Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're jumping into enterprise cybersecurity, which,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, feels like trying to hit a moving
Speaker 1: target sometimes.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The threats are just getting well smarter, more spread out,
Speaker 2: hitting from all angles. It's relentless.
Speaker 1: And it's not just the threats changing, right, the way
Speaker 1: we work is totally different completely.
Speaker 2: Clouds, sauce, apps everywhere, people working from home, coffee shops, anywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you've got this massive explosion of apps and users,
Speaker 1: but also deeper security holes opening up because.
Speaker 2: Of it exactly, And that old idea of a secure
Speaker 2: walled garden, you know, the corporate network gone pretty much dissolved.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: It's now this amorphous edge. It's fluid, it's everywhere, and
Speaker 2: companies are frankly struggling to keep up security wise.
Speaker 1: The old ways just don't cut it anymore, not at all.
Speaker 2: Which brings us to saw Secure Access service edge.
Speaker 1: Okay, sauce, we hear that term a lot Gartner coined it.
Speaker 2: They did. It's basically an architectural framework, a new way
Speaker 2: of thinking designed specific for this client to cloud world
Speaker 2: we're in.
Speaker 1: Now, So not just another buzzword, hopefully definitely not.
Speaker 2: It's it's really a necessary shift.
Speaker 1: So our mission today on this deep.
Speaker 2: Dive is to really unpack sauces for you. What's actually
Speaker 2: in it, why does it matter so much now, how
Speaker 2: does it work?
Speaker 1: And maybe what should you look for if you're considering it.
Speaker 2: Exactly. We're drawing insights from Sasize for Dummies versus Networks
Speaker 2: Special Edition. The goal is you walk away feeling like
Speaker 2: you've got a solid handle on it.
Speaker 1: Great, let's start with that perimeter shift because that really
Speaker 1: sets the scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, So the old model.
Speaker 1: Everyone's in the office right connected to the company data.
Speaker 2: Center, uh, using those private secure MPLS networks mostly.
Speaker 1: And the security was basically just being inside the walls
Speaker 1: pretty much.
Speaker 2: It was private fixed. If you were in, you were
Speaker 2: generally trusted. Simple. Maybe a bit too.
Speaker 1: Simple now, okay, so what changed? Everything you mentioned work
Speaker 1: from anywhere.
Speaker 2: That was huge, plus everyone adopting sauce apps like Salesforce
Speaker 2: Office three sixty five, you.
Speaker 1: Name it, and moving workloads to different clouds right aws
Speaker 1: Azure exactly.
Speaker 2: So suddenly you've got more people, more data, more everything
Speaker 2: outside the old walls than inside.
Speaker 1: So the perimeter isn't a place anymore.
Speaker 2: Not really, it's like software defined now. It pops up
Speaker 2: transiently around the user, the device, the app, wherever.
Speaker 1: They are individual virtual perimeters.
Speaker 2: That's the concept, yeh, a fundamental shift.
Speaker 1: And those old WANs, the NPLS networks that must be
Speaker 1: groaning under the strain.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, major pain points, super complex to manage it.
Speaker 1: Every branch expensive too, right, MPLS bandwidth isn't cheap, not.
Speaker 2: At all, and you often lack visibility agility. Plus that
Speaker 2: whole model of backhauling all Internet traffic to a central point, like.
Speaker 1: Forcing all international slites through one airport.
Speaker 2: Exactly, huge bottleneck doesn't work for distributed users needing cloud apps.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the old walls are down, the old roads
Speaker 1: are jammed. Enter SASE. You said it's not one thing
Speaker 1: but a package.
Speaker 2: Right, think of it as an integrated framework, a bundle
Speaker 2: of technologies designed to work together from the start, not.
Speaker 1: Just like duct taping different security tools.
Speaker 2: Now, that's the key difference. The integration is where the
Speaker 2: power comes from.
Speaker 1: So what's in this ASE toolkit?
Speaker 2: Okay? At the foundation you've got SD one software defined.
Speaker 1: Wants, right, we've heard of that, yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's evolved it's not just about saving money on
Speaker 2: connections anymore. It's full networking, smart traffic steering, even security
Speaker 2: built in, allowing direct Internet access safely from branches.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's the network foundation. What about the security layers?
Speaker 2: Then you later on things like SWGs secure web gateways.
