Cisco SASE Architecture

What is Cisco SASE?

The convergence of network and security functions closer to end devices, at the cloud edge, is known as a service model called Cisco SASE. Cisco SASE combines cloud delivered networking and security functions to provide secure access to applications for all users or devices, from anywhere and at any time.

The Cisco SASE architecture includes the following basic components:

• Networking: Cisco SD-WAN, Site-to-site VPN, and Remote Access.
• Security: Firewall, Intrusion Prevention, DNS security, Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), and so on.
• Visibility: End to end visibility into performance and security metrics of the SASE solution.

SASE architecture combines networking, client connectivity, security, and observability capabilities in a single offer and helps you to:

• Connect and secure access to applications, data, and the internet for remote workers, fixed locations, any internet-facing devices, and workloads.
• Gain end-to-end observability to applications over any network or cloud.
• Optimize performance by ensuring the fastest, most reliable, and secure path to the cloud.
• Adopt Zero Trust network access (ZTNA) by verifying the identity of users and the health of their devices to secure access to applications on a per-session basis.
• Make business more agile by using the cloud to remove complexity from your infrastructure and provide immediate scalability.

Cisco SASE Benefits and Challenges

The Cisco SASE architecture provides major benefits for modern organizations with hybrid cloud environments by bringing network and security functions to the edge, closer to users and devices and providing identity verification, segmentation and policy enforcement while reducing the complexity and providing end-to-end visibility. 

These are some of the benefits of the Cisco SASE architecture:

• Connect any user or device to any application from anywhere
• Use comprehensive on-premises and cloud-based networking and security services
• User or device identity and policy enforcement
• Streamlined user access to the internet and business applications

These are some of the challenges of the SASE architecture:

• Device and software compatibility
• Connectivity for branch sites and remote workers
• Identification and policy enforcement
• Application experience