. However, there are additional advantages to creating a user interface that is simple to use from beginning to end.SASE advantages that enhance your user experience are summarized below:

• Ease of use: Users may give up on an engagement and switch to one of your competitors if they find it difficult to utilize your website or app. A well-thought-out, user-friendly navigation system is crucial to building authority, trust, and credibility with prospective clients.
• Boost Revenue: You will draw more users who will spend more time on your website or mobile app if you provide an easy-to-use and accessible user experience. Better conversion rates and increased income for your company result from this.
• Faster Time to Market: You may avoid bouncing ideas back and forth between designers and developers if the user experience (UX) of your website or app is done correctly. Both the development time and expense will be lowered as a result.
• Reduced Support Costs: Research indicates that businesses that invest in user experience incur reduced support and customer acquisition expenses. Additionally, studies reveal that investing one dollar in UX services often yields a return of one hundred dollars.
• Boost Customer Retention: Businesses that offer their clients high-value experiences, satisfying interactions, or substantial rewards will keep more clients since their clients like doing business with them.
• Enhances Customer Loyalty: Content customers are more inclined to stick with a business's goods and services and may even refer the business to others or provide reviews and testimonials, which may have an impact on their network.
• Prevents Resource Waste: Developers' time is not being handled effectively when they have to redo UX design components that were already there and could have been avoided earlier. Financial losses are frequently the outcome of squandering time or resources.
• More Accurate Prototyping: Prototyping aims to reduce development costs by testing usability and design concepts. Making more precise drawings and prototypes with the aid of a well-thought-out UX helps expedite the implementation process.

What Features Help SASE Improve User Experience?

Using the SASE architecture enhances the user experience and network security. Secure access service edges satisfy both administrator and user demands in today's dispersed networks. The features that help SASE enhance the user experience are as follows:

1. Move away from centralization while maintaining performance and security: A secure access service edge (SASE) architecture is used to centralize security policies while distributing the whole environment. Organizations may move away from centralization with the help of SASE's capabilities without sacrificing security or efficiency.

2. Superior Performance is a result of SASE's Efficient Data Flow: Even though SASE is still relatively new to the IT sector, its quick transition to remote operations has generated a lot of interest in the idea. SASE essentially provides security in a distributed paradigm by allowing administrators to continue enforcing policy-based control while simultaneously enabling users' connectivity in the most direct and effective manner feasible.

   Data from users doesn't have to be returned all the way to the data center. This saves a lot of time because the traffic now travels directly to a cloud-based software-as-a-service provider, for example. This is one of the main reasons why the move away from centralized security has been so strong in recent months since it drastically increases performance. S

3. Implement Intent-Based Security for Users, No Matter Where They Are: SASE aids with visibility, which has frequently been a problem for businesses attempting to implement dispersed security. Performance problems drive users to abandon conventional VPNs, giving the company less visibility and control over its endpoints. SASE restores that visibility by effectively sending traffic through a cloud proxy.

   SASE is transparent to the user as a client that launches at startup and then establishes a connection with cloud security services. It essentially places everyone behind a massive firewall, complete with all the bells and whistles that the security stack has to offer, but it does so by improving speed by connecting the user to a local service.

   Administrators can then apply the security posture they have established at the intent level to all users, wherever they may be. To be honest, it's the best of both scenarios.

4. Enhances protection: The SASE framework is ideal for implementing a zero-trust security approach because it integrates network security with access management. SASE increases security while ensuring a faultless user experience by requiring device and person authentication before granting access to resources.

5. Services provided via the cloud: Apps and services hosted on the cloud are vital to the functioning of contemporary digital organizations. The seamless integration that SD-WAN and SASE offer with cloud systems allows for direct and safe access to cloud services.

In the digital era, SASE is now an essential technology for modern enterprises attempting to thrive in a rapidly evolving business environment.

How Can SASE's Impact on User Experience Be Measured?

You can see the whole service delivery path with autonomous digital experience management (ADEM), from the user and branch to an application that may affect your user experience. With the aid of this visibility level, you may promptly identify segments that could lead to a worse user and branch experience and take proactive measures to fix issues before people notice them. With insight into the "where" and "why" of network issues, you obtain root-cause diagnostics of devices, WiFi, the internet, apps, and network issues that frequently affect the user experience.

Complete user, branch, and application monitoring is provided by the native integration of ADEM and SASE. Complete visibility into all WAN links, both active and backup, that link branches to different applications located in private data centers, SaaS, or IaaS is provided by ADEM. This SASE-native integration, a first for the industry, offers visibility that would not be possible otherwise.

The end-user experience of monitored apps operating in a branch office is proactively measured by ADEM, allowing you to isolate and fix issues before they affect numerous users.

Users connecting from branch locations are now visible in the same dashboard that displays your mobile or home user experience. Whether a path is active or in backup mode, the dashboard offers a score based on the application experience for each path. Being able to perform proactive synthetics on each path allows you to determine which way is optimal for each application across all users in a branch office. Real-time visibility and experience diagnostics are improved by real-user monitoring.

How Does SASE Respond to Trends Impacting User Experience, Like Remote Working and Mobile Access?

Since the COVID period in particular, being able to access company resources from a remote place has proven to be a business game-changer and lifesaver. VPNs are among the most widely used remote access solutions, but when they fill up, they can become unstable and have latency problems.

