In my previous two blog posts, I talked about SASE as it relates to the complex application landscape and the challenges enterprises face in providing secure and consistent access to apps. We also talked about how Citrix’s unified and ready-to-deploy approach to secure access service edge (SASE) architecture can help you to empower your hybrid workforce with a secure access experience.

In this blog post, the last in our three-part series, I’ll highlight key IT initiatives driving a SASE model, expected business outcomes, and how to plan and accelerate your SASE journey leveraging a unified and complete SASE architecture.

Key IT Initiatives to Move to a Flexible, Reliable Hybrid Work Model

Citrix’s unified SASE model enables you to choose the best path for your environment and your cloud transformation strategy. Here are two key IT initiatives to empower secure distributed work across enterprise environments:

  • The transition from conventional VPN technologies to a zero trust access model, with or without VPN: Accelerate and modernize IT to transition from traditional access models and reduce VPN dependencies with modern secure remote access for the entire hybrid workforce.
  • Seamlessly move to a hybrid work model without rearchitecting the whole network: Enable effective access security for the modern and distributed workforce for all apps, no matter where the information resides, where the user is, or where the work happens.

Identify Expected Business Outcomes Before Implementing SASE

With several vendors and multiple point products offering SASE solutions, it has become difficult for organizations to pick the right solutions. Each organization could have a unique path toward a complete, mature SASE architecture, which won’t happen overnight.

It’s best to plan your SASE journey with a focus on your expected business outcomes and choose vendors that will partner with you along the journey to help to plan and achieve a complete SASE architecture. Here are few key business outcomes we see our customers consider on the journey to a SASE model:

Secure business-critical apps

  • Understand critical apps you’ll need to support your business to create a baseline for your security strategy to stop breaches, to reduce complexity, and to enable agility, scalability, and growth across your distributed hybrid workforce

Enhance workforce experience

  • Provide the fastest, most reliable experience with comprehensive security

Effectively reduce the attack surface

  • Enable intelligent, contextual, and consistent security policy for any app, any location, and any device
  • Implement least privilege and zero trust principles
  • Reduce dependency on cumbersome VPN solutions

Simplify transition to cloud

  • Enable secure access to all internal and external applications
  • Seamlessly move to cloud services
  • Speed up site rollouts while lowering transport costs

Accelerate the journey to SASE

  • A unified approach built on a global cloud architecture
  • Agile IT operations, holistic visibility, autoscale, and faster troubleshooting

Accelerate Your SASE Journey

Because SASE architecture includes several components, flexibility is key to accelerating your journey. Citrix SASE solutions deliver all core and recommended SASE security functionalities within a unified solution and a single-pass architecture for lower latency and better performance.

Starting Your SASE Journey

Choose the deployment option that best fits your unique needs and business goals. There are core components you might consider deploying first such as SD-WAN, SWG, CASB, ZTNA, FWaaS (with IPS), identity-sensitive data, and malware protection. Also, you might add WAAP, RBI, sandbox, API-based access to SaaS for data context, and support for managed and unmanaged devices.

Considering all these different components, it might be hard to figure out where to start your journey. The closely integrated components within Citrix’s unified SASE architecture make it easy and enable you to take a logical and flexible path that fits well with your existing environment. You can take different approaches in starting with security or networking:

Security-First Approach

When evaluating security solutions toward a unified SASE architecture, IT and security professionals, should consider key factors including how quickly they can enable secure access through cloud-delivered security stack to protect users, apps, and data with end-to-end contextual security. Unlike traditional approaches and point product solutions, with Citrix secure access solutions, your applications are continually protected — no matter where employees work, which devices they use, or what your infrastructure looks like. Citrix Secure Workspace Access and Citrix Secure Internet Access provide the fully integrated, automated solutions businesses need to keep applications secure and employees productive.

Citrix Secure Internet Access offers a comprehensive, cloud-delivered security stack so you can empower users with the most secure experience possible — for any app, anywhere, on any device. This complete security platform includes a secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), data loss prevention, next-generation firewall (FWaaS), malware protection, sandbox, and more. These security capabilities work together to enable secure access to the internet and SaaS and protect remote users, without the complexities and expense of datacenter-based security. Request a demo to see Citrix Secure Internet Access in action.

Citrix Secure Workspace Access provides VPN-less access to sanctioned apps. Unlike a traditional VPN, Citrix Secure Workspace Access provides a zero trust approach to securely access all internal apps managed by IT, including corporate web, SaaS, and virtual apps. With advanced security controls for managed, unmanaged, and BYO devices, it’s ideal for IT and employees alike. Request a demo to see Citrix Secure Workspace Access in action.

Networking-First Approach

When evaluating networking solutions towards a unified SASE architecture, network administrators and business managers should consider certain factors including ease and speed of deployment, the simplicity of the move to secure hybrid work model, intelligent traffic management, high performance, and an always-available WAN edge solution that provides exceptional experience, and seamless business continuity.

Citrix SD-WAN accelerates digital transformation with flexible, secure connectivity for cloud and virtual applications. A comprehensive SASE-ready SD-WAN with automation, policy-based enforcement, zero-touch deployment, and intelligent reporting makes it easy to quickly roll out new applications and monitor connections to the cloud. Enterprises everywhere use Citrix SD-WAN to ensure bandwidth is fully optimized and to increase cost savings by consolidating routing and security hardware in branch locations. Request a demo to see how to deliver a secure, always-on network with Citrix SD-WAN.

Learn more about the core and recommended SASE components on our What Does a SASE Architecture Look Like page.

SASE Maturity Hygiene

Your SASE journey is an adaptive process, and you must continuously monitor the maturity of your SASE hygiene. You must evaluate your existing security and networking technologies to identify gaps and the best paths forward based on use case priorities and expected business outcomes so you can plan for a phased and gradual SASE deployment.

Citrix’s flexible architecture and comprehensive technology portfolio can help you to build a unified SASE deployment strategy through continuous assessment, planning, and deployment of SASE components in multiple phases so you can move forward with confidence. This simple, three-step approach can help you plan your SASE journey:

  • Assess: Continuously evaluate and monitor the existing environment to identify gaps based on key IT and business initiatives
  • Plan: Plan best paths forward based on use case priorities and expected business outcomes
  • Deploy: Implement SASE’s core and recommended components in different phases and with a unified approach to get the true value of a SASE model

Learn More

Want more on SASE? Make sure to read my previous blog posts on why you need a unified approach to SASE when tackling a complex app landscape and on taking a strategic approach to secure a hybrid workforce with SASE. And visit our SASE page to learn more about how SASE solutions can help organizations to provide secure remote access to apps and the internet, without straining IT teams, and to meet the complex needs of distributed workforces.