The choice of a company’s IT architecture is critical – it has a direct impact on the SASE goals. Organizations should make careful decisions as they determine how each service component supports business needs.
Companies must keep an eye on the overall picture of their IT architecture at all times, especially about the introduction of SASE. This also includes knowing which service dependencies and capabilities exist to keep attack surfaces as small as possible.
At the same time, this also includes keeping an eye on the strategy for security risk management. Several other factors also play a role, including timing, application and service coverage, availability and resilience, as well as geographic requirements and teams involved, to name just a few.
How Should Companies Prepare?
In the first part of our SASE series, we discussed that every organization has to develop and implement its plan. An effective architecture helps companies meet their current challenges. It also addresses future needs. But where do you start? Organizations should start by creating a questionnaire because the decisions made in the planning phase influence the implementation and workflow of the project and its success.
It is also essential to consider the disciplines and departments affected by the decision regarding the architecture. There is no question that networking and security decisions are intertwined for most businesses today.
The dependency and success of any decision are often made apparent by choosing where a service is physically located. This inherent dependency is one of the core functions and benefits of SASE. Still, it is wise to consider each component and how the operations team will manage and maintain the architecture after implementation to ensure that the right choice is made.
SASE Improve Opportunities
Another organizational advantage of SASE is that it brings security closer to both the user and the data. SASE also makes it easy to work closely with the development teams. Application and development teams get security functions seamlessly and smoothly instead of reducing risk after implementation. The more detailed a company researches in advance, the greater the chances of success. With SASE, you can design and plan fantastic architecture. This architecture ideally fits an organization’s current and future requirements and creates a balance between costs, agility, and resilience.
The nice thing about SASE is the possibility to move discrete, complex functions into a cloud-native implemented service. Companies benefit from cloud properties such as agility, flexibility and a suitable consumption model for their needs. At the same time, they can focus on web traffic security, productivity application data, custom applications for a specific industry (e.g. healthcare), and much more.
Companies that operate an on-premises data centre facilitate the work of the operations team, the guidelines of the cloud and- premise appliances manage. This process mustn’t be more complicated than necessary, for example, by introducing new tools. These often require an additional set of guidelines, some of which may not be easily translatable between the appropriate instances.
Every SASE Trip Is Unique
Network and security are growing closer together than ever before. Each of the two disciplines requires specific expertise, but there is some overlap. When teams support one another, this convergence strengthens the organization and improves overall operational resilience. SASE offers companies the perfect opportunity to choose a cloud-enabled architecture group. Network, security and application expertise is required to develop the architectures of tomorrow. It is exciting to see how this development is driving change for companies and the industry.
Conclusion
If companies learned anything about cybersecurity in 2020, it is this: It is impossible to predict the future. Companies need to be proactive and prepared for all eventualities. It would help if you had a resilient and secure infrastructure that meets current and future requirements. With SASE, Juniper is helping companies achieve this vision.