However, remote access has changed over time. Employees of today may operate from any location and access resources stored anywhere in the cloud, rendering physical, perimeter-based techniques obsolete. SASE (secure access service edge) is relevant here because the new normal demands a more scalable and secure approach to perimeter and remote access than the old ways.

SASE is a relatively new architectural idea that offers customers safe and dependable remote access regardless of their location or the type of network they are connected to by fusing the capabilities of security and software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) into a single, unified cloud service. This method has several advantages when it comes to remote access:

• Scalable remote access: Because SASE is built on a cloud architecture, it may scale quickly without requiring extra hardware, saving money. Users just need to install a single application or agent to gain safe access to resources from any location by utilizing their work credentials.
• Performance: By analyzing traffic close to the user's location (also known as points of presence, or PoP), SASE enhances the performance of remote access by redirecting traffic to other places via the SASE private backbone rather than the erratic internet. VoIP and video are examples of high-latency applications whose performance is enhanced by this.
• User experience: Regardless of the user's location or the resource being accessed, SASE replaces the numerous agents and applications needed for remote access in a conventional network with a single application that provides consistency.
• Convergence: SASE is about convergence as opposed to a multi-vendor model, where various sites employ separate security appliances. While maintaining visibility and control over people and programs, this lessens the complexity of security.
• Security: Unlike VPNs, which provide users with unrestricted access to anything once they've authenticated, administrators may set up detailed access restrictions and approve or prohibit apps based on user profiles. SASE is a combination service that combines many common utilities into one, such as zero-trust network access (ZTNA), cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway (SWG), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and endpoint security. This is in contrast to technically disjointed setups that have several isolated security silos that are cut off from one another.

In conclusion, SASE gives workers safe access from any location. This is a huge benefit for businesses these days since the trend toward mobile work is growing. Even when they are not in the office, employees may safely access business resources. SASE is being embraced by an increasing number of enterprises; by 2028, its market volume is predicted to reach 5.9 billion USD, up from its projected 1.9 billion USD in 2023. Specifically, the significance of SASE will only grow due to the growing need for mobile access and remote working. Furthermore, by integrating technology such as artificial intelligence and automation, SASE will become a smarter and more responsive structure.

How Does SASE Achieve the Balance Between Security and User Experience?

Zero-trust policies and robust multi-factor access control may be implemented throughout a session since security services are combined and provided as a cloud service. Efficiency may be attained by combining control and management. Latency is decreased by performing encryption, decryption, and analysis simultaneously. These characteristics are necessary for a network and security architecture to balance security requirements with network performance. Numerous networking and security elements are integrated by SASE. Three areas apply to this feature: network services, zero trust network access policies, and cloud-hosted security.

1. Components of cloud-based security: Security solutions that are typically installed at the network perimeter must relocate to the cloud site as security advances closer to the network edge. SASE architecture offers "cloud-native" alternatives for important security components, such as:
   • Firewall as a Service (FWaaS): The cornerstone of a company's network security architecture is a firewall. SASE enables the firewall to be set up as a cloud-based service that offers security while having no negative effect on network speed.
   • Secure Web Gateway (SWG): Users must be shielded from web-based risks, whether they are onsite or remotely located. In addition to monitoring and filtering dangerous Internet traffic, GTS enforces the company's cybersecurity standards.
   • Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): A software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for access control and security is called CASB. It facilitates safe and secure access to cloud-based programs like Office 365.
2. ZTNA Constituents: The goal of a zero-trust security policy is to restrict user access to the network and permissions to what is necessary for their job function. This lessens the possibility and consequence of a security event. Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) or Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions apply the zero trust security paradigm. It is useful to use the following to do this:
   • Robust Authentication: In a zero-trust architecture, authorization and access are determined by the role of the user inside the company as well as device authentication. Strong user authentication safeguarded by multi-factor authentication (MFA) and device compatibility solutions are essential for identity-based security.
   • Authorization and access control: The ZTNA solution has to decide if a user's subsequent requests are legitimate after their identity has been established. This is accomplished by comparing a request against role-based access controls (RBAC) and granting or refusing access in accordance with the circumstances.
   • Continuous session monitoring: The goal of zero trust security is to reduce the possibility that ongoing session monitoring will be necessary. Because of this ongoing observation, confidence levels and risk estimates may be modified in response to observed behavior.
3. Components of Network Services: SASE is intended to protect the corporate wide area network (WAN) while simultaneously enhancing dispersed enterprise network performance. By incorporating software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) features and guaranteeing the security of transient and mobile users, it does this. A network of SD-WAN devices spread among physical or cloud facilities is how SD-WAN is implemented. Depending on the application and purpose of each SD-WAN device, all traffic passing through the business WAN network is routed from the entry point to the nearest device to its destination. The use of SD-WAN in conjunction with SASE has several benefits:
   • Optimal path selection: Congestion, capacity limitations, and network failures can all cause a rise in network delay. To optimize network performance, SD-WAN makes use of intelligent route selection and performance monitoring.
   • Application-Database Routing: When away from the office, remote and mobile corporate users want safe access to enterprise resources. Unmanaged devices require access for contractors. The client and clientless device gain safe access to the SASE network and the requested resource by using a secure remote access solution.

In conclusion, as enterprise networks change, so too must network and security designs. SASE is intended to offer network speed improvement along with security in a single solution. SASE offers a high degree of security while reducing the negative effects of security on the user experience by moving routing and security functions to the network edge.