Speaker 1: Protecting users browsing the Internet.
Speaker 2: Exactly, filtering URLs, blocking malware, preventing data loss for those
Speaker 2: remote users. And closely related are casbs Cloud Access Security
Speaker 2: Brokers cafsbs.
Speaker 1: They handle the cloud app side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they give you visibility and controller or how your
Speaker 2: sasaps are being used. Crucially, they help secure your data
Speaker 2: even when it's sitting in someone else's cloud system.
Speaker 1: That's important. Okay, what else?
Speaker 2: And a really big piece ZTNA zero trust network.
Speaker 1: Access, zero trust trusts nothing pretty much.
Speaker 2: It's not about building walls, it's about putting a bouncer
Speaker 2: at every single door inside. It constantly verifies identity, device
Speaker 2: health context before letting anyone access anything, so you.
Speaker 1: Only get access to exactly what you need and nothing more.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it hides applications from view unless you're explicitly allowed,
Speaker 2: massively reduces the attack surface if someone does get in
Speaker 2: they can't just wander around.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense, limits the blast radius totally.
Speaker 2: And finally, you integrate f waws firewall as a service,
Speaker 2: often using ngngfw's next gen firewalls.
Speaker 1: So advanced firewalling but delivered from the cloud.
Speaker 2: YEP, deep packet inspection, understanding applications, preventing intrusions, all that
Speaker 2: good stuff, but integrated into the safety fabric.
Speaker 1: Wow. So it's SD one, swgcasb Z ten A flaws
Speaker 1: all rolled into one.
Speaker 2: But the real magic, like you said, isn't just having
Speaker 2: the pieces, it's that they're.
Speaker 1: Integrated, designed to work together from the ground up exactly.
Speaker 2: It's a single cohesive system, not of Frankenstein's monster of
Speaker 2: different security boxes. That integration makes it faster, smarter, more comprehensive.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to make this all work smoothly, there must
Speaker 1: be some core principles, right, some architectural must haves.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's a kind of secret sauce to doing SaaS
Speaker 2: properly for performance and security.
Speaker 1: Give us the ingredients.
Speaker 2: First off, hardware neutrality, moving away from needing specific proprietary
Speaker 2: boxes for.
Speaker 1: Everything, ah, avoiding appliance sprawl exactly.
Speaker 2: I think flexible software. You can run on standard hardware,
Speaker 2: VMS containers, one integrated stack, handling, routing, security optimization, everything
Speaker 2: much simpler, less.
Speaker 1: Costly, okay, flexibility, what else?
Speaker 2: Performance is key? So single pass execution this is crucial.
Speaker 2: Single pass Yeah. Instead of a data packet being stopped, unpacked, inspected, repacked,
Speaker 2: then sent to the next box to do.
Speaker 1: It all again, which sounds slow, very.
Speaker 2: With single pass, the packet is unpacked once all the
Speaker 2: security engines, firewall, IPS, malware detection inspected in parallel. Then
Speaker 2: it's a repacked and.
Speaker 1: Sent on like an efficient assembly line versus separate workshops.
Speaker 2: Perfect analogy, dramatically lower latency, much better performance.
Speaker 1: Makes sense. What about scaling? Needs change?
Speaker 2: Right, So you need elastic scale out and a design
Speaker 2: using containers and micro services. Think lego blocks instead of
Speaker 2: a solid.
Speaker 1: Statue, easy to add a remove capacity exactly.
Speaker 2: Spin up resources, scale horizontally, deploy temporary branches in the
Speaker 2: cloud almost instantly, super agile and resilient.
Speaker 1: It's cloud native thinking and for users everywhere.
Speaker 2: Global distribution is vital. You need SaaS points of presence
Speaker 2: or pops spread around the world close to your users.
Speaker 2: Reduces latency, improves their experience.
Speaker 1: Local access basically.
Speaker 2: YEP, and related to security in line encryption, SaaS has
Speaker 2: to be able to handle encrypted traffic, decrypt, inspect based
Speaker 2: on policy, then re encrypted scale without needing special hardware.
Speaker 1: Can't let threats hide in encrypted tunnels precisely.
Speaker 2: And finally, segmentation with multi tenancy, SAS needs to isolate
Speaker 2: traffic internally and for service providers, multi tenancy allows them
Speaker 2: to securely serve multiple customers on shared infrastructure, keeping everyone separate.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's a solid foundation. Now let's talk more about
Speaker 1: the security capabilities. How does SAS actually make things more
Speaker 1: secure day to day?
