Making sense of zero trust – why a managed SASE solution is the ideal option for enterprises

Remote working and cloud computing are among the most significant trends in the global business landscape, unlocking innovation but also increasing attack surfaces and creating opportunities for cyber attackers.  

To mitigate these threats, businesses are turning to a new generation of cybersecurity solutions – with research showing Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) at the forefront. 

An exclusive survey of 207 companies conducted by Foundry for Palo Alto Networks and Accenture across North America, the UK, Germany, and France, revealed that boosting IT and data security was their top priority for 2023.  

But it also revealed a lack of clarity about the best way to implement SASE, leading to a need for managed SASE solutions which ensure businesses fully leverage the benefits of this technology.  

The evolving threat landscape 

Many businesses are feeling pressure to meet growing customer needs, as they seek to optimize their IT stacks to stay ahead of competitors. The report found that only 25% regard their digital transformation program as advanced. 

With staff logging in via a myriad of devices, networks and locations, the threat perimeter now exceeds the coverage that most traditional security solutions provide. Perhaps reflecting this acute and complex challenge, the survey found only 11% of businesses felt their security was ‘perfect’.  

Why SASE? 

SASE is a framework that combines software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) and network security services like Cloud Access Security Brokers, Firewall-as-a-service, and Zero Trust into a single, cloud-delivered service model.  

Comprehensive and scalable, it brings together multiple security and networking solutions into a single platform which can simplify management, reduce costs and improve overall security posture.  

Businesses are cognizant of the need for new security solutions and SASE is leading the way. The survey revealed that it was already the most widely deployed modern solution (44%).  

Identifying the best solution 

But with a complex and an ever-changing threat landscape, IT decision makers take different routes when it comes to SASE adoption. Many (37%) still adopt a best-of-breed (BoB) strategy toward security. In this piecemeal approach, companies onboard an array of different siloed solutions, which do not necessarily work together and put pressure on IT and security teams to manage them in concert. BoB differs markedly from an integrated approach, which combines multiple security capabilities into a unified platform enabling cross-capability data-sharing and significantly higher automation. But although 36% say they do take an integrated approach to security, only 14% think that the benefits of these two security strategies were highly differentiated.  

An integrated approach works best 

Those turning toward a combined networking and security solution are reported to be experiencing a wide range of tangible benefits: greater agility (42%), lower cost (41%), reduced complexity (39%), threat prioritization (39%) and improved security (37%) among them.  

And this makes sense because a single-vendor platform approach provides a holistic solution to address the entire attack surface, ensuring consistent policies while providing a clear understanding and control of what’s happening in the network. Conversely, BoB point solutions built into a multi-vendor approach only provide fragmented results, leading to partial insights and unacceptable trade-offs between security and usability. 

Benefits of external expertise with the right technology 

While SASE is easy to deploy, bringing in a trusted partner such as Accenture enables organizations to take advantage of managed SASE and leverage the full benefits of the solution. In fact, the report found that more than half (52%) of respondents considered engaging a managed service provider (MSP) for rolling out SASE. 

A solution like Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE, gives organizations unique benefits like superior ZTNA 2.0 security, simplified operations, and exceptional user experience. And, it offers best of breed networking and security technology all delivered through a consolidated, cloud-based platform – thus solving many key dilemmas mentioned above.  

Meanwhile, managed service providers like Accenture can help businesses mitigate costs and adapt to changing needs.  

Read the full White Paper now to understand the growing popularity of SASE. Alternatively read the German or French versions of this White Paper.