Key Capabilities of SSE: How Can They Help?

Key Capabilities of SSE

SSE incorporates various capabilities intended to implement a full network security stack. These security functions are largely focused on achieving five security goals.

Access Control

Access management is critical to network, application, and data security. SSE incorporates zero trust network access (ZTNA) capabilities to manage access to corporate networks and resources by zero trust principles.

All access requests are individually assessed against a user’s assigned privileges and permissions to determine if the request is legitimate. If these privileges are assigned  by the principle of least privilege — granting users only the rights required for their role — this granular permission management dramatically reduces the security threats associated with compromised or misused accounts.

Threat Protection

SSE solutions incorporate capabilities designed to shield users against various types of attacks. Some key threat prevention functions in SSE include:

• Cloud Secure Web Gateway (SWG): A SWG offers secure internet access for users accessing the internet via the corporate WAN. SWGs inspect and filter internet traffic to apply corporate security policies and protect against malware and other threats.
• Advanced Threat Detection: SSE’s cloud security services typically include advanced threat detection and prevention capabilities. SSE integrates antimalware capabilities and includes an intrusion prevention system (IPS) to detect and block distributed denial of service (DDoS) and other malicious traffic.
• Sandboxing: Sandbox analysis inspects and executes potentially malicious content in a secure environment. This allows SSE to identify subtle malware and block it from being delivered to the intended user.
• URL Filtering: URL filtering enables an organization to block users from visiting certain websites. This can be used to enforce corporate security and acceptable use policies or to prevent users or malware from communicating with known malicious domains.

Data Security

SSE includes a couple of features designed to help protect corporate data against unauthorized access and potential breaches. These include:

• Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): CASB solutions act as intermediaries between cloud environments and their users. They inspect requests to cloud applications, enforce corporate cloud security policies, and can prevent attempted exploitation of these applications.
• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP solutions inspect outbound traffic for sensitive types of data, such as that protected by regulations and standards (GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, etc.). Integrating DLP enables SSE to prevent unauthorized access and prevent potential breaches of this data.

Security Management & Performance

SSE is designed to streamline and simplify security management by eliminating dependence on point security products. Some of the features that provide this benefit include:

• Security Monitoring: SSE centralizes security monitoring and management for several security functions into a single solution. This reduces the overhead associated with security monitoring and enables security personnel to more easily correlate data from multiple security functions.
• Integration with Additional Security Tools: SSE solutions incorporate various security functions, and these platforms may enable easy integration with an organization’s other security tools as well. This further simplifies security management and also enables faster incident response across the enterprise environment.

Enhanced User Experience

SSE often incorporates remote browser isolation (RBI) to provide a balance of security and usability for internet browsing. RBI loads web content in the cloud and only provides the final, rendered image to the user’s browser.

By moving page loading away from the user’s machine, RBI reduces the risk of malware and other web-based security risks.

Considerations for Adopting SSE

SSE offers the potential to dramatically strengthen and simplify a corporate cybersecurity architecture. When considering SSE solutions, some things to keep in mind include:

• Security Integration: While SSE includes several security functions, it isn’t a complete corporate cybersecurity architecture. SSE solutions should be capable of integrating with an organization’s existing security infrastructure to avoid creating visibility and security gaps.
• Regulatory Compliance: Various regulations and standards mandate that an organization have certain security solutions or capabilities in place. SSE solutions should be assessed to verify that they both offer strong security and meet the requirements of applicable regulations.
• Scalability and Cost: Cloud-native SSE solutions should be able to scale to provide high-performance security even during traffic surges. However, it’s also important to verify that the solution is cost-effective and that the company can afford this security scalability.