The digital landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, demanding network and security architectures that are agile, flexible, and robust. When Gartner introduced Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) in 2019, it wasn’t just another networking buzzword; it was a visionary blueprint for the future of enterprise networking and security. SASE represents a fundamental shift, converging traditionally siloed networking and security functions into a unified, cloud-delivered service. Within the SASE landscape, Sase Cato Networks stands out as a pioneer, offering a mature and comprehensive platform.
Gartner recognized SASE as “transformational,” a designation rarely given, even to impactful technologies like SD-WAN. This transformational nature stems from SASE’s ability to address the critical challenges of modern digital businesses, and sase cato networks has been at the forefront of realizing this vision. While many vendors talk about SASE, Cato Networks delivers a truly converged and globally distributed architecture with its Single Pass Cloud Engine (SPACE), the bedrock of the Cato SASE platform. To gain a deeper understanding of SASE and how Cato Networks embodies its principles, explore this detailed whitepaper. Let’s delve into why SASE is so transformative and how sase cato networks is leading the way.
The Urgency of SASE: Why Now?
The rise of SASE is intrinsically linked to the demands of today’s digital business. Agility and speed are paramount. Businesses operate globally, with distributed teams and mobile workforces. The ability to rapidly assemble teams, access resources regardless of location, and quickly adapt to market changes defines the modern digital enterprise. Cloud computing has become a cornerstone of this transformation, and the benefits of SASE are crucial in enabling this new era of business agility.
However, traditional enterprise networking and security infrastructures have become bottlenecks. Networks are often rigid and complex, while security is fragmented across different locations, cloud environments, and user types. This siloed approach, built for a bygone era, hinders business agility and slows down innovation. Stitching together disparate solutions like SD-WAN, firewalls, and IPS appliances has become increasingly cumbersome and ineffective.
Gartner succinctly captures this obsolescence, stating, “Digital transformation and adoption of mobile, cloud and edge deployment models fundamentally change network traffic patterns, rendering existing network and security models obsolete.” This shift necessitates a new approach, and SASE, particularly as exemplified by sase cato networks, provides the answer.
Decoding SASE Network Architecture: Core Principles
The SASE architecture offers a radical solution: a single, unified network that securely connects any enterprise resource – physical locations, cloud assets, and mobile users – anywhere in the world. The sase cato networks implementation embodies these core characteristics:
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Identity-Driven Security and Networking: SASE moves beyond simple IP address-based networking. User and resource identity becomes the central control point. Network experience, access rights, quality of service, and security policies are all dynamically determined based on the identity associated with each network connection. This identity-centric approach simplifies operations by enabling consistent networking and security policies across users, regardless of device or location. Sase cato networks leverages identity to provide granular control and enhance security posture.
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Cloud-Native Foundation: SASE is inherently cloud-native, capitalizing on the inherent advantages of cloud architectures. Elasticity, scalability, self-healing, and automated maintenance are fundamental to a SASE platform. This cloud-native design ensures optimal resource utilization, simplifies management, and allows for rapid adaptation to evolving business needs. The sase cato networks platform, built on its SPACE architecture, is a prime example of a cloud-native SASE implementation.
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Comprehensive Edge Support: A true SASE solution must seamlessly connect and secure all enterprise edges. This includes physical locations (branch offices, headquarters), cloud infrastructure (IaaS, SaaS), and mobile users. SD-WAN appliances handle physical edges, while mobile clients and clientless browser access extend secure connectivity to remote users. Sase cato networks provides comprehensive edge support, ensuring consistent security and performance across the entire enterprise. Learn more about why SASE must support all edges.
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Globally Distributed Architecture: To deliver consistent networking and security capabilities with optimal performance, a SASE cloud must be globally distributed. This necessitates a worldwide network of points of presence (PoPs) to minimize latency and ensure proximity to users and applications. Sase cato networks operates a globally distributed network, ensuring low-latency access and consistent service delivery worldwide.
The globally distributed architecture of SASE ensures consistent and low-latency service delivery to all edges.
