The Best SASE SD-WAN Vendors: What is SASE?

What is SASE? Who are the best SASE SD-WAN vendors?

In the video below, Mike Smith explains SASE (secure access service edge), and also tells you some tips on how SASE vendors differ in their product offerings.

Want Mike’s recommendations on the SASE vendors your company should be quoting? Click the button below and ask him today.

About Mike
Mike Smith is the Founder and President of AeroCom and has been helping companies with telecom and cloud services since 1999. He has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards and in 2011, he was honored as one of the top 40 business people in Orange County, CA., under 40 years old. You can also hear him as the host of the popular Information Technology podcast, ITsmiths with Mike Smith. Follow Mike on LinkedIn, Twitter or SpiceWorks.

Transcript

You’ve heard the term SASE out there, and you’re wondering what it is.

And you might have heard the term SD-WAN and you’re wondering what that is.

Well, I’ve got a lot of questions about that recently, so I wanted to make a video about it. What is SASE? Secure Access Service Edge.

Shortcut

But before I get started on that, just a quick reminder, if you have questions on any of this stuff, if you’re a midsize company and you’re looking into SASE, if you want to take a shortcut, just contact me. I’m a broker for all the major service providers, and I can help you and feel free to watch the video, there is some great information here. But if you just want to take a shortcut, contact me, I’m happy to help you and give you some recommendations on the best SASE vendors to quote for your company. But, more information at the end of this video, back to what is SASE.

So, Secure Access Service Edge, what is it?

A little research might help

Well, if you’ve seen any of my other videos on SD-WAN, Secure Access Service Edge, is essentially what back in the day, before the term SASE was even invented, what I used to call a cloud-enabled SD-WAN solution, with built-in cloud-based security, that is essentially SASE. But since then, they’ve actually added a term for it on Gartner, and around the industry. So now there’s an official term for that. But that’s what I refer to in my other videos.

So a good video to maybe watch, of one of my older ones, is the video where I explain the three main types of SD-WAN architecture. So that’s when I touch on it a little bit there, and that might give you some good background for this video.

Defining SASE

And in that sense of what SASE is, it’s a cloud-enabled SD-WAN solution where the SD-WAN vendor deploys an appliance at each one of your company’s locations. And that appliance connects up to that vendor’s closest geographic gateway the cloud. So by doing so you have a device on site and you also have a gateway in the cloud that you’re connecting up to. So, you’re controlling both ends of the communication there.

So once you connect an onsite appliance to the SD-WAN service providers nearest cloud gateway, that allows you to do a lot of things like outbound and inbound traffic prioritization and load balancing, and all kinds of cool SD-WAN features.

But I’m sure if you’re on this video watching, trying to learn more about SASE, you’re more interested in the security part. So what it also does when you connect up to the service provider’s nearest cloud gateway at the cloud level, is you access all this service provider’s security package.

Well, what does that include? Well, that depends on the vendor.

Firewall as a Service

So some of the things it can include are firewall as a service like full UTM next-gen firewall as a service based in the cloud. So all of your network traffic is being filtered at the cloud level before it hits your internet circuit. So that’s cool because the advantages is none of the bad traffic so to speak even comes to your internet connection that you have. So none of your bandwidth that you’re buying from your ISP is taken up with bad traffic. So in essence, you’ll get faster bandwidth if you do all of your firewall filtering in the cloud, as opposed to on-prem. So that’s just one feature it can have.

Secure Web Gateway with URL Filtering

Another feature that they can provide you with is a secure web gateway with URL filtering. So you can do all of your content filtering in the cloud in addition to the fire walling.

Anti-Malware, IPS & IDS

Another couple of features are things like anti-malware and intrusion prevention. IPS IDS might be included as well.

MDR

Now, one thing that might be included which opens up a whole nother can of worms is MDR, managed detection and response. And if you want to learn more about MDR, you can watch my other videos on MDR, but that’s kind of a whole other box of things that that can include.

And what does MDR include? That can be a lot of different things. So that could be managed SOC. That could be penetration testing that could be phishing replication. That could be all, all kinds of different things and it could include network. It could include a log like a managed SIEM, things like that. So as you’re shopping for a SASE service, you should really ask a lot of questions both internally and externally of the vendor.

So internally, you should be asking what security services do we actually want to have that the SASE vendor provides us? And then be asking that vendor all of these questions. So there isn’t one set of security features that every single SASE vendor includes. It really depends on the vendor. And the point of this video is I really want you to start thinking about what security features does your company need, and then find a SASE vendor that includes that.

Secure Remote Access

Another feature that you might want to think about that’s obviously a big deal with the pandemic is secure remote access. With the SASE solution, most SASE vendors also include secure remote access. So instead of sending a gateway to all your sites, they do that, but they also include a VPN software for your remote users to VPN into the SD-WAN network and access all of the security features, which is obviously a big deal if you have a lot of employees still working from home from the pandemic.

So just some things to think about there.

Have more questions?

Again, if you want to know which SASE vendors your company should be quoting based on all the stuff that I talked about, don’t Google it, don’t research it for hours, it’s going to take you forever and you’ll probably end up finding the wrong ones anyway, just reach out and contact me, either email me or shoot me an email, give me a call (714.593.0011). I’m happy to help you.

I’ll ask you a few questions and really quickly I’ll tell you a handful of vendors that I think are the best fit for your company and then I’ll also introduce you to the right people within those organizations to help make sure you get a great quote. You get all the right pricing included. You get all the features that you want included, things like that.

And the nice thing is, if you decide you want to go with one of those vendors and sign up with one of them, you don’t have to pay our company anything. Those vendors pay us our broker fee. There’s absolutely no reason not to reach out and just at least see what I have to say. And I’ll probably help you save a lot of time and get you with the right vendor.

So if you liked the video, don’t forget to hit the like button down below and subscribe to our channel so that you don’t have to see those ads anymore. Once we get to a thousand subscribers, I can get rid of all the ads that you’re seeing on this video. So subscribe to the channel, like the video, and I’ll catch you on the next one.