Predictions 2022: Better Mobile Device Performance for Zero Trust and Cloud Access Security Ensures Great SASE

 In Blogs & Bloggers

By David Cohen, Mobolize | Chief Strategy Officer, Co-Founder

While I spent 2021 working at home, I spent a good deal of time talking and investigating nearly 50 security companies focused on different parts of enterprise and small and medium-sized business security.

There was a lot to like in the professionals I dealt with, but I was surprised to discover just how far behind the big names in corporate security were. In contrast, the new market leaders in corporate security were innovating by following a new pathway originally set out by Gartner in 2019. The secure access service edge (SASE) approach directs cyber security vendors and corporate IT to integrate two industries – network performance and cyber security – into a single, cloud-based architecture under the banner of Zero Trust. Its powerful and timely.

As we move in to 2022, I am focused on a few key trends inspired by my numerous conversations.

Work from home is the new normal for years to come: This new cybersecurity wrinkle is here to stay and has forced corporations of all sizes to prioritize cyber security and adopt SASE, which removes the forced choice between network performance and security as both now work in harmony. What work at home has done is push corporate IT towards modern and superior security architectures in particular Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA.)

Vendor & product consolidation across the security ecosystem: One of the trends accelerated by the pandemic was vendor and product consolidation. The corporate IT approach to utilize only best of breed products created too many vendor relationships and too many different products for IT to manage. The solutions became the problem. Corporations are now looking to purchase a portfolio of products from a single vendor to reduce management. This also aligns to the SASE approach.

ZTNA replaces legacy VPNs as the dominant method for remote work: The cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS) has changed everything and pushed out traditional security vendors too slow to redesign their products and offer up a suite of solutions that conform to the SASE vision. There is a cloud application for everything and the number of integrations and connections in the enterprise is exploding. This is exposing the transport mechanisms and the critical need for better performance as cloud applications become more delivery sensitive.

CASB vendors embrace/converge with ZTNA to extend beyond web applications: Mobolize, has built an endpoint Data Management Engine that runs across all computational endpoints. The result is better mobile performance under ZTNA as well as other network security solutions including secure web gateway, data loss prevention and Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB.) The rejection of Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) VPNs by CASB vendors is understandable. But, what ZTNA gets right is to modernize VPNs to handle fine grain traffic management, not exclude them entirely.

Our Data Management Engine, which includes a state-of-the-art SmartVPN®, is designed to complement what is offered by the CASB server. And where CASB suffers, pairing our technology transforms their security product suite by enabling ZTNA to be added to it. We do this through our technology partnering program, which has successfully been adopted by Fortune 100 security companies.

Ironically, the malware/ransomware bad-actor trends pushing security adoption forward also carry business risk for the vendors operating a limited set of the SASE solutions. The vision for 2022 is to offer more cyber solutions while delivering best-in-class technology.

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