Why Switch from Legacy VPN to Managed SASE Services?
As networking and security increasingly converge, businesses are exploring ways to upgrade their outdated legacy virtual private network (VPN) infrastructure to a more efficient, scalable solution that also reduces management and maintenance burdens for IT teams. Secure access service edge (SASE) solutions could be the answer to the growing need for higher performing, more secure distributed environments.
SASE is a cloud-based network architecture that combines security services and networking capabilities and is designed to protect all points of access within a network, including distributed and mobile workforces. SASE delivers networking and security capabilities as cloud services, and it’s often considered better suited for remote access at distributed locations than VPNs. SASE combines SD-WAN and Security Service Edge (SSE) into a unified cloud service that simplifies WAN deployments and provides organizations with improved security and operational efficiencies.
For businesses with VPNs, there are many reasons to consider an upgrade from VPNs to managed SASE services. From better performance and enhanced security to scalability and simplified management, let’s take a look at why managed SASE services might be a superior choice over legacy VPNs.
Why Upgrade from VPNs
VPNs have long been relied upon to allow employees to work remotely without compromising company data security by encrypting internet connection and making it safe for employees to connect to the corporate internal network from anywhere. But with environments becoming more sophisticated and organizations being more distributed, VPNs might not be the best fit for today’s business networks.
VPNs provide security—but within limits. An upgrade from VPNs to managed SASE services could improve the overall security posture of organizations. The capabilities of SASE offerings include zero-trust, data loss prevention, cloud access security broker, firewalls, and secure web gateways. VPNs cannot offer this. Some vendors might try to bundle one or two of these options with a VPN to sell you on security, but it’s still nowhere near as secure as the entire assembled SASE architecture.
VPNs can also introduce latency due to the hairpinning of traffic that is caused when they need to send your data between servers and back to your device. This can cause problems on your network, especially in the case of applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). When VoIP calls encounter latency, users can experience audio delay, fuzzy sound, missing audio, dropped calls, choppy conversations, and echoes, which causes people to speak over each other. Simply put, high latency results in poor user experience.
As organizations grow and add more users or locations, managing VPNs becomes increasingly complex burdening in-house staff with maintenance and other non-strategic tasks. With new security warnings for VPNs coming every month, network and security staff are tasked with continuously patching and updating the hardware.
The Benefits of SASE Services
With more distributed locations and remote workers than ever, SASE is taking center stage as a lower latency option that doesn’t require as much hardware to deliver more security capabilities than VPNs.
Let’s examine a few benefits managed SASE services offer over VPNs.
Improved network performance and user experience
While legacy VPN environments could slow down network performance and cause issues, such as dropped VoIP calls, SASE can provide higher protection without slowing down the network. This is due to the intelligent traffic routing of SD-WAN, combined with the improved infrastructure of SASE that does not need to send your data or signal nearly as far as a VPN.
Enhanced security
SASE also offers a zero-trust approach with more security features, such as firewalls and access controls, which outweigh the security offerings of VPNs. Occasionally, VPNs try to bundle their offerings with some of these security controls, but they’re still inferior to a full SASE stack.
Easier scalability
For distributed environments, SASE can more easily adapt to changes in the number of users or locations, whereas VPNs in some scenarios become more complicated to manage as an organization grows.
Network and security convergence
SASE brings together the needs of the network and security teams, providing optimal performance and security capabilities, eliminating silos and blind spots between the two teams.
Managed service benefits
Enterprises can opt for a managed SASE solution that handles updates and maintenance, reducing the on-site work required when compared to managing VPNs in-house.
Hughes and Netskope Deliver Superior SASE Services
Hughes partnered with Netskope to bring its leading-edge SSE capabilities to our managed services portfolio. Hughes award-winning Managed SD-WAN Services are the foundation that our Managed SASE Services are built on.
SASE can represent a significant improvement over traditional VPNs, providing a compelling case for enterprise businesses to make the switch to a more modern and comprehensive networking and security solution. SASE offers advantages such as reduced latency, improved security, and easier scalability—making it a more future-proof technology investment. Combine Netskope’s cutting-edge SSE technology with the proven managed services offerings of Hughes, and upgrading outdated VPN infrastructure to a managed SASE service becomes a win in performance, security, and management.
Learn more about Hughes Managed SD-WAN Services and Hughes Managed SASE Services.