Hybrid work is demanding a complete paradigm shift in how CIOs and CISOs keep their workforce safe and productive. With more users, devices, and data distributed outside the protections of the traditional corporate perimeter, relying on location-centric tools like VPNs and firewalls and backhauling traffic through corporate data centers is becoming too complex, too risky, and too costly. Instead, organizations are aspiring to unify security and networking controls in the cloud to deliver consistent protections across all traffic.

This aspirational architecture – often known as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) – offers a simpler, more secure, more cost-effective way to connect any source to any destination. In particular, organizations are empowered to adopt Zero Trust best practices – which means establishing default-deny, least privileged policies that only let users access what they need based on first verifying identity, device posture, and other context. Plus, shifting security and networking to a distributed cloud network ensures controls are enforced and traffic is inspected close to end users, wherever they are.

Ultimately, modernizing IT and security in this way helps organizations stay ahead of their transformational business needs. CIOs improve workforce productivity by equipping administrators with a simpler, single platform for policy setting and by delivering more streamlined, faster IT experiences for end users. CISOs reduce cyber risk by equipping security teams with better visibility, more granular controls, and more comprehensive threat defense across an organization’s attack surface. Finally, CTOs improve IT efficiency by deprecating expensive legacy hardware and simplifying branch office security and multi-cloud connectivity with a unified cloud platform.