DARK Reading outlines a staged approach for organisations adopting Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which combines networking and security controls for on-premises, cloud and edge environments. The transition is described as a governance and organisational change as well as a technology project, potentially taking 6–18 months or longer while legacy and SASE systems operate together.
A comprehensive assessment should identify shadow infrastructure, duplicated tools, network and application dependencies, traffic flows and compliance requirements, followed by controlled pilots lasting typically three to six months. Suggested starting points include remote workers, new branches or non-critical SaaS applications, with the specific SASE capability chosen according to the organisation’s main problem, such as zero-trust network access, SD-WAN or CASB.
The article recommends migrating workload groups in phases—starting with remote users and mobile devices, then branch networks, cloud applications and sensitive on-premises systems—while keeping legacy infrastructure available for one to three months to support rollback. Organisations should redesign policies around least privilege, user and device identity, application sensitivity and security posture rather than IP-based location, while removing redundant or overly permissive rules.
Staff may also need training in cloud-native architecture, API automation, identity integration and distributed policy management. After deployment, quarterly policy reviews and performance monitoring should check for security gaps, unintended changes, latency, throughput and reliability problems. The article says a comprehensive global deployment may require one to two years and sustained leadership commitment.