Analysis
What You Need To Know
The global COVID-19 pandemic accelerated most organizations’ plans for digital transformation and inverted many from primarily on-premises to primarily remote working. As a result, most enterprises scaled up their VPNs, and some adopted zero-trust network access (ZTNA). Many were also pushed to overnight cloud adoption and digitalization. Traditional network security technologies supported this by expanding their cloud-delivered services with adjacent preventive technologies to protect assets and to support mobile workforces.
Rapid scaling and the need to enhance the user experience of remote workers played an important role in the adoption and consolidation of cloud-based network security controls which contributed to trends of SASE, ZTNA, etc. With vendors consolidating multiple network security controls, it is important to understand when to choose consolidated vs stand-alone products based on your use cases. Security controls still vary from vendor to vendor, and you need to understand the available controls in the marketplace and ascertain if they secure hybrid clouds, digital infrastructure, remote workforce and other business security and risk goals when setting an organizational network security strategy. SRM leaders must make intelligent, risk-based and cost-effective decisions about the security technologies they choose to defend their organizations.
