A year after it rolled out a beefy managed secure access service edge (SASE) solution from Cato Networks, Windstream Enterprise teamed with the vendor again to bring a simplified security service edge (SSE) offering to market.
Chris Alberding, Senior Director for SD-WAN and Security at Windstream Enterprise, told Fierce the easiest way to think about SSE is as a subset of SASE. While SASE takes a more holistic approach to securing the network by combining SS-WAN with security, SSE can deliver near-immediate and “cost-effective” protection for the network and its users.
He added the single-vendor part of its new offering with Cato means businesses don’t have to worry about navigating different systems, which is a boon for those with a lack of sufficient IT resources or a skills gap. The SSE package from Cato includes a secure web gateway, firewall as a service, zero trust network access, cloud access security broker, next-generation anti-malware, managed detection and response, data loss prevention and intrusion prevention capabilities.
“Single vendor solutions ensure that security policies are synchronized and uniformly applied for all locations and end users,” Alberding explained. “Most businesses already have security vendors, but often these existing architectures are outdated, disjointed and/or are limited in their ability to support their customers and employee’s demands for expanded remote access to cloud applications…IT departments benefit from a single portal for total visibility and management control, all with simplicity of a single vendor relationship.”
In February 2022, Gartner noted that just 15% of organizations looking to purchase a SSE solution chose a unified offering rather than buying different components like a security broker, secure web gateway and zero trust network access tools separately. But the firm predicted the number of those looking for a consolidated offering would rise to 80% of enterprises by 2025.
Dell’Oro Group in December hinted full-fledged SASE solutions could follow a similar path. While just over 10% of SASE solutions were unified at the time, Dell’Oro’s Mauricio Sanchez told Fierce they were growing at a 7 to 1 ratio compared to disaggregated offerings.
According to Alberding, Windstream is positioning itself to capitalize on this trend. “We have a robust roadmap for 2023 that will continue to expand upon our single-vendor SASE and SSE offerings,” he said.