Transforming Secure Access: The Future of SASE Architecture
Secure access management today faces a myriad of challenges. Organizations often rely on a patchwork of disconnected solutions — identity management, VPNs, firewalls, and more — that are loosely integrated. This fragmented approach leads to complexity, security risks, and frustrating user experiences. Enter the xSASE architecture, a comprehensive solution that promises to revolutionize secure access by integrating identity, endpoint protection, and network security into a unified framework.
The State of Secure Access Today
The difficulties in access management largely stem from relying on disconnected point solutions. This mix includes identity management, VPNs, SASE products, firewalls, privileged access management (PAM), and endpoint management — all loosely integrated. This approach breeds several challenges and amplifies frustrations associated with access management.
Fragmentation Breeds Complexity and Insecurity
The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) model has emerged as a promising architecture, combining network and security-as-a-service functions into a single cloud service. While SASE addresses some fragmentation and complexity issues, it’s not comprehensive enough to cover all secure access use cases. For instance, endpoint compliance and privileged access are often not included, requiring additional out-of-band solutions.
A significant issue in the current access market is the lack of integration and cohesion among these disparate components. Each solution operates independently, with limited visibility into the complete access context. This fragmented approach results in a lack of comprehensive understanding and control over access requests.
Moreover, the disconnected nature of these solutions hinders seamless user experiences. Users frequently face multiple agents on their endpoints, numerous login prompts, and confusion over their access rights and resources. This suboptimal experience hampers productivity and satisfaction.
The siloed nature of point solutions also leads to incomplete security measures. Each component acts independently, complicating the enforcement of consistent security policies and robust security controls across the entire access landscape. This exposes organizations to security vulnerabilities and compliance risks.
Juggling Separate Solutions Creates Headaches
Managing multiple tools manually creates unnecessary complexity for IT administrators. Their days are burdened with juggling various tools, performing repetitive tasks, and manually integrating workflows to meet access needs. This manual effort is time-consuming, error-prone, and inefficient, especially for small and midsized businesses with lean IT teams.
To overcome these hurdles, a greenfield approach is required. Organizations need to transition from a legacy “best-of-breed” approach built around isolated technologies to an integrated and unified solution. The ideal solution should provide seamless integration, comprehensive visibility, and centralized control over access management, ensuring both security and user experience are prioritized.
The Future of Secure Access: Silo-Free Architecture
Rather than stacking up point solutions to protect user, the data and the endpoint on top of the network security architecture for example SASE, we can extend the SASE architecture and enrich it with the foundational services such as endpoint protection, identity broker, secret vault and along with the network services as well as the security services. Then on top of the core services mentioned above, overlay an unified policy engine, telemetry data fabric and an automation engine. At last combine the SASE agent with the endpoint agent, optionally use endpoint agent to enforce the network and threat protection to avoid the traffic detour and boost the performance and privacy. The proposed extended SASE (xSASE) takes a comprehensive approach to tackle the various secure access challenges by carefully considers the holistic security postures at play in providing access. When a user successfully accessing a application or network resource, it signifies that they possess the correct identity, entitlements, endpoint compliance, networking, access conditions and validated credentials for the target resource or service.
Rather than stacking up point solutions, a more comprehensive approach is needed. Extending the SASE architecture and enriching it with foundational services such as endpoint protection, identity brokering, secret vaults, network services, and security services is key. Overlaying these core services with a unified policy engine, telemetry data fabric, and an automation engine creates a holistic solution.
Combining the SASE agent with the endpoint agent enhances security and user experience. Optionally, this unified agent can enforce internet access policies on the endpoint to boost performance and privacy by avoiding traffic detours. This extended SASE (xSASE) approach tackles various secure access challenges by considering the holistic security postures involved in providing access. Successful access to an application or network resource indicates that the user possesses the correct identity, entitlements, endpoint compliance, networking conditions, and validated credentials.
xSASE Architecture
The xSASE architecture ensures that foundational services — identity, endpoint, secrets, and other SASE services — are interconnected and orchestrated by a unified policy, monitoring, and automation layer. This cohesion allows for a full and contextual understanding of access requests.
When a user requests access, the system evaluates their identity and permissions stored in the identity broker service, device compliance status managed by the endpoint service, and network security posture managed by the SASE services. This in-depth understanding of the access context leads to more effective and secure access control decisions.
The interconnected nature of xSASE’s holistic architecture brings numerous benefits. It creates an environment that enhances user experiences, delivering exceptional performance and continuous access for employees, contractors, and partners regardless of location. Users enjoy rich, high-quality experiences throughout their work journey.
Moreover, the architecture empowers organizations to enforce robust security measures, including end-to-end Zero Trust principles and conditional access controls. This facilitates seamless and secure access to all applications, whether they reside on-premises, in the cloud, or are SaaS-based.
As a result, organizations benefit from a comprehensive and highly effective security framework that allows users to access any application from any device with confidence.
Experience It For Yourself
Splashtop Secure Workspace has implemented the xSASE architecture, seamlessly blending a wide array of cybersecurity technologies — Zero Trust Network Access, Privileged Access Management, Identity Broker, Secure Web Gateway, Remote Browser Isolation, and more — into one unified platform. It surpasses traditional systems, offering secure, agent and agentless access to private and SaaS applications, preventing data leaks, and elevating security and usability simultaneously.
Ready to test drive the xSASE architecture? Explore the capabilities of Splashtop Secure Workspace and take the first step towards a more secure digital environment.
For more information, check out these resources:
Mastering Web App Security with Splashtop Secure Workspace
Feel free to reach out with any questions or for a personalized consultation on how Splashtop Secure Workspace can enhance your organization’s security posture. Get started with your Splashtop Secure Workspace trial today.
