SASE

What is SASE?

SASE isn’t just the latest buzzword. There are important business benefits enterprises realize from a SASE architecture.

• Enhanced security:  As organizations shift to a cloud-first approach, SASE enforces security policies consistently across all traffic and locations, with inspection performed directly in the cloud. It safeguards remote access and protects enterprise data from cyber threats, while minimizing the attack surface and enhancing threat detection and response.
• Improved business productivity and customer satisfaction: With SASE, organizations can streamline their network infrastructure based on advanced SD-WAN capabilities. By eliminating the limitations and complexity of conventional router-based networks, SASE introduces the agility needed for digital transformation, resulting in notable enhancements in both application performance and reliability.
• Zero trust security model: SASE embraces the zero trust security model by requiring continuous verification of user identity before granting access to resources. Zero trust is particularly relevant in today’s threat landscape, where traditional security models are no longer sufficient to protect against sophisticated cyber threats.
• Simplified management and reduced complexity: SASE streamlines deployment, as well as network and security management. It consolidates multiple, disparate networking and security functions (like SD-WAN, SWG, CASB, and FWaaS) into a single platform. This convergence reduces the need for managing a sprawl of vendor-specific hardware appliances and point solutions.

• Enable and secure hybrid working: As employees connect from anywhere and from any device, ZTNA provides consistent policy enforcement and access control for users and devices. It supports least privilege access and verifies that no user is trusted by default. Unlike a VPN that gives broad access to the corporate network, ZTNA limits user access to only specific applications or microsegments that have been approved for the user.
• Enforce zero trust everywhere with universal ZTNA: Universal ZTNA (universal zero trust network access or uZTNA) extends zero trust principles to on-premises locations and IoT devices by integrating SASE with AI-powered NAC capabilities. This integration enables comprehensive visibility and monitoring of all network-connected devices, including IoT. With identity-based segmentation, universal ZTNA facilitates that users and devices can only access network resources appropriate to their roles. The system continuously monitors network activity, allowing real-time adjustments to access permissions and rapid detection of suspicious or malicious behavior.
• Optimize performance for global and distributed users: SASE leverages a globally distributed cloud architecture and edge computing, enabling users to connect to the nearest PoP  (point of presence). This reduces latency and optimizes application performance, especially for users in remote locations.
• Adopt cloud and SaaS applications: SASE enables direct, secure access to cloud applications (e.g., AWS, Microsoft 365, Salesforce) without backhauling traffic through a centralized data center. It optimizes performance through edge computing and SD-WAN while providing security services like CASB to control cloud app usage and protect data.
• Safeguard users against web-based threats: To protect organizations against web-based threats such as ransomware and phishing, SWG monitors and inspects traffic through URL filtering, malicious code detection, and web access control, establishing policies that restrict access to specific categories of websites, including adult content, gambling platforms, and sites known to pose significant risks.
• Secure access to SaaS apps: When users can access both approved and unapproved SaaS applications, a CASB (cloud access security broker) provides visibility into these activities, identifies shadow IT, and enforces organizational SaaS policies, safeguarding sensitive data from potential exposure.
• Protect data and improve compliance: In addition to CASB, SASE includes DLP capabilities, helping organizations monitor user activity and control the movement of sensitive data. Its unified platform also simplifies auditing and reporting, ensuring compliance with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS.
• Connect and secure branch offices: Traditional architectures often use MPLS links to connect branch offices to headquarters. In this architecture, cloud traffic must be backhauled to the data center to perform a security inspection, which increases latency, and therefore impacts application performance. With the SD-WAN part of SASE, organizations intelligently steer traffic to the cloud, directly from branch offices, and implement a robust and flexible way to connect branch offices to headquarters. Advanced secure SD-WAN solutions with a built-in next-generation firewall can even replace legacy branch firewalls providing capabilities such as IDS/IPS and DDoS protection.

HPE accelerates the path to SASE with an edge-to-cloud zero trust framework. Unlike siloed zero trust products, our unified platform brings together SD-WAN, SSE, and NAC to enforce consistent policies for every user and device—on-premises or remote.

The SSE portfolio delivers ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and DLP, all managed from a single interface, while our cloud-native NAC extends zero trust to all devices—even unmanaged or IoT—through AI-powered observability, authentication, and dynamic segmentation, providing secure access and consistent enforcement across diverse environments.

Our AI-driven secure SD-WAN solutions combine advanced networking features such as tunnel bonding, best path selection, WAN optimization, and multi-cloud networking with built-in security, including next-generation firewall, IDS/IPS, adaptive DDoS defense, URL filtering, and role-based segmentation. They integrate natively with SSE for a complete unified SASE architecture, or with third-party SSE partners for an open, flexible approach.