Speaker 2: It brings advanced tools together intelligently take advanced threat protection,
Speaker 2: the integrated IDPs, intrusion detection and prevention.
Speaker 1: Systems, so not just spotting attacks, but stopping them.
Speaker 2: Right using everything from known attack signatures to anomaly detection,
Speaker 2: behavioral analysis, sandboxing suspicious files, all working together, and crucially
Speaker 2: being able to decrypt TLS traffic to see.
Speaker 1: Inside because so much traffic is encrypted.
Speaker 2: Now exactly, you can't protect what you can't see.
Speaker 1: What about protecting basic things like browsing or DNAs aocin enhances.
Speaker 2: That too, DNA security features like dns sec filtering known
Speaker 2: bad domains help prevent basic hijacking and fishing. And then
Speaker 2: there's remote browser isolation or RBI.
Speaker 1: RBI that sounds interesting. How does that work?
Speaker 2: It's pretty clever. Instead of your browser directly loading a
Speaker 2: web page, the browsing happens on a remote, isolated server
Speaker 2: in the cloud. Only a safe image of the page
Speaker 2: is streamed to your device.
Speaker 1: So if there's malware on the web page.
Speaker 2: It detonates harmlessly in that isolated cloud container, not on
Speaker 2: your machine. Your endpoint stays clean.
Speaker 1: Nitt trick. Okay. What about controlling data and understanding user actions.
Speaker 2: That's where ueboor it comes in. User and entity behavior analytics.
Speaker 1: Behavior analytics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it learns what's normal activity for users and devices,
Speaker 2: then flags anomalies so you can spot compromised accounts or
Speaker 2: insider threats based on weird behavior.
Speaker 1: Not just static rules, more context aware security exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which ties into sensitive data protection. Says can understand
Speaker 2: the content text of data, is it sensitive, who's accessing it,
Speaker 2: where is it going, and apply policies automatically block uploads,
Speaker 2: force encryption, watermark files based on risk.
Speaker 1: And this all falls under that UTM umbrella. Sometimes unified
Speaker 1: threat management often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, UTM is just a way of saying, you've got
Speaker 2: a comprehensive suite firewall, IPS, malware protection, DLP, the works
Speaker 2: all integrated.
Speaker 1: Got it, so a very layered, integrated defense. How does
Speaker 1: all this tech actually help businesses transform? Though? What's the
Speaker 1: link to bigger goals?
Speaker 2: It's a massive enabler. Think about multi cloud, it's complex
Speaker 2: connecting securely to aws, asure Google Cloud, maybe private clouds nightmare.
Speaker 2: Sometimes SACY simplifies that traumatically. You can automatically discover and
Speaker 2: set up secure connections, managing both the data path and
Speaker 2: the control signals.
Speaker 1: So it smooths out multi.
Speaker 2: Cloud adoption definitely. And it brings cloud dated flexibility, automatic
Speaker 2: resource provisioning, consistent user experience wherever they are, simpler IT management.
Speaker 2: It just fits the modern way way of operating.
Speaker 1: So you get multi cloud readiness, built in security, better routing,
Speaker 1: smart traffic steerings.
Speaker 2: Sophisticated visibility analytics. Yeah, all those modern capabilities bundle together.
Speaker 1: Okay, talk about simplification for the IT teams out there
Speaker 1: feeling buried. How does SAC help with management and crucially
Speaker 1: the budget huge impact here.
Speaker 2: Faster administration and deployment is a big one. Automation handles
Speaker 2: a lot of the setup and monitoring policies are consistent everywhere.
Speaker 1: Less manual tinkering at each site wayless.
Speaker 2: And then there's single pain visibility. This is gold one
Speaker 2: dashboard to see everything, network performance, security events, user activity
Speaker 2: across your entire estate, offices, clouds, remote users.
Speaker 1: Moving from managing boxes to managing the user experience exactly.
Speaker 2: Which gives you complete control. You see issues instantly, you
Speaker 2: can change policies quickly, and this all drives down costs.
Speaker 2: How so well, Capital costs drop because you ditch most
Speaker 2: of that hardware appliance sprawl. Bandwidth costs often decrease using
Speaker 2: direct Internet acts instead of expensive mpls everywhere it. Staff
Speaker 2: costs go down thanks to automation and easier management.
