Equinix Inc.

06/10/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 06/10/2025 09:56

4 Steps to Implement SASE for Secure Multicloud Networking

Hybrid multicloud has become the norm in today's business world, and this means that enterprises are asking more of their networks. They not only need to move data quickly between different cloud and on-premises environments, but also keep that data protected wherever it ends up. Gartner® coined the term "secure access service edge" (SASE) to describe this convergence between networking and security.[1]

SASE is a concept that combines SD-WAN access with secure gateways and zero-trust tools, all hosted in the cloud and consumed as a service. It's meant to reflect the dynamic, distributed nature of today's organizations and the security threats they face.

At a time when digital infrastructure tends to be distributed across many locations, organizations that use centralized security models will inevitably struggle. They'll have to move data further to be inspected at a single location, significantly affecting performance. They'll also expose their infrastructure to single points of failure. Additionally, the model can be inflexible, since it's hard for them to change their infrastructure when their needs change.

To compensate for these issues in the traditional approach, they'll begin to deploy more tools in more places to keep traffic protected, leading to higher costs and complexity. With SASE, businesses can make decentralization a fundamental principle of their security strategy, enabling greater flexibility while retaining high levels of security.

SASE is an effective framework for securing today's highly distributed hybrid multicloud environments. However, implementing it can be challenging and time-consuming. Let's look at how an organization might simplify SASE implementation by splitting it into four manageable steps. This includes a planning phase and then deploying three common SASE components: SD-WAN, secure gateways and firewalls, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA).

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Step 1: Plan your SASE implementation

Before you do anything else, you need to map out which SASE components you plan to deploy, and evaluate which vendors to acquire them from. This provides the foundation for everything you'll do later, so it's essential to approach this carefully and strategically.

In order to get where you want to go, you must first determine where you're starting from. This means evaluating the current state of your network and security architecture. As you do this, you can identify opportunities to improve your existing technologies or processes and fix any weaknesses. One key step during this phase is to determine the locations of your users, applications, and the data they need access to. This will help inform the second phase of the deployment.

It's also important to define what a successful SASE implementation would look like in your case. Each organization has different priorities, but they can all benefit from looking for low-hanging fruit: the components that would make the biggest impact on their security posture from the moment they deploy them. Showing tangible benefits early on can help keep stakeholders engaged as the implementation continues.

Step 2: Deploy SD-WAN

SD-WAN is a fundamental building block of SASE, so it's a natural place to start for any organization that hasn't deployed it yet. Doing so will ensure the network is optimized and ready to support additional SASE components. Having a solid network foundation is usually the first step in designing any distributed application.

This is also likely to be the most difficult phase of your SASE implementation. It's important to ensure that the SD-WAN solution not only integrates with your existing infrastructure, but that it's also ready for whatever you might add in the future.

Because this is such a critical phase, it calls for extra caution. When an organization is new to SD-WAN, IT teams should be thoroughly trained on the selected solution to gain the skills needed to operate it. There should also be a pilot phase to test everything and ensure a smooth rollout. It can take several months to make sure all the integration kinks are ironed out.

The emergence of advanced AI use cases is forcing many enterprises to change the way they approach SD-WAN. AI applications are often distributed by nature: Although most model training happens in centralized locations where compute is abundant, organizations also need to connect with their ecosystem partners and enable real-time inference near distributed data sources. Also, some organizations will need dedicated infrastructure in specific locations to help meet their data privacy and sovereignty requirements. This means that network performance is now more important than ever, which in turn means that getting SD-WAN right is more important than ever.

As an example, consider agentic AI. When human agents experience poor network performance, they often complain about it. It's not ideal, but at least you know there's a problem that needs to be fixed. When AI agents experience poor network performance, they don't complain. They continue to work as intended, just less efficiently. This means that poor performance could inhibit your agentic AI workflows without you even realizing it.

While AI creates new networking challenges, it can also be part of the solution. AI is shaping the future of SD-WAN; it can help networks adapt to changing traffic patterns for better performance, detect and mitigate threats proactively, avoid downtime with predictive maintenance, and more.

Step 3: Set up firewalls and gateways

Next in line will be virtual firewalls and secure web/email gateways. Many organizations have different business units operating different secure gateway solutions. This makes it difficult to manage and ensure compliance. The main goal of this phase is to achieve centralized management for all these different gateways, no matter where they're located. A unified solution will help simplify management and enable immediate threat mitigation.

It's important to track user experience when implementing gateways. Paying attention to how the changes impact users and how easily users adapt to these changes can be critical to ensure further SASE adoption within the organization. There should be effective processes for collecting user feedback, so that the implementation teams can address problems and better understand users' pain points. These processes are also important for the next phase of the implementation.

Step 4: Adopt zero-trust network access

With the fundamentals in place, your organization can now start implementing ZTNA. This phase can be very challenging, because it impacts every user and every part of the network. The feedback mechanisms established in the previous phase should carry over into this one to avoid degradation of the user experience.

ZTNA requires continuous verification of devices and users before they're allowed to access networks and applications. This phase of the implementation calls for special attention to monitoring and alerting systems (another area where AI can help).

When done right, ZTNA enables unified access controls at the individual-user level across heterogenous IT environments. Thus, it's an important prerequisite for implementing bring-your-own-device programs in a secure manner.

Implementing a network architecture for a distributed, multicloud world

This blog post provides examples of how organizations commonly get started with SASE. It's not intended to be a comprehensive list of everything a business might deploy. Once they complete the initial steps, organizations can assess their results and then move on to consider which components they might want to implement next.

In addition to implementing new tools, SASE adoption has profound implications for an organization's operations and strategies. The framework fundamentally enhances the security posture of hybrid multicloud deployments. It unifies various security functions, shifts them to cloud native services and enables centralized management. This allows organizations to apply consistent, uniform security policies across all endpoints in both on-premises and cloud environments. It also provides deep visibility into network activity, enabling faster threat detection and response.

The architecture's adaptability makes it perfect for hybrid multicloud. Organizations can quickly adapt to shifting business priorities without needing to revamp their entire network infrastructure. Growth becomes more seamless, with the ability to quickly incorporate new services and users.

SASE is a paradigm shift that fundamentally redefines networking and security, bringing them together in a single, comprehensive framework. This convergence will be crucial as organizations adapt to a digital world that's increasingly decentralized, cloud-centric and interconnected.

At Equinix, you can find everything you need to simplify your SASE implementation. This includes firewalls and SD-WAN devices from Equinix Network Edge, as well as simplified hybrid multicloud networking via Equinix Fabric®, our software-defined networking solution.

[Link]

Equinix Network Edge devices help secure multicloud networks as part of a SASE deployment

Deploying SASE is just one example of how enterprises are optimizing their networks for a hybrid multicloud world. To learn more, read our white paper Thriving with a hybrid multicloud strategy.

[1] Gartner IT Glossary, "Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)", as of May 8, 2025.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

  • Multicloud Networking
  • SASE
  • SD-WAN
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Ted Kawka Global Principal
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Equinix Inc. published this content on June 10, 2025, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on June 10, 2025 at 15:56 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at support@pubt.io