With hybrid cloud adoption continues to become mainstream, organizations should be aware of the challenges that they may encounter while implementing SASE.
Considered to be the consolidation of various tools as well as methodologies, SASE began gaining momentum around 2019. As per Gartner, 40% of organizations will have a strategy in place to adopt SASE by 2024. But, despite showing some promises to enhance a secure enterprise infrastructure, there are a few challenges that lie ahead while considering its implementation and practices in a hybrid cloud environment. Some of the major challenges associated with its implementation include making a paradigm shift, aligning responsibilities appropriately, and ensuring that organizations choose the correct vendors and products to support their desired outcomes.
Hybrid cloud models require a new approach to cybersecurity, including tools and practices. With the integration of SASE, organizations are abandoning their WAN-style networking models and are leaning into the use of the internet as the primary model of communication. It means that organizations will no longer own their network, further complicating their cybersecurity.
Here are three challenges that organizations will encounter when incorporating SASE in their hybrid cloud environment:
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Increasing collaboration between security and networking departments
Just as the push given to DevOps and DevSecOps to break down the silos between the teams, SASE requires cybersecurity teams to revisit the roles and responsibilities and, more importantly, increase collaboration among networking and security teams. This is especially true when organizations have different security members responsible for managing the on-premise infrastructure and security while another one focuses on the cloud. It also includes cloud-native environments where the developers own more of their tech stack via infrastructure-as-a-code deployments.
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Steering through the constantly growing tools ecosystem
The second challenge that organizations face in integrating SASE is steering through the growing and complex landscape associated with the environment. As SASE is fundamentally a blend of tools and methodologies, it increases complexity and confuses the vendor ecosystem for most organizations to navigate.
Even after settling on a specific set of tools to implement, organizations need to look at their existing tech stack. It involves analyzing duplicative capabilities that can further complicate their operations for organizations advancing towards a more modern cloud-driven SASE tool paradigm. Failure to properly consolidate tools can lead to disjointed capabilities, tool sprawl, and fragmented enterprise architecture. Furthermore, industry experts state that security teams will also have to deal with side effects of tool sprawl that include burnout, frustration, fatigue making critical security risks prone to attacks. Hybrid cloud environments will exacerbate this challenge as legacy security tools often do not support or are ideal for securing cloud environments.
Also Read: Password-less Technology Can Help Fight Phishing Attacks
Surveys also show that security teams are dealing with the side effects of tool sprawl, including fatigue, burnout, and frustration, which may leave critical security risks falling off the radar as teams struggle to keep up. Hybrid cloud environments exacerbate this challenge due to legacy security tools, most often, do not support nor are ideal for securing cloud environments.
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Infusing trust in SASE
Many security professionals still stumble upon the issue of trust when embracing the SASE approach for hybrid cloud environments. Thanks to SASE’ heavy consolidation functionality and goals of tooling, organizations have to put a great deal of trust in SASE providers while considering their network and security needs. Hence, organizations should do their research to ensure they partner with a reputable vendor, define service level agreements, have widespread market adoption, and act as a trusted partner.
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