SASE: The Move to Managed Service Providers 

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Abe Nejad: And the digital transformation is creating new opportunities for enterprise and carrier stakeholders. But, it also introduces a myriad of challenges and in a security capacity. What new security challenges are operators and enterprise stakeholders facing and how are managed service providers playing a pivotal role during this period with a spike in adoption and the need for SASE solutions? On this executive broadcast we have Checkpoint's Erez Yarkoni. He's vice president worldwide sales, telco and cloud. And we also have AT&T's Todd Waskelis. He's Assistant Vice President AT&T cybersecurity. And gentlemen, welcome.

Erez Yarkoni: Thank you, Abe.

Todd Waskelis: Thank you.

Abe Nejad: Well, thanks for being with us. As I said in the intro, the digital transformation is creating this new or new opportunities for enterprise and carrier stakeholders, but also introduces many challenges in the security space. So, Erez, I'll start with you on this one, at a high level, what new security challenges are your customers and partners facing right now?

Erez Yarkoni: Thanks, Abe. So, I think I'll divided into two areas. And maybe we'll pitch the second part to Todd, I think it's, it's right up the alley of an AT&T. But, when customers go through this digital transformation, one of the first things they're facing is that they're adopting new places in which they have to secure their applications, their data, their customers, and so on. So, obviously, in you know, they're used to having applications inside the data centers behind the firewall, and so on, applications are now moving to be hosted in the cloud, they're being built native to the cloud, you still have to provide the same concepts of security they did before. They have to provide posture, they have to secure the application, and so on. But, posture in the cloud may mean something else. And they need new tools and new capabilities to do that. I think one of the main challenges in this digital transformation is that the transformation to cloud and to digital changes the speed and volume in which you do your business, and how you change your business. And with that change in speed and volume, and the fact that you're using new platforms, comes a level of complexity that customers weren't used to before. And that's one of the big challenges. They require automation. They require tools. They require new capabilities to provide pretty much security postures and security capabilities that they're used to and actually secure their business. In addition, we also broke the concept of the network. By broke, I mean, the network now is something a lot bigger than what it used to be for an enterprise network. And these new edges or new paths over the network create new opportunities to the business, but also introduce new security challenges. And I think, you know, a partner like AT&T is perfectly positioned to address these and maybe Todd can take this.

Todd Waskelis: Yeah, thanks, Erez. You know, I do think that there were some organizations who had started their digital transformation journey prior to, you know, this dynamic change in the workforce that we went through, right? And then there's some that, you know, got forced into this. And now they've got an opportunity to step back and say, you know, what is my digital transformation really going to look like? Because now I've got to do this right, we may be thinking about doing it in a few years or down the road. But now we're now we're really forced into it. So, the network changes is dramatic. Right? I think that's one of the biggest things. But, I think the piece that a lot of organizations aren't thinking about is the component of risk management that goes into that digital transformation, right? Where as we move these applications to the cloud, we have all these remote workers, and we have these new edge environments. And the perimeter is, you know, wherever it might be, it's a great opportunity to step back and say, you know, what, how do we look at this from a risk management perspective, and it really requires to go through every one of those applications, every one of those users determine you know, where it's going to sit, who's going to need access and ensure that you're controlling those environments properly. I think that's one of the biggest challenges that companies are walking through as they go through the digital transformation.

Abe Nejad: Todd, so, even though we would like to believe that one supplier can provide an end to end solution that will cover all these core services for robust security solutions; the reality is that most of us will need services from multiple vendors. How do we approach this state of the industry right now?

Todd Waskelis: Yeah, listen, there's a lot of vendors out there that will provide end to end solutions, right. But given the dynamic of the networking environments, the heterogeneous architectures that are out there, it's highly unlikely you're going to find just one that's going to give you your end to end, right. There's I don't think that there's one set use case that work works for everyone, right. And so, some large enterprise organizations have entire IT departments that they can dedicate resources to helping with this sort of putting together all of these complex vendors in this  solution, because you can't just pick one, right. But, smaller mid-sized organizations struggle with that. They just just don't have the resources. And that's where, you know, a lot of organizations shift to a managed service provider, somebody that can step in and help them stitch together all of those components from those multiple vendors, and give them that that end to end solution across the best of the breed products that are out there. I mean, really, there's rarely one size fits all, the environment is extremely dynamic, you know, everything from the network to the cloud to these IoT devices that now need access. So, looking for a trusted partner is one of the things that we see some of our customers going through. Yeah.

Abe Nejad: Erez, ar CSPs needing multiple vendors, again, how do we approach this state of the industry.

Erez Yarkoni: So you know, I think that when we talk vendors, specifically, we talk products and in the space of security products, and there's a couple of us that provide really a 360 view of securing or providing security products. However, customers, they implement business solutions, and they want to implement secure business solutions. And you know, a product only takes you up to a certain point when you're trying to put together a secure business solution, a secure business service, and so on. And that's where it comes all the rest of the complexity. And sometimes in that complexity, you find that you need more than one product. And sometimes you say you find that maybe there's a product provider that gives you kind of, you know, a lot of it or almost everything you need, but you rarely find the product also gives you the services that are required to implement it, to manage it, to continuously change it and, and enable it for your employee base, your IoT base, anything that requires access. And then in today's world, obviously, everything is connected to a network. And because now the concept of a network is extended to these last mile and mid mile networks that are provided by telcos and service providers. If you can find a service provider that can deal with the network complexity, securing who has access to it, and who's trusted in coming to the network, and provide security solutions for securing your applications and data all in a service, you're removing a lot of cost and complexity from your organization. And like Todd said, probably some of the big guys can afford to do it themselves. But really, if you want to get this put together the right way without a lot of holes, you want a service provider to stitch it together for you, deliver it as a service and guarantee the service level.

