Secure Access Service Edge and Zero-Trust: The Ultimate Security Solution

Secure Access Service Edge and Zero-Trust: The Ultimate Security Solution

With more businesses going hybrid or fully remote and data breaches on the rise, organizations are scrambling to ensure data and application security at every level. As security has become even more paramount, more and more organizations are implementing a zero-trust security model, which has slowly become the standard for cloud security.

But savvy organizations are also deploying more advanced security principles, including secure access service edges (SASE). And despite occasionally being incorrectly positioned as either/or solutions, zero-trust is actually a foundational part of a SASE architecture.

Let’s explore how this dynamic duo works together to create even more secure networks and cloud environments.

What is SASE?

Gartner coined the term SASE just a few short years ago, in 2019, to explain an emerging cybersecurity principle, which integrates security into the network architecture to deliver consistent and secure access, no matter where users, applications, or data are.

It brings together wide area networking (WAN) and network security services, including cloud access security broker (CASB), zero-trust, secure web gateway (SWG), and firewall as a service (FWaaS) into a single, cloud-delivered service model.

What is Zero-Trust?

While zero-trust and SASE are newer philosophies, zero-trust is a bit more established. Forrester Research first coined the term in 2010 to sum up the principle of least privilege (POLP) to network access.

Zero-trust is a strategy based on the idea of “never trust, always verify” that requires continual authentication and verification before granting access to your network, data, and applications. A few tenets include:

• Implementing a POLP strategy and strict access control
• Ensuring secure access to resources from anywhere
• Inspecting and logging all traffic

How do SASE and Zero-Trust Work Together?

When you think of SASE and zero-trust, think of them as parts of the same security vision. They both work to protect your data, applications, and assets in the cloud using dynamic perimeters and user verification.

SASE deploys security via the cloud, whereas zero-trust uses the POLP principle to ensure security. But instead of working separately, zero-trust is part of the SASE framework. SASE is what establishes and enables zero-trust network access (ZTNA).

SASE combines network and network security components in a single cloud-based service—one such component is ZTNA. Without ZTNA, there’s no point in deploying SASE. But once you implement ZTNA and build it into your SASE architecture, you can consistently enforce your security policies throughout your entire network, providing much stronger network security.

Together, SASE and ZTNA allow for the decentralized network distributed teams need while providing high levels of security. Users get the access they need—from any location or device—and organizations get the security they need to protect assets and data.

Ready for SASE and Zero-Trust?

Whether you’re looking to ramp up your security efforts or have implemented parts of your SASE architecture but need help rolling everything out, Lightstream is here to help. Our team of experts has decades of experience with cloud security and partner with industry leaders to deploy zero-trust and SASE solutions.

If you’re ready to get started or have questions, reach out to Lightstream.