The Future Of Network Security Is In The Cloud

By Analysts Neil MacDonald, Lawrence Orans, Joe Skorupa, Gartner

Digital business transformation inverts network and security service design patterns, shifting the focal point to the identity of the user and/or device — not the data center. Security and risk management leaders need a converged cloud-delivered secure access service edge to address this shift.

Key Findings

• Network security architectures that place the enterprise data center at the center of connectivity requirements are an inhibitor to the dynamic access requirements of digital business.
• Digital business and edge computing have inverted access requirements, with more users, devices, applications, services and data located outside of an enterprise than inside.
• Complexity, latency and the need to decrypt and inspect encrypted traffic once will increase demand for consolidation of networking and security-as-a-service capabilities into a cloud-delivered secure access service edge (SASE, pronounced “sassy”).
• Inspecting and understanding data context will be required for applying a SASE policy.
• To provide low-latency access to users, devices and cloud services anywhere, enterprises need SASE offerings with a worldwide fabric of points of presence (POPs) and peering relationships.