SASE has emerged in recent years as a favored solution to the challenges created by evolving enterprise IT estates, hybrid working, and a complex security landscape. But where is this transformative network architecture heading, what developments are we likely to see in the next few years, and what will the business impact be?
Adopting SASE is a top priority for 43% of organizations, thanks to its ability to provide simple, high-performance, and highly secure connectivity between enterprise users and resources across a wide variety of different locations.
As SASE continues to mature, we expect to see more advancements in the way it operates and an expansion of its capabilities into new areas of the enterprise infrastructure. Let’s explore what that might look like.
AI Will Help Networks Run More Smoothly and Reduce the Burden on Humans
Although the dream of self-healing autonomous networks may still be many years away, AI’s contributions to network management are becoming increasingly valuable.
Machine learning (ML) and older forms of predictive AI have already been helping network managers detect problems, plan future capacity needs, and reduce power usage. Today’s AI is capable of basic administration, troubleshooting, and network management, freeing up network teams for more valuable tasks, reducing human error, and speeding up issue resolution.
As we move forward, GenAI promises to help humans with more complex, large-scale network design and management tasks like:
- Gathering and analyzing large quantities of network data to manage capacity and routing, helping to make networks more efficient and improve performance
- Helping network teams to prioritize a tidal wave of alerts to tackle the most critical issues, and suggesting remedial action
- Making networking simpler for operators with GenAI interfaces or chatbots that provide easily understandable answers and can carry out instructions from humans
As Attackers Try to Outpace Defenders, AI Strengthens Security Defenses
AI is powering more sophisticated security threats that find and exploit vulnerabilities faster, and produce highly effective attacks that are personalized to their targets and can change tactics to avoid detection.
On the flip side, however, AI is also helping enterprises to strengthen their security posture.
AI is already playing a major role in detecting threats and incursions faster based on atypical patterns of traffic and behavior. And newer iterations of ML and GenAI are increasingly strengthening security by:
• monitoring and correlating security data across the entire network estate for a more comprehensive picture
• identifying risks and vulnerabilities based on each organization’s individual security posture in combination with threat intelligence
• automatically handling security issues and incidents
• identifying suspect messages that can indicate a phishing attack based on their content
• analyzing and prioritizing security alerts and identified vulnerabilities, so they’re addressed faster
• managing the risks of GenAI services, by enforcing security policies and stopping users from uploading confidential data
Ultimately, GenAI may contribute to the evolution of intent-based security. This would allow security teams to define business outcomes (say, creating a secure path between two networks), which are then automatically configured on the network without manual intervention.
SASE Will Incorporate Essential IoT Security
The number of IoT devices worldwide is forecast to more than double from 19.8 billion in 2025 to more than 40.6 billion by 2034.
This increases network complexity, adding more elements that need to be connected, managed, and secured – most of these devices have no built-in security and provide new attack surfaces for bad actors to target.
SASE vendors are beginning to introduce specialized IoT capabilities, allowing organizations to incorporate these devices into their SASE solutions rather than managing them with separate tools.
This improves security and detection, simplifies management, and provides a more comprehensive and holistic view of network activity and risk. It also allows organizations to segment IoT devices, stopping attackers from moving laterally through the network if an incursion takes place.
Wrapping 5G Into SASE Offers Enterprises More Connectivity Choices
5G networks are forecast to handle 80% of global mobile traffic by the end of 2030, compared to 35% at the end of 2024.
That’s no great surprise considering the spectacular increases in speed, capacity, and performance that 5G offers – it’s believed that 5G will eventually be able to handle as many as 100 times more connected devices per square kilometer compared to 4G.
Securing these connections with zero trust and SASE is currently high on the agenda for vendors and providers. As 5G is increasingly converged into these solutions, organizations will have a greater choice of fixed and wireless connectivity options while still retaining the end-to-end control of security and performance that SASE offers.
SASE’s Expansion Beyond the WAN
As SASE matures, we’re likely to see its use extending beyond the WAN to other areas, such as edge computing, the LAN, and multi-cloud.
LANs are often secured by disparate, poorly integrated point solutions. Incorporating the LAN into a SASE framework reduces complexity, improves visibility, and creates a unified security environment.
Nearly four out of five organizations now use multiple clouds. Keeping these disparate environments transparent and secure is becoming more difficult.
Some SASE providers are beginning to offer multi-cloud capabilities, but visibility and orchestration are currently often lacking. Others are working toward integration with the separate cloud security tools that enterprises often use to secure multiple clouds. With the majority of enterprises intending to expand the number of clouds they use, this is likely to be an area that SASE vendors will continue to focus on.
SASE Underpins a Future-Ready Network
As SASE matures, making the right choices about strategic direction, service options, and maintaining the relevant skill sets is likely to become a greater challenge – almost half of organizations say a lack of expertise is a key reason for turning to managed service providers.
SASE’s value comes from its ability to simplify network management and improve security with consistent, centralized policies, and this is unlikely to change in the future. However, we’re highly likely to see the incorporation of more capabilities to help enterprises provide end-to-end security and network orchestration across more devices and connectivity options.
These capabilities will increasingly be integrated into more unified offerings for easier management and greater security and visibility – all essential characteristics of an enterprise network that’s prepared for whatever the future throws at it.