SASE vs. Traditional Telco Services: A Paradigm Shift
SASE represents a fundamental departure from traditional telco-managed network services. Telcos often bundle disparate point solutions, masking network complexity but failing to deliver true convergence. Enterprises end up paying for both the individual products and the complex management overhead.
In contrast, the single-pass, cloud-based architecture of SASE, pioneered by vendors like sase cato networks, offers genuine simplicity and efficiency. By converging all networking and security functions into a unified platform, SASE streamlines traffic processing, enhances context awareness, and improves performance compared to service-chained point products. SASE is built for cloud scale, agility, and self-service – qualities that traditional telco services often lack.
The same limitations apply to network providers relying on virtual machines in the cloud or service chaining. These approaches require separate sizing, scaling, and management of VNFs (Virtual Network Functions), VMs, and services. Similarly, security vendors aggregating cloud-based security capabilities often miss the crucial SASE elements of network flow control and native WAN edge support.
Convergence is the defining characteristic of SASE. Simply linking point solutions, whether as appliances or service chains, falls short of true convergence. Sase cato networks embodies this convergence, offering a truly unified platform.
Cato Networks: The Original SASE Platform
Cato Networks has been a SASE visionary since its inception in 2015, predating Gartner’s formal introduction of SASE by four years. Today, sase cato networks connects and secures thousands of enterprises globally, encompassing hundreds of thousands of branch offices, cloud instances, and mobile users. Cato Networks has consistently been recognized as a “sample vendor” in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Enterprise Networking’s SASE category since its inception.
The sase cato networks SASE platform stands out for several key reasons:
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Cloud-Native from the Ground Up: Cato Networks built its platform with a cloud-native architecture from day one, embodying the five essential attributes: multitenancy, scalability, velocity, efficiency, and ubiquity. Cato SPACE, the Single Pass Cloud Engine, is the core of the Cato SASE architecture, designed to power a global, resilient, and scalable SASE cloud service. Thousands of Cato SPACE instances power the sase cato networks cloud, delivering a comprehensive suite of networking and security capabilities to any user or application, anywhere in the world, at cloud scale, with self-healing and self-maintaining operations.
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Identity at its Core: Sase cato networks is fundamentally identity-aware. User identity is a central contextual element extracted by Cato SPACE from every network flow, enabling IT to enforce granular, identity-based security and networking policies.
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Universal Edge Connectivity: The sase cato networks platform seamlessly connects all enterprise edges – physical locations, cloud resources, and mobile devices – into a unified network. Physical locations connect via Cato SD-WAN appliances, mobile users leverage Cato’s client and clientless access options, and cloud resources are integrated through Cato’s agentless configuration. Traffic is intelligently routed to the nearest Cato PoP, where Cato SPACE analyzes context and applies relevant policies.
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Global Reach and Performance: The Cato Private Backbone, the foundation of sase cato networks, is a globally distributed, SLA-backed network comprising over 85 PoPs interconnected by multiple tier-1 carriers. Each PoP runs the complete Cato converged software stack, extending the SASE definition to include WAN and cloud optimization for enhanced global application access.
The Cato Networks global backbone ensures optimized and secure connectivity worldwide.
Cato Networks is proud to be recognized as a sample vendor in the SASE category. While some competitors have either ignored convergence or pursued appliance-based approaches, sase cato networks has consistently championed the true vision of SASE. As Shlomo Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Cato Networks, emphasizes, “Since Cato’s founding, we’ve focused on converging networking and security into the cloud, creating one, global, cloud-native architecture that connects and secures all locations, cloud resources, and mobile users everywhere.”
To further explore the capabilities of sase cato networks, delve into comparisons of CASB vs SASE, ZTNA vs SASE and gain clarity on what SASE is not. Begin your SASE journey today by becoming a certified SASE expert through our available course and exam. Contact us to take the first step towards transforming your network and security with sase cato networks.
** Gartner, “Market Trends: How to Win as WAN Edge and Security Converge Into the Secure Access Service Edge,” Joe Skorupa and Neil MacDonald, 29 July 2019
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