Secure Service Edge for Hybrid Work Environments

As employees use hybrid work environments to access applications and information, organizations must secure remote workers. It can be achieved by using a secure edge service.

SSE is a cloud native architecture that combines networking and security services into a single platform. This allows security to be covered across SaaS cloud applications, private applications and cloud services from a single policy.

Access Control

A comprehensive solution for secure service edges (SSEs) is necessary as employees and partners are increasingly using the internet and mobile devices to access data, content, applications and other resources. SSE protects end users from unauthorized and malicious access, enables secure access to web, cloud, and private applications, and provides digital experience monitoring.

SSE is a cloud-based platform that integrates networking and security functions, such as software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), firewall as a service, secure web gateways (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), and zero trust network access (ZTNA). It offers consistent application and security enforcement across locations and users while delivering centralized visibility into traffic.

SSE also includes a zero trust approach to access control that is based on identity and never places users on the corporate network. This provides fast and reliable WAN connection without the requirement for a VPN. SSE also includes a defense-in depth strategy that is effective in detecting and preventing threats such as malware.

Threat Protection

SSE offers threat protection for internet sessions, ensuring that users connect securely to critical business applications no matter where they are located. This facilitates hybrid work, protects private and cloud data connectivity, speeds cloud migrations, simplifies integrations during M&As, and enables hybrid working by employees.

The cloud platform can deliver security services to users regardless of their location or device. It reduces risk because it eliminates gaps in point products, and also removes the need to update legacy appliances manually.

Zero trust: SSE Systems should provide least-privileged access in accordance with a zero-trust policy. This includes user role and behavior as well as device, application, or content. This reduces the attack surface by preventing lateral movement, protecting applications from discovery and preventing lateral movements.

SSE enforces policy control by combining unified threat prevention capabilities, CASB, and ZTNA to enforce corporate standards on all users. This is true regardless of the location or type of device. This helps mitigate the risk of insider threats, ransomware and other threats that can occur when employees connect to sensitive data or use cloud applications that are not compliant with corporate policies.

Data Security

Protecting information is essential for organizations that allow remote and mobile workers to access data and applications via the internet. Secure service-edge delivers security using web gateway (SWG), zero-trust network (ZTNA), and cloud access security broker technologies.

SSE also offers centralized cloud data loss protection (DLP) capabilities, enabling sensitive data to be easily found, classified, and secured in a unified way. This can help support compliance policies, such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and GDPR.

SSE products must also offer advanced threat prevention, such as cloud-based firewalls (FWaaS), CASB analysis of data stored in SaaS software, and adaptive security access control. SSE solutions must include adaptive access control, which identifies and adjusts access based on changes in device posture.

Monitoring

When working with a secure service edge, it's important to monitor internet sessions. This allows you to see how your network is performing and what apps are being used.

Monitors can alert you to potential problems, allowing you to prevent them before they even occur. This will also allow you to improve your customer experience and cut costs.

SSE platforms capable of inspecting web and data trafic on a large scale are critical. You should choose a vendor who has solid service-level agreements and is experienced in evaluating the traffic of major multinationals.

One of the main use cases for security services edge is the enforcement of policy control over mobile, cloud, and internet access. This could include enforcing access and internet control policies within the company to ensure compliance or reducing risk via content blocking and malware isolate.