Over the past several years, organizations have been expanding their multi-edge networking strategies to enable new hybrid work realities and support work-from-anywhere (WFA) users as they become increasingly dependent on cloud applications and environments to do their jobs. However, as these networks grow to meet new business demands, the attack surface increases.

The result is a growing gap between network functionality and security coverage that inherently exposes organizations to more points of compromise and degrades the user experience of those remote workers who still rely on the conventional, virtual private network–only solutions to access the network. This is usually because all their application traffic still needs to be backhauled through the network to receive security protections and access controls.

Supporting this new distributed and performance-heavy strategy is now fundamental to succeeding in today’s digital marketplace. Selecting the right SASE vendor can mean the difference between operational success and struggling to keep all the essential elements working together. In theory, SASE provides WFA users with secure access to the cloud no matter where they are. However, not all SASE solutions are equal when it comes to scalability, security, and orchestration. The best SASE solution won’t increase overhead by adding the technologies that need to be implemented and the IT staff required to get them to work as an integrated system.