Lessons learned during the pandemic have contributed to the adoption of SASE, which promises the best of seamless security and high performing, reliable connectivity across cloud, hybrid and on-premises networks. The survey findings revealed that IT and Security teams have struggled to deal with multiple complaints from workers; more than a third (36%) of respondents’ end users complained of dropped connections when using bandwidth-hungry applications such as videoconferencing, and others suffered from the lack of real-time tech support (31%). Security issues have abounded, including the inability to enforce security policies across the remote workforce (37%), or to spot new threats facing users (34%), according to respondents.

Given this picture of fractured security policies and failing connectivity, companies are moving towards SASE to fix the problems, with nearly 9 out or 10 companies (87%) re-evaluating their remote connectivity policy over the past year. SASE has overtaken VPNs as the connectivity of preference, with 23% implementing VPNs versus 34% choosing SASE.

However, despite its popularity, SASE remains misunderstood by the majority of IT and security professionals. A mere 31% of respondents were able to correctly identify the definition of SASE as “the convergence of networking and security services like CASB, FWaaS and Zero Trust into a single cloud-native service model”. Despite this confusion, the top reason for adopting SASE is clear – to improve the security of devices and applications used by remote users, according to 43% of the survey respondents. This was closely followed by 31% stating the desire to prioritize the performance and delivery of business-critical applications in the cloud, and the need to support more remote workers (31%) as key reasons behind SASE adoption.

Other interesting findings include the following:

• Nine out of ten businesses prioritize security ahead of visibility and control, bandwidth and connectivity or user experience, when adopting SASE
• While security is the most compelling reason for adopting SASE, for three in five businesses the responsibility for deciding to implement SASE rests with the IT team versus executive staff, the c-suite, or the board of directors
• The IT team ranks way ahead (49%) of any other department as the most likely to complain about unreliable connectivity
• Video conferencing and collaboration apps have posed the greatest challenges in terms of consistent performance and reliability, according to 36% of respondents

For a copy of the global digital transformation survey “Experiences and Attitudes Towards a Post-COVID Workforce,” see: https://versa-networks.com/resources/ebooks/experiences-and-attitudes-towards-a-post-covid-workforce/.