What is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?

SASE (pronounced sassy) is a new term coined by Gartner to describe the convergence of the WAN edge and network security.

Security paradigms are changing as more users, devices, applications, services and data move outside the secure corporate perimeter. This drives many organizations to route this external traffic to a dedicated cloud for security processing, rather than backhauling the traffic to a corporate data center for security processing. SASE is being adopted by organizations with many branch and remote locations to drive simplified security management and cost savings through reduced backhaul. SASE reduces the requirements to install and manage a complete tech stack in each branch location, and policy instead can be unified and managed globally within the SASE cloud. SD-WAN adoption can be a key enabler for SASE.

Gartner envisions that SASE will increasingly include security functionality such as SWG, CASB, DNS, ZTNA, branch firewall and remote browser isolation.