Extra tags: Digital Transformation
Remote working was not a choice during the pandemic but as the world enters the endemic phase, it looks as though it’s here to stay. Whether at the demand of employees or employers seeing the boost in productivity it provides, many organisations have opted to adopt a flexible hybrid working model. But if the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that remote working isn’t all unicorns and rainbows.
When remote working was at its peak and COVID-19 stopped the world in its tracks, the emergence of the cyber pandemic, the negative cybersecurity impacts resulting from threat actors seizing the global crisis to launch treacherous cyber exploits, made life even harder. IT teams that were scrambling to help their organisations operate online now had to deal with the increased possibility of a cyber breach as changing work styles and behaviours create new security vulnerabilities, piling on problems to their already full plates.
Even in 2022, when organisations have gotten the grasp of remote work, cyber threats – from online scams, malicious domains and phishing, to data breaches and ever-evolving ransomware attacks – are still very much a problem and will continue to wreak havoc for some time.
While we are unsure of how the cyber pandemic will progress, the one thing we do know is that organisations have no chance of protecting themselves from sneaky intruders while still depending on VPNs and hardware firewalls.
What is SASE?
How can an IT team secure a highly mobile workforce while protecting a mixture of on-premises and cloud-based services, without incurring too much cost? With SASE, of course! Secure Access Service Edge, or more commonly known as SASE, is a cloud-based IT security model that combines Wide-Area Networking (WAN) and other network security services and delivers them on the cloud edge.
There are primarily five capabilities included in most SASE offerings, all of which are needed to protect an organisation’s hybrid workforce:
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Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN): Establishes private corporate networks using MPLS circuits. Allows enterprises to flexibly create and manage their network infrastructure.
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Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): Connects users to applications using real-time verification to protect against potential breaches.
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Secure web gateway (SWG): Filters web traffic, blocks unauthorised user behaviour and enforces company security policies to prevent cyber threats.
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Firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS): Protects cloud applications and infrastructure by delivering security capabilities such as URL filtering, intrusion prevention and more via the cloud to filter out potentially malicious network traffic.
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Cloud access security broker (CASB): Secures confidential data, reveals shadow IT, and ensures compliance for cloud-hosted services.
With SASE, you can reduce the cost and complexity of hardware network appliances by moving your network security to the edge. This way, your IT teams have an easier time securing your hybrid workforce without too much of a headache.
Now finding the right SASE solution may be a daunting task, as any digital adoption is but Cloudflare has got your back with Cloudflare One, their Zero Trust network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform offers simple deployment and management, consistent security and speed, and integration to the solutions you already have in place. With Cloudflare One, you can connect users, applications, and offices from anywhere around the world securely.
Organisations that employ Cloudflare One will be able to notice a reduced attack surface of up to 91%, a lower TCO and an increase in onboarding speed. Hybrid working is made more reliable and secure with a SASE solution in place. With Cloudflare One, it is a single platform to rule them all!
Eager to protect your hybrid environment? Head on over to the Cloudflare website to learn more.