Speaker 1: And fewer security breaches must save money too.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Fewer breaches plus ZT and A shrinks the attack
Speaker 2: surface dramatically, and finally scalability costs. Need a new branch
Speaker 2: office or connect new cloud resource. Spin it up quickly
Speaker 2: and easily in the SAT cloud, much cheaper and faster.
Speaker 1: Let's make it concrete. Tell us about Acmebank. They had
Speaker 1: the old setup.
Speaker 2: Yep, Traditional Wan struggling with mobile banking demands, adopting cloud apps,
Speaker 2: supporting work from home. The usual story needed better security, performance, visibility,
Speaker 2: and less reliance on old telco lines. So they went
Speaker 2: SaaS they did to play a single platform, integrating everything,
Speaker 2: routing sd WAN security layers like Firewall, swgcsp DLP, even
Speaker 2: RBI and UEBA all delivered as a cloud native service
Speaker 2: and the result much simpler infrastructure. They could rapidly roll
Speaker 2: out secure access to home offices, temporary locations. Security was stronger,
Speaker 2: application performance improved, failover was better. Users got a consistent
Speaker 2: experience everywhere. It solved their core problems.
Speaker 1: That really illustrates the benefits. So if an organization is
Speaker 1: looking at SaaS, what are the key things to focus
Speaker 1: on best practices?
Speaker 2: Critically? Look for a true single software stack. Was it
Speaker 2: built integrated from day one or is it just different
Speaker 2: products stitched together?
Speaker 1: Why does that matter so much?
Speaker 2: Performance usually and fewer potential security gaps between the components.
Speaker 2: Easier management too. A ground up design.
Speaker 1: Is generally better, Okay, unified architecture, what else?
Speaker 2: Focus on contextual security and access? How well does it
Speaker 2: use identity, device posture, location, maybe even UiB insights to
Speaker 2: make access decisions that Role based access control RBAC needs
Speaker 2: to be really granular.
Speaker 1: And dynamic adaptive security right, and.
Speaker 2: Think about the future scalability for new technologies. Is the
Speaker 2: platform ready for IoT five G, whatever comes next? These
Speaker 2: things demand huge processing power and flexible secure. It needs
Speaker 2: to be future proof.
Speaker 1: Good point, So boiling it all down, what's the checklist
Speaker 1: for a good SaaS solution?
Speaker 2: Okay, key things flexible delivery, cloud on prem hybrid, check
Speaker 2: single pass architecture for performance, check global pops for low latency.
Speaker 1: Check single management console.
Speaker 2: Essential, future proof design, yes, elastic, scalable pricing important. Does
Speaker 2: it have integrated DLP UBR RBI. Look for those advanced features.
Speaker 1: And independence crucial.
Speaker 2: Needs to be independent of specific cloud providers, hardware vendors
Speaker 2: or network transports. Gives you freedom and avoids lock in.
Speaker 1: Fantastic. It really feels like SaaS isn't just incremental, It's
Speaker 1: a fundamental rething.
Speaker 2: It really is. It tackles the reality of today's distributed
Speaker 2: cloud first world head on by merging networking insecurity into
Speaker 2: one cloud native service.
Speaker 1: So we've covered a lot. AS is clearly here to
Speaker 1: stay and essential for modern enterprises.
Speaker 2: No doubt. It addresses the core security and connectivity challenges we.
Speaker 1: Face now, which leads to a final thought. As tech
Speaker 1: keeps blurring boundaries, think quantum computing, breaking encryption, or maybe
Speaker 1: fully immersive metaverses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whole new frontiers or edges.
Speaker 1: Exactly how does this trust nothing idea evolve beyond sas?
Speaker 1: What new edges are going to pop up that we
Speaker 1: haven't even imagined yet that will need securing?
Speaker 2: That's the multi billion dollar question. Isn't it something for
Speaker 2: everyone to ponder as they look at securing their own
Speaker 2: digital landscape today and tomorrow. SaaS is the path now,
Speaker 2: but the evolution won't stop.
Speaker 1: There a lot to think about. That wraps up this
Speaker 1: deep dive on SASE. We hope this gave you a
Speaker 1: clear view of this critical technology. Until next time, stay curious.