RANT Roundtable in partnership with Ultima

Among the things we all suspect we know about cybersecurity are the fact that it’s an industry that loves an acronym, and that it serves a customer base that knows there’s no such thing as a silver bullet but keeps on hoping one will turn up regardless. So the arrival of SASE – Secure Access Service Edge – in Gartner’s expanding technical lexicon should only provide one surprise: that it doesn’t rhyme with ‘base’, ‘case’ or even ‘vase’, but with ‘classy’. (It’s a pity that the business services giant is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, rather than San Diego.)

First coined in 2019, SASE has come into its own post-COVID. Rather than a new technology or additional piece of security tooling, it’s a methodology that can help companies tackle some of the key information-security challenges that have either emerged or intensified after remote and hybrid working became the new norm. Many businesses responded to the huge growth in work-from-home and bring-your-own-device by deploying VPNs, yet with the mushrooming use of time-saving but security-shredding generative AI applications, that approach is throttling business productivity, staff creativity and internal functionality.

By leveraging technologies and approaches likely already up and running in the business, a SASE framework can allow users to work in the most efficient and frictionless manner – on their own devices; using commercial applications outside corporate networks – but without bypassing the enterprise’s security controls. Our friends at Ultima – who have helped many clients realise the benefits of SASE thinking, and use it internally themselves,  believe that, while the pace and complexity of implementation will depend on the specifics of the client organisation, the benefits of adoption can be transformative. 

Join representatives from Ultima, and a select group of your senior cybersecurity peers, for an evening of fine food, convivial conversation, and a detailed discussion about how a SASE approach could help secure your workforce, wherever they are.