Insight on what is Secure Access Service Edge? How does it work? Why is it important?
What Is Secure Access Service Edge?
Application Delivery Networks (ADN) is a network that connects multiple locations of an organization. In this case, the network may be globally dispersed. The secure access service edge is used to provide secure access to the application delivery network for the end users.
When a user wants to access data or applications hosted in ADN, the user’s first point of contact is the secure access service edge router. It may be a virtual router or a physical router depending on the implementation. The role of a SASE router is to authenticate, authorize, and provide security services to the users.
In addition, it also acts as a smart firewall by controlling and filtering traffic that passes through it. ADN and Internet will be further detailed in this blog post in the later part of this blog.
Importance of Secure Access Service Edge
SASE provides authentication for ADN users and devices. This helps to prevent unauthorized users from accessing ADN and its resources. For example, if a user wants to access an internal application from an external location via ADN, he/she needs to authenticate before accessing the application.
This authentication is provided by SASE. Authentication can be done using one-time passwords (OTP), passwords, certificates, etc. depending on the security policy implemented by an organization. Also, this provides authorization for ADN users and devices depending on their roles and permissions.
Authorization provides granular control over ADN users. Also, their roles whether they can perform certain actions or not on certain resources within ADN. For example, if a user has been assigned with Administrator role on a specific application, he/she will be able to perform all tasks on that application.
This includes creating policies, setting access controls, etc. But if he/she is assigned only Read Only role on that application then he/she will only be able to read data from it. But not able to make any changes or create new resources within it (for example create new user accounts).
Filtering Traffic Monitoring
Secure Access Service Edge acts as a smart web application firewall by monitoring network traffic that passes through it. What happens when it is allowing communication between different components of ADN as well as external networks? Then it also allows the administrator to implement security policies such as restricting communication between certain locations.
This includes hosts within ADN based on IP address range or port numbers etc., based on the organization’s security policy. So, SASE is usually a physical router. But in the case of some service providers, it can be a virtual router that runs within a hypervisor/VM on an external cloud service provider.
SASE is an important component of ADN. It provides centralized authentication and authorization services to ADN users. Also, it acts as a smart firewall to control and filter traffic between different components of ADN and external networks.
It is deployed as part of ADN where the end users are located. If the end users are not at the same geographical location then an ADN hub may be installed at each location to host a secure access service edge.