The Right Steps to SASE: Understand Where You’re Going

The following is an excerpt from Netskope’s recent book Designing a SASE Architecture for Dummies. This is the first in a series of seven posts detailing a set of incremental steps for implementing a well-functioning SASE architecture.

When undertaking a new project, the need to deliver quantifiable results today (or at least very quickly!) is a significant challenge facing a CIO, CISO, or anyone with high-level responsibility for enterprise networking and security. Unlike typical IT projects where long development cycles may be tolerated, security must demonstrate value right away and deliver quick wins. Vulnerability is scary.

SASE addresses that vulnerability using an architecture that reflects the way security must be delivered now and also reflects the increasing (and favorable) convergence of security and networking. But true SASE is a long-term evolutionary process. Your organization will grow into SASE, not achieve it overnight. The key to your success is, therefore, to deliver a succession of tangible victories — deliberate leaps forward — that repeatedly expand and strengthen your organization’s security in ways that are demonstrably meaningful. 

But to do that you must know where you are starting from and where you are going. By approaching SASE as a series of informed investments and implementations, each game-changing in its own right, you can deliver continuous, dramatic results as you steer your enterprise away from its parochial data-centric worldview to one able to fully and securely reap the many benefits of the cloud.

If you’d like to read the complete Designing a SASE Architecture for Dummies book, you can download a complimentary copy here!