Cybersecurity threats are growing in complexity and volume. Single-vendor SASE is a newer approach to securing branch offices, remote workers and on-premises systems using the cloud. As partners work to provide customers with the most sophisticated solutions, single-vendor SASE solutions can offer great benefits to partners.
SASE solutions are, at their core, a mashup of converged-network and security-as-a-service capabilities, combining software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) with security service edge (SSE) components such as secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), network firewalls and zero-trust network access (ZTNA). These offerings use a cloud-centric architecture and single-vendor SASE solutions are, as the name suggests, delivered by one vendor.
SASE platform like those from iboss, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks and others are gaining popularity in the channel because they offer a way to replace multiple legacy technologies like VPNs and proxies, which helps not only increase security but improve productivity and consolidate MSPs’ technology stack.
SASE is a One-Stop Security Shop
They're a great one-stop shop for MSPs and MSSPs to solve for universal connectivity, cutting the costs of acquiring all the different hardware and software solutions and managing those relationships, said Paul Martini, CEO, iboss.
"What SASE does is this idea of consolidation into a single service," he said. "The SASE service lives in the cloud, and so it's able to provide the data loss prevention, the malware defense, the inspection of the data, the ransomware detection, all that stuff is happening within the cloud service, not within an office. But if you have workers go back into the office, a SASE vendor typically, like iboss, also has SD-WAN capabilities. And so you can protect all the things that are not human in the offices, in remote areas, wherever users go, they're always connected to the service," he explained.
For MSPs and MSSPs, it's easy to manage the service through a single console and set access or security policies across an entire IT estate, Martini said, and managing services for multiple organizations can also be done through the same platform.
"Whether I'm servicing 100 organizations or 1,000 organizations, I can manage them all through the same platform. I can flip between them and set one policy across the network component. It's not going to replace your desktop firewall, but as data leaves a laptop, the firewalls, the proxies, the VPN, all of the things that you need to have in addition to that to ensure that an attacker doesn't get into your network and hijack your entire database and then ask you for a ransom."
SASE for Business Continuity
Because SASE is based in the cloud and not on endpoints, business continuity is also a much easier proposition for MSPs and MSSPs, he said. SASE is also distributed, which means if one endpoint goes down, it doesn't impact the greater system, he added.
"The more you do on the endpoint, the slower it becomes and it introduces more risk of a kernel panic or an outage," Martini said. "SASE platforms work at the network level, processing data, scanning data, those types of things aren't happening on a laptop, a desktop, an endpoint -- they're happening within the cloud service itself, which increases performance of an endpoint and reduces the risk of an outage occurring," Martini said.
A SASE solution can be set up in minutes, saving MSPs and MSSPs time when onboarding new customers. That can shorten sales cycles and allows partners to deliver value to customers almost immediately, Martini said.
"The iboss platform connects all the users to our service within about 15 minutes -- which means that if I'm onboarding a customer, I don't have to wait. I can just push and connect those devices and show value on that same day, in terms of protecting data and showing incidents and delivering visibility into things that are happening within the organization that they might not have even known about," Martini said.
There are also the benefits of shrinking the technology stack and cost consolidation for end customers, in addition to offering generous margins on solution sales for partners, Martini said. Unlike some competitors that charge extra for private internet access to connect the solution, iboss bundles that access with the larger solution.
"So partners can go to customers and offer a solution that can immediately cut their cost by probably 30% -- so if they're looking at places to cut their budget or save money this one line item offers MPLS, private access, plus all the network security and zero-trust and security, too. And all that's going to increase that user experience as well. And then, of course, the channel makes good margin on all that as well. So it's a win, win everywhere," Martini said.
