As organizations continue to grapple with the challenges of remote workforces, edge computing, and cybersecurity operations, a new framework has emerged as a potential solution: Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). While SASE has shown promise in addressing security concerns at the intersection of on-premises, cloud, and edge systems, adopting it comes with its own set of challenges. Building an effective SASE framework requires organizations to rethink their security governance, shift policy focus, retrain teams internally, and build new relationships externally.
This transition can be a lengthy process, lasting anywhere from 6 to 18 months or more, and demands maintaining security on both legacy and SASE systems simultaneously. To embark on this journey, organizations must conduct a comprehensive infrastructure assessment to uncover shadow infrastructure, redundant security tools, and point solutions that are never fully decommissioned. This audit phase will help understand what aspects of SASE are most important for the organization and what they already have in place to achieve those ends.
According to John Grady, principal analyst at Omdia, conducting a thorough self-assessment is essential. “Ask yourself where you want to be two and three years down the road,” he advises. “Take that assessment and build out your roadmap.” This means identifying areas of pain, such as remote access or branch connectivity, and starting with pilots in controlled environments.
Pilot deployments should target specific segments, minimizing impact should issues occur. Ideal pilots could include remote-worker populations, new branch locations not yet migrated from legacy infrastructure, or non-critical SaaS applications where security gaps don’t threaten core business operations. Pilot deployments should run for extended periods – typically 3 to 6 months – to capture seasonal variations, integration edge cases, and performance patterns under different load conditions.
As organizations progress with pilot deployments, they must establish performance baselines, validate that SASE policies correctly permit required traffic while blocking unwanted flows, and develop operational procedures for incident response, policy changes, and troubleshooting specific to the SASE platform. “Start where the biggest pain is,” Grady recommends. For example, if remote access is the main concern, start with zero-trust network access; if branch connectivity is the issue, then Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) may be the way forward.
Once pilot deployments are complete, organizations can begin a phased migration of workload groups. Rather than attempting to cut over the entire security infrastructure at once, migrate workload groups sequentially. Allow time to validate each migration before advancing to the next. Typical phases may include remote workers and mobile devices, branch office networks and SD-WAN connectivity, centralized cloud application access, and sensitive on-premises workloads.
By migrating remote work first, organizations gain operational experience with SASE platforms while addressing the highest-pain legacy VPN problems, building internal expertise and organizational confidence before tackling more complex scenarios. Each migration phase should maintain coexistence with legacy infrastructure for 1-3 months to enable a rapid rollback if unexpected issues arise.
The final stage of implementing SASE involves comprehensive policy redesign and governance evolution. As organizations transition to SASE, their security policies must adapt to the new framework, incorporating zero-trust principles, cloud-native security controls, and software-defined networking capabilities. This requires close collaboration between IT teams, security experts, and business stakeholders to ensure that policies align with organizational goals.
Ultimately, building an effective SASE framework demands a fundamental shift in security governance, policy focus, and team expertise. Organizations must be willing to invest time and resources into this transition, but the benefits of improved security posture, reduced complexity, and increased agility make it well worth the effort. By following these steps and maintaining a flexible approach, organizations can successfully implement SASE and reap its rewards in the long run.
Source: Dark Reading — 2026-09-24