MEF published a report that explores multiple factors dramatically increasing the risk of major cyberattacks worldwide.
“State of the Industry Report: SASE – Validating Cyber Defense in an Era of Unprecedented Threats” explains how enterprise networking and cybersecurity decisionmakers can utilize MEF standards-based SASE certification to choose the best solutions with validated cyber defense effectiveness and application performance.
According to the report, many organizations are responding to today’s high-risk threat environment by prioritizing investment in SASE, a cloud-based cybersecurity model, to advance secure digital transformation. SASE solutions protect users, devices, and applications at scale regardless of their location, combining network connectivity via SD-WAN, cloud-based security including Zero Trust (ZT) and Security Service Edge (SSE), and subscriber policies, to provide a high level of application performance and a tightly integrated set of security capabilities.
Key findings include:
- Industry Collaboration Essential: Stronger collaboration to develop effective, standardized and scalable cybersecurity solutions to protect critical infrastructure is essential. The SASE market is a logical focal point for collaboration.
- Increased Investments: Global spending on cybersecurity, the top area of technology investment in 2024, is expected to increase at double-digit rates. According to Gartner, nearly 40% of CIO’s will or plan to deploy SASE solutions by mid-2025.
- MEF Standards and Certification Drive Adoption: SASE industry standards and certification programs like MEF’s are crucial for ensuring consistent terminology, interoperability, and validated security effectiveness of SASE solutions, building trust, and accelerating adoption.
- Benefits of Standards-Based SASE Certification