By Tod Ewasko, CPO
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is quickly becoming the standard network technology that allows modern workforces to interact with corporate resources wherever they are. SASE significantly benefits today’s distributed organizations, featuring better security, which includes encryption and zero-trust network access. However, SASE creates blindspots for important security technologies that perform threat analysis, detection, and response. Special integrations can overcome this issue and restore visibility to critical SASE data.
Traditional cloud management security concerns are related to the risks and challenges of protecting data and applications in a cloud-based environment. Key considerations include data loss or leakage, data privacy or confidentiality, accidental exposure of credentials, incident response, legal and regulatory compliance, data sovereignty or residence or control, and protecting the cloud infrastructure from attacks. A recent report by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), Cloud Security Alliance’s Top Threats to Cloud | CSA, identifies new and more nuanced threats focusing on configuration and authentication issues, such as insufficient identity, credential, access, and key management; weak control plane; metastructure and application infrastructure failures; and limited cloud usage visibility. These threats require more attention to the higher layers of the technology stack and the senior management decisions that influence the technology stack and cloud configurations. Therefore, traditional cloud management security concerns are insufficient to address the complex and evolving challenges of securing cloud computing.
Securing and managing company assets and data becomes more complicated with the migration to cloud computing, especially when multicloud environments are involved. SASE is a network architecture and technology set that combines wide area network (WAN) and other network security functions into a single service.
Implementing SASE helps IT teams optimize access performance, reduce operational complexity, and enhance security posture on a global scale. This is accomplished by moving the network edge to the cloud and leveraging SASE, significantly reducing performance bottlenecks and security gaps associated with traditional hardware-based appliances and VPNs. SASE enables organizations to simplify their network management, which reduces costs and latency while enhancing security and compliance through improved management, detection, and response capabilities. Because it’s a cloud-based service, SASE is scalable by design, making it a viable option during rapidly changing times. The SASE approach also addresses the problem of providing secure and reliable access to applications and data for distributed and mobile users, devices, and locations.
NetWitness’ suite of products, starting with the XDR (extended detection and response) platform, delivers the industry’s most complete integrated solution for SASE through product capabilities developed over the last 25 years. Our extended list of partners’ products integrates with NetWitness’ XDR to address security threat management and provide comprehensive visibility and threat detection across the network perimeter. These capabilities enable organizations to secure their remote workforce, cloud applications, and internet of things (IoT) devices with a unified platform that integrates network security, endpoint protection, identity management, and threat intelligence. NetWitness provides an integrated security solution, including network detection and response (NDR), (EDR), (CASB), (SWG), (ZTNA), and threat intelligence as a unified platform. This platform-based approach enables capabilities for SASE to deliver superior threat detection and response across the entire attack surface, from endpoints to cloud applications.