Value SASE

Effective security is inherently valuable, but how do we accurately estimate that value? How do we quantify the value of a solution for an unknown risk impact? Former President of the US, Ronald Reagan, was quoted as saying: "Information is the oxygen of the modern time. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire; it wafts across the electrified borders." If information is oxygen, what is the accurate value of oxygen to human life? Effective security pays for itself in reducing risk, liability, and loss of unknown quantities by protecting that oxygen or—in this case—non-public information.

To evaluate SASE in a value proposition or ROI, the investment should be first quantified. Steven Ross, Executive Principal of Risk Masters Inc., points to the Return on Security Investment (ROSI), which is a calculable assessment as a way of identifying the monetary value of the security investment. This may be important to the CFO or investors as a model for understanding financially the inherent value of secure IT investments. More information can be found at the following link: https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/past-issues/2011/what-is-the-value-of-security#1.

Without effective security solutions, an organization will cease to achieve a primary ROI for time and capital invested. A recommended value proposition for security is the ability to conduct, without obstruction, the primary business of the organization on whose behalf the secure solution is employed. SASE provides cost-effective security and builds value by reducing inefficiencies in previously developed generations of secure communications. Cost reductions can be achieved by reducing labor, time, capital, focus, outages, performance issues, and educational requirements for staff members trying to build their own perfect technology. Simply speaking, the investment required to develop secure technology solutions in-house with homegrown or best-of-breed market solutions has been providing a negative ROI, which has driven the market to leverage an MSP that specializes in a specific technology. This method also allows for the transfer of liability to the MSP, which provides some relief for executives not choosing to develop their own secure communications solution in-house.

Leveraging SASE with SD-WAN prepares networking and security solutions for a future of automated and secure IT provisioning with real-time operations remediation. To eliminate the inefficiencies that every network has experienced, the solution starts with abstracted components and the disaggregation of data and control-plane activity (separating components). By leveraging a deconstructive process, smaller changes may be made, reducing the risk of any one change causing a major impact to secure network communications. The smaller the change, the quicker the change can provide business value. The target process is analogous to a garden-pruning process that makes small changes until the overall desired effect is achieved. Unlike physical garden pruning, small changes in SASE can be reversed quickly if a negative outcome is realized. Overall, this methodology allows IT organizations to move much quickly than we could even 5 years ago, which allows us to do more with less at the pace of the market.

Orchestration allows for solutions to be templated. The orchestrator allows templates to be overlain upon any of the logical components in the overall solution or service. The creation of a template-based design offers rapid deployment across the abstracted solution. An additional benefit of orchestration is that template continuity may be enforced by the orchestrator and any variance in behavior be reported to security operations systems for tracking and mitigation. This process allows the achievement of compliance with approved network or security designs and immediately identifies violations for action.

SASE provides value in efficiencies, scale, automation, enforcement, and orchestration over similar secure communications technologies in production today. The overall value reduces the design, build, deploy, and operate labor required to keep an organization communicating securely.

Overall, the value of a SASE solution lies in its ability to reduce productivity losses caused by security risks or threats. SASE integrates independent security solutions for a holistic approach that can be automated, reducing the amount of human labor required while taming a mission that was once near impossible.

In the following section, I hope that you will learn to embrace SASE for the inherent benefits it provides to your organization.