Zero Trust & SASE

The world of IT products is a labyrinth like no other. Anyone who has seriously tried to find a good SASE or Zero Trust solution knows exactly what I mean. It feels like an odyssey – with one difference: instead of sirens and cyclops, you encounter marketing slides full of buzzwords and glossy brochures promising more than a Hollywood trilogy.

But why is it so difficult to navigate this chaos? The core of the problem lies in the terms themselves. SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) and Zero Trust are not only relatively new, but they are also so vaguely defined that even vendors sometimes struggle to explain exactly what they are selling.

Try typing “SASE” into Google, click on images, and get ready to be confused! Marketing departments seem especially enamored with Zero Trust – these days, even a vacuum cleaner appears to have Zero Trust capabilities (in addition to adjusting suction power with AI).

A short Journey into the Hype’s Past.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on similar buzzwords from the past:

• Web 2.0: Suddenly, everything was “social” and “interactive,” though few could truly explain the difference from Web 1.0, aside from the fact that everything looked flashier.

• Big Data: Everyone feared not being “data-driven” enough, even as many companies were still managing their data in Excel spreadsheets.

• Cloud: At first, the cloud seemed like a magical place capable of anything, from storage solutions to world peace. (In reality, it was just another computer owned by someone else.)

Today, Artificial Intelligence and Zero Trust are the latest buzzwords. As always in such market phases, there is a lot of abstraction and little concreteness. This is unfortunate, as these concepts are powerful and have significantly improved the digital world.

A brief Attempt to untangle the Confusion.

Zero Trust is based on the idea that there is no traditional network boundary anymore. Instead, all users, whether inside or outside the corporate network, must be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated for security configuration and posture.

The principle is to treat every user and resource in the network equally, regardless of location - whether on-premises or in the cloud. For example, a company’s intranet could simply be another cloud application, classified as “internal” based on its access controls rather than its location.

This approach clearly has the potential to reduce complexity while increasing security - a valuable combination for any organization.

SASE as a Security Model for Zero Trust.

SASE can be the security model that brings these ideas to life, fulfilling many Zero Trust requirements directly or indirectly. This includes technologies like Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Firewall as a Service (FWaaS), and others.

That’s why Zero Trust is often linked to SASE, particularly because Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), a core component of Zero Trust, appears in many SASE frameworks.

However, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution - concepts, products, and the organization itself must align. Zero Trust isn’t an off-the-shelf product or just an IT project; it’s about building a flexible architecture that meets today’s high digital service demands while being tailored to specific needs.

Zero Trust Security. Why it Matters.

Traditional approaches at lower OSI layers can no longer withstand modern user experiences or contemporary threats.

The management layer within a Zero Trust architecture enables standardized communication between various components and enforces security policies that determine which data flows are allowed within a corporate network. Every interaction and data flow is considered potentially suspicious.

Organizations need security solutions that are not only state-of-the-art but also future-proof - without being overwhelmed by architectural complexity.

Potential outcomes include:

• A unified user experience, regardless of location

• Efficient and standardized integration of new services or partners

• A high level of centrally managed security despite a highly decentralized infrastructure

• Strongly reduced network architecture complexity - all serving as business enablers.

Conclusion: No quick Miracles.

Finding the right SASE or Zero Trust solution is not a sprint but a marathon - more of a strategy than a quick fix. And as with any odyssey, sometimes the journey itself is the goal.

Zero Trust architecture plays a crucial role by helping companies manage hybrid IT infrastructures securely and ensuring granular access control while maintaining relatively low complexity.

So, don’t be discouraged if it takes longer than expected. And remember: even Odysseus eventually made it home- despite all the sirens, cyclops, and marketing nonsense.

Still confused? No worries - this text is too short to cover everything. But we’re happy to help you understand it better or develop the right security concept. Why? Because we have been working with these topics for years with passion, experience and expertise.