AT&T is adding a third option to its SASE product portfolio in the form of a new partnership with Cisco.

In short, SASE is the convergence of network and security. "At its core, Secure Edge and SASE technologies can be built on a global SD-WAN foundation that utilizes a set of cloud-based security features and a minimal customer premise equipment (CPE) layer," founder and founder Scott Raynovich explained. Futuriom's principal analyst, in the "2021 Cloud Security Edge and SASE Trend Report".

Earlier this year, AT&T partnered with Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks to launch the Managed Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) service. In April of this year, AT&T also cooperated with Cisco to launch SD-WAN services for home networks. Rupesh Chokshi, vice president of cyber security at AT&T, said that the service provider has started the SASE journey in collaboration with security giants, because a "safety first mentality" is of utmost importance as the threats of ransomware and malware surge.

"We see SD-WAN and security merge like peanut butter and jelly," Chokshi said. "Technology partners are also aware of this. Looking back, through the acquisition or development of these capabilities, there are organic and inorganic ways to integrate things together."

AT&T's Rupesh Chokshi said that SD-WAN and security are combined smoothly like this classic sandwich. Photo of Freddy G on Unsplash.

In some cases, security threats cost companies millions of dollars—according to the Wall Street Journal, earlier this year, currency exchange company Travelex bombarded our nearly $2.3 million in Bitcoin for ransomware cybercrime molecular. In addition, according to Verizon's Annual Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR), phishing and ransomware attacks increased by 11% and 6% respectively in 2020.

Chokshi said that the SASE service launched by AT&T and Cisco will provide customers with access to SD-WAN and bring many security measures, including firewalls, domain name system (DNS) security, secure Web gateways, and access to Cisco Umbrella and Duo Security service. Umbrella and Duo are Cisco's security platforms. In addition to the zero-trust network access function, they also provide security at the DNS and IP layers.

"We can combine all these [security features] together to ensure that we can provide security policy management for users in the enterprise, regardless of whether the user is working in a branch, at home, or elsewhere," Chokshi said. "The whole idea is to make the hosting services delivered on a large scale more uniform.

Chokshi said that AT&T and Cisco's SASE service is very suitable for mid-market and large enterprises, as well as public and government departments.

This kind of cooperation between AT&T and Cisco emerged while SASE was still in the early stages of adoption. "A survey conducted by Check Point Software of 450 IT and security professionals found that although 94% of respondents are familiar with the term SASE, only 9% of respondents have started implementing it, and another 21% are in Planning stage," Raynovich explained in his recent SASE trend report.

Raynovich also pointed out that in the first half of 2021, “Cisco’s efforts to bundle its security product portfolio with many acquisitions did not result in growth, while vendors such as Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Juniper Networks have shown good growth.”

Data from the company's security revenue report for the first half of 2021 shows that Cisco's security revenue lags behind existing security vendors. (Image source: Scott Raynovich, founder and principal analyst of Futuriom.)

Cisco may have been a bit slow to get revenue from its security product portfolio, but there are still many gains in the SASE market. Dell'Oro Group predicts that by 2025, SASE market revenue will reach double-digit billion U.S. dollars.

Mauricio Sanchez, director of Dell'Oro Group, said in a statement: “As companies move to cloud-first and mobile-friendly, they have encountered structural flaws in the hub-and-spoke model and need alternative solutions.” The need for good scalability and ubiquitous security has prompted the supplier community to respond to the integration of software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) and secure web gateway (SWG) solutions into the new architecture under the SASE umbrella. Therefore, enterprises Interest in SASE is soaring."

— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading

© 2021 Light Reading, part of Informa Tech, a division of Informa PLC.