Question: How do I know it's time to consider a SASE migration? What is driving the change in existing networking and security technologies?

Shaila Shankar, SVP and general manager, Cisco Cloud Network and Security: The short answer is networking and security technologies are too complex. As more people work remotely, across more devices, all over the globe, applications and resources that have been traditionally deployed on the corporate network are now dispersed across different public clouds and SaaS providers. With offices beginning to reopen, organizations need to support a secure and seamless return-to-office experience, while continuing to support hybrid workers with access to applications and resources that are both on the corporate network and in the cloud.

Customers are increasingly looking to us to deal with the complexities associated with setting up and maintaining secure access between users and data. All the while, they want assurance of adequate performance service levels that mirror the more complex access. With campuses, offices, branches, and remote workers all accessing resources from managed and unmanaged devices, the perimeter is now everywhere. This is creating challenges in customers’ abilities to efficiently monitor and remediate security incidents.

The increase in complexity, shortage in skilled IT people, and dynamic scale requirements are creating challenges with existing models. The alternative is that customers would make CapEx-heavy investments, maintain teams of experts, and take highly customized approaches to network architecture design. We know that’s not where our customers want to focus their limited time and resources.

That's why the time is now to consider migrating to secure access service edge (SASE). The acceleration in transitioning to a hybrid workplace is inexorable. The truth is that you likely already have some SASE components in play already.

Embarking on the SASE journey must be carefully considered and executed. It takes time and depends on your organization’s needs. You may need to prioritize securing your remote workers or address gaps in your existing SD-WAN deployment. Both are a great place to start your SASE journey.

It is not too early to start having a conversation now about how your organization can benefit from SASE and what capabilities to prioritize.