Five years since Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) was introduced, around 72% of security professionals consider end-user experience the most important to SASE adoption, according to a study by Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.
Top considerations
Based on the results of the survey of 608 security professionals, respondents also consider the richness of security features (63%), solution cost (62%), and finding a complete SASE solution with all components from a single vendor (52%).
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) (73%) and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) (58%) are the top SASE features that are most important to respondents.
SASE adoption and security
Cybersecurity professionals are either already adopting or planning to adopt SWG (69%) and ZTNA (66%) in the next 12 months. SD-WAN (63%), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) (56%), and CASB (53%) are not far behind.
The study also revealed that the majority (87%) of respondents have a zero-trust framework in place, such as a network firewall (63%), an identity provider (60%), and an endpoint security solution (53%)
To defend against cyberthreats, security professionals consider cybersecurity tools such as a next-generation firewall (87%), endpoint security (76%), and on-premises secure web gateway (49%). Malware protection) (85%) and URL filtering (77%) emerged as the most important features for securing internet access for the respondents.
Balanced approach
The survey results underscore that while security professionals prioritise user experience, they are not planning to compromise security features, highlighting the respondents’ balanced approach to network protection.