What Are the Fundamental Steps of SASE Adoption?

What Is SASE?

SASE is a framework that combines key security capabilities with software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), all in one cloud-delivered platform.

Read the full article: What Is SASE?

What Are the Benefits of SASE?

Traditional security and networking architectures, built for older IT environments, are complex and inflexible, making them ill-suited for today's cloud-first, distributed systems.

SASE takes a different approach, providing:

• Enhanced security: SASE combines cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway (SWG), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and more for real-time protection across hybrid environments. Zero trust network access (ZTNA) enforces identity-based least-privileged access for remote users and devices.
• Improved connectivity and performance: SASE optimizes traffic routing across cloud platforms and branch offices. SD-WAN connectivity reduces latency, improves application responsiveness, and ensures users can securely access resources anywhere, anytime.
• Cost savings and scalability: SASE reduces overhead costs while providing greater scalability as organizations expand their operations or adopt new cloud services.

6-Step Guide to Successful SASE Adoption

A step-by-step approach will help you avoid common pitfalls as well as achieve a faster, smoother SASE rollout.

Step 1: Assess Your Organization’s Needs

Evaluate your infrastructure
Identify gaps in your environment that SASE can address. Are legacy systems like VPNs or MPLS increasing latency or risk? Do you have complete visibility across remote workers, branch offices, and SaaS? Are cloud scalability or endpoint security being hindered? Later, you can map any shortcomings directly to your goals.

Identify operational pain points
Document challenges faced by stakeholders in IT, compliance, and end user workflows. Are siloed tools overwhelming your security team? Do cloud users regularly report latency or access issues? Clearly addressing pain points will shape the scope and priorities of your SASE roadmap.

Get buy-in from all key stakeholders
Involve IT, compliance, and leadership early in the decision-making process. Aligning on key issues like integrations, regulatory support, and budget will support a smoother and faster transition.

Step 2: Create a Deployment Roadmap

Define measurable success targets
Set clear, achievable goals for your rollout. For instance, you might aim to reduce SaaS app latency by 30%, reduce unauthorized access attempts by 40%, or achieve full visibility into compliance activity logs within six months. Tracking against these goals will help you evaluate progress and refine your strategy as needed.

Prioritize high-impact use cases
Lay out deployment stages sequentially, starting with the most impactful scenarios. For example, begin with securing your end users, advance to your clouds and data centers, and then move to your IoT/OT devices and business-to-business scenarios. This will help avoid overwhelming your IT operations while still delivering tangible results quickly.

Plan to address common challenges proactively
Address potential obstacles, such as workflow disruptions or integration hurdles, in advance to avoid delays later. For example, making sure your admins and users understand how SASE will impact daily operations can reduce resistance to change. Understanding API compatibilities ahead of time will also help answer questions about how to accommodate legacy systems.

Step 3: Select the Right Vendor

Look for a unified platform with simplified management
Your SASE solution should offer an intuitive, single-pane management system for policy enforcement and analytics to simplify operations. Features like DLP, malware protection, and user monitoring should work seamlessly together without the need for separate consoles. Integrated experience monitoring should support easy, end-to-end troubleshooting to keep users productive and satisfied.

Select a true zero trust solution
Not all SASE solutions are equal. Avoid legacy firewall-based approaches, which allow lateral movement and increase risk. Instead, look for a true zero trust SASE platform. Zero trust ensures only verified users access authorized apps without exposing your network, protecting your organization as threats evolve.

Prioritize simple, effective segmentation
Look for a SASE solution that simplifies segmentation for users, apps, and devices. Legacy architectures often turn segmentation into never-ending, complex projects. Zero trust architecture automates segmentation, ensuring consistent enforcement without the need for ongoing manual adjustments. This streamlined approach reduces complexity while strengthening overall security.

Demand comprehensive security and data protection
Choose a SASE platform that includes advanced cyberthreat protection and data security with real-time enforcement and visibility into where your data lives and flows. Adaptive access controls based on risk scores, ongoing verification, and AI-driven anomaly detection are key to stopping threats and preventing data leaks across all channels.

Ensure scalability through intelligent infrastructure delivery
Choose a platform with globally distributed points of presence (PoPs) to enforce policy as close to users as possible. Verify advanced secure connectivity capabilities built to handle multi-site and high-demand workloads for consistent service quality.

Step 4: Run Pilot Deployments

Test and validate your roadmap in controlled environments
Roll out your chosen SASE solution in pilot environments according to your roadmap. Controlled deployments minimize risks and limit the scale of challenges that may arise during implementation.

Refine configurations based on results and feedback
Evaluate your pilot's results against your roadmap’s metrics to identify any areas where you need to make adjustments. Gather feedback from IT teams and users to refine configurations and workflows for smoother deployment as you bring more environments online.

Step 5: Integrate Systems

Transition foundational components first
Prioritize integrating key systems like user authentication into the SASE platform’s framework to establish secure access policies. Introduce monitoring tools to give administrators a centralized view of activity across your entire network, including endpoints, branches, and cloud workloads.

Phase out legacy tools over time
Plan to gradually retire systems like VPNs or standalone firewalls as you test your SASE platform. Start by running your legacy and new systems side by side early in deployment, and remove old tools as your teams get comfortable with your SASE platform's functionality.

Step 6: Scale and Optimize

Expand SASE across critical environments
After successful piloting, scale SASE across your organization. Ensure SD-WAN improves traffic routing across branch offices and hubs, while ZTNA secures remote access for employees globally. Prioritize consistent security enforcement and connectivity performance across regions.

Train teams to manage and use SASE systems effectively
As deployments scale, ensure your teams train on how to manage dashboards, configure policies, and troubleshoot issues across the platform. Give your users concise onboarding around changes like multifactor authentication or new SaaS access processes.

Monitor and optimize based on performance data
Use the SASE platform’s analytics tools to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) like compliance reporting accuracy, latency reductions, and detection rates. Compare outcomes to your established goals to uncover areas for improvement. Continuous refinement ensures your SASE platform stays aligned with your organization's evolving needs.

How Zscaler Can Help

SASE offers stronger security, better connectivity, and simpler operations—but those benefits depend on high performance and scalability. That’s why we built the AI-powered Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange: to deliver fast, reliable, and optimized performance for every user, workload, and location, no matter the demand.

• Cloud-first architecture consolidates and simplifies IT services for a frictionless, consistent, and transparent user experience.
• Full inline TLS/SSL inspection at scale leverages a proxy-based architecture for advanced protection against threats and data loss.
• Global peering and optimization provide superior user experiences and traffic routing through leading application and service providers.
• Zero trust networking securely connects any location without routed overlays, and enables least-privileged app access without unrestricted lateral movement.
• Zero attack surface means IP addresses and source identities are hidden behind the SASE platform, invisible to the open internet.