# What is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)?

> Secure access service edge (SASE) is an architecture and service-delivery model that combines wide-area networking with cloud-delivered security controls close to users, branches, applications, and other resources.

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## Content

A SASE design commonly brings together software-defined WAN connectivity with capabilities such as secure web gateways, cloud access security brokers, firewall as a service, and zero trust network access.

The aim is to apply consistent, identity- and context-aware policy even when users and applications are distributed across offices, homes, data centers, and cloud platforms. SASE is not one protocol or a guaranteed feature set: services, integration depth, traffic paths, and policy models vary substantially.

### Key points

- **Primary purpose:** Connect distributed users and resources while applying security policy through a common service architecture.
- **Key design factors:** Points of presence, latency, private and public application access, identity integration, branch connectivity, data residency, and failure behavior.
- **Operating choices:** Implementations may use one provider or coordinated services, but policy, identity and context, telemetry, and traffic engineering must be meaningfully integrated; procurement consolidation alone is not SASE.
- **Important limitation:** Moving enforcement to the cloud does not remove endpoint, identity, application, data, resilience, or provider-concentration risk.

### Related terms

[Security service edge (SSE)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/security-service-edge/>) · [Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/software-defined-wide-area-network/>) · [Zero trust network access (ZTNA)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/zero-trust-network-access/>) · [Firewall as a service (FWaaS)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/firewall-as-a-service/>) · [Secure web gateway (SWG)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/secure-web-gateway/>)

### Sources

[NIST SP 800-215: Secure Enterprise Network Landscape](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/215/final) · [NIST glossary: SASE](https://csrc.nist.gov/glossary/term/sase)

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