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Co-authored by Mark Day and Jeff Brainard
In recent blogs, we’ve explored the role of Security Service Edge (SSE) technologies as part of a SASE architecture, and the key differences between SSE and SASE. But so far, we’ve focused more on overall functionality than on its realization and what SSE means from a cloud design and implementation perspective. In this post, we shift gears to put a spotlight on networking and infrastructure as it relates to security clouds. Let’s start by stepping back and looking at legacy enterprise networking.
What’s Changed with the Cloud?
Until fairly recently, most enterprises hosted their data and applications in enterprise-managed data centers. Accordingly, the role of enterprise networking and infrastructure leaders was primarily to support secure connectivity to the data center. The security services inspecting traffic and enforcing policies had certain features in common: They were protecting traffic flowing to and from the data center, and they were packaged as appliances running in the data center.
Recent years have seen the data and applications of interest migrate out of the data center and into the cloud. Two examples are Microsoft Office 365 for office productivity tasks and Salesforce for sales automation and customer relationship management. Accordingly, it’s no longer realistic to treat the data center as the only concern for connectivity, as well as security. Instead, the primary focus becomes the user and the user’s varied requirements. The emphasis is now on an integrated platform of connectivity with embedded security services. From the user’s perspective, this architecture simplifies safe and secure access to web, cloud, SaaS, and private applications.
From the perspective of enterprise IT, SSE is appealing because it replaces a jumble of different connectivity and security technologies. Perhaps more importantly, the traditional approach is no longer workable: A collection of physical or virtual appliances daisy-chained in a data center simply won’t work after the apps, users, and data have moved away. SSE can become how every user reaches every service. It combines the best aspects of an enterprise WAN and the internet, with high-performance secure connectiv