Todd Waskelis: Yeah, you know, AT&T is one of those managed service providers, right, in fact, probably one of the largest. So, helping an organization, everything from endpoint security, through network security into the cloud, from delivery to operations. That type of support, getting an organization up and running through the digital transformation is critical. You know, then we augment that with a really a world class consulting organization that helps you understand your true risk posture, your architecture, and they can navigate you through that that transformation from a cybersecurity perspective.

Erez Yarkoni: Absolutely, Todd, we experienced that with you all the time.

Abe Nejad: So, Erez, of course, you've already both touched on the importance and the benefit of managed service providers, but let's talk about today what's happening as we are in a unique crisis as the COVID pandemic really still continues to confront all of us. How are managed service providers now playing even a bigger pivotal role during this period, Erez?

Erez Yarkoni: I think what happened with COVID as Todd touched it before is an acceleration of programs that either existed before or were in consideration before for organizations, but it happened in places that maybe the plans and the consideration weren't mature or weren't existing at all. I mean, if you were used to running your call center behind the firewall, the applications are such that you can only access them when you're sitting in the office and your employee base that are using these applications or maybe not even enabled with laptops. And all of a sudden you got to transition that and change that overnight in order to keep the business up and running. Having a partner that provides a managed service that allows you to do that, understands how to get the network up and working for your call center employees at the edge, being able to deploy secure compute capacity for them with endpoint and that trust the individual on the other side integration to their directories and so on and also cleaning the pipes as they come in, making sure that they're not becoming a target of phishing or of malware. Remember, if you were a bad guy, and you tried to fish them or somebody sitting at home before COVID, I don't know what your chances was that you're getting somebody dealing with a very, very sensitive enterprise data. Today you're most likely going to find somebody at home dealing with very sensitive enterprise data. So, you got to make that security a little tighter, a lot tighter, and COVID accelerated it.

Todd Waskelis: Yeah, I think what we saw, especially with the, with the quick hit and COVID was, you know, obviously organizations completely unprepared for this. I mean, I've heard stories of, you know, call center employees pulling up to the front door and desktops being loaded into their front, right, and then they go home, and they connect behind now some firewall that they bought at a local electronics store, and who knows if the Wi-Fi is secured, and, and now you've got this exposure of company data all over the place, right? So, I think, uh, you know, having a partner to help you kind of understand, you know, and what's your risk exposure is efficient deployment of those types of services, right, without having the need to train your personnel is really where it's at. And when we start talking about, you know, SASE and the components of SASE you know, a secure network is a big piece of that, right? There's security that needs to happen at the, you know, the delivery level, and this this piece here, but, you know, ensure strong routing, secure transport, all of those other components are a big piece of pulling these two together. Yeah.

Erez Yarkoni: And if I was sitting at the edge of one of these services, and now the vitality or the heartbeat of my business is dependent on people being able to execute their work from home, I'd like to know that I have a network partner that can also guarantee that that network is available, right, at the right quality, at the right service level. So, it's a combination of a network provider and security provider that makes somebody like an AT&T such a great partner when you're trying to solve something like what COVID introduced us to.

Todd Waskelis: Yeah, and the one other thing I'd want to add here is that it's not just about the technology, right? And the triad, we've got these other two components with the people in the process. You know, the joke of, hey, we'd always have secure networks if we didn't have carbon based entities banging on keyboards, right? Well, those entities used to be behind a corporate firewall, and they were monitored by systems. And now they're working out of home and offices that are, you know, completely remote. And so, ensuring that we continue to follow our training and awareness and making sure that our end users are aware of their responsibility for cybersecurity because the technology is going to do a big part of protecting that. But, there's still that piece that they've got to be aware of, and they've got to support. So, don't forget about the users and the processes in the back end.

Erez Yarkoni: Absolutely.

Abe Nejad: So, Erez, let's go a bit into the future, what we can expect, let's say over the next six months. Global solutions and standardization are really integral for the success of SASE, where are we on the timeline for developing an industry wide consensus to accelerate broad embracement of standardized SASE services?

Erez Yarkoni: Well, I think that the SASE was a concept that was put together, and it aggregates about 11 different areas in which you have to provide capabilities. We have product companies like ourselves, that are building their capabilities in that and are putting those together. Some of them were things that existed before like branch security, endpoint security, user security, zero trust type of security. So, being able to authenticate the access every time and so on. All of these make up {inaudible}, I think that what we'll see is over 2021 a big progression in platform companies like Checkpoint, being able to put in front of a customer and in front end, hopefully, not hopefully, but in front of a managed service provider. Hopefully, that's where the adoption come through because as I said, before, you require services, really something very rich, that gives you access to all 11 type of services. And that can close the SASE story end to end for an end customer.

Abe Nejad: And, Todd, anything to add?

Todd Waskelis: Yeah, you know, I we do believe that there's going to be, you know, there's some fragmentation now, right, I think it's going to be based on practical experience that are going to drive those standardized standards. You know, we believe that a combination of an AT&T cybersecurity and a checkpoint solution on the front end to providing that secure network and those transport services and those cloud based services are going to be the best to meet the demand of today's enterprises, right, as we start getting to that standardization. So, you know, I do want to hit again that, you know, this deployment of a SASE solution requires a lot of planning. We're not just going to go out and you know, put the technology in place. And so, AT&T, it's also an organization that can help you plan as you as you build out your strategic vision, and then you migrate to that that cloud based SASE solution.

Erez Yarkoni: Yeah, I'll add to that. What we see today is, you know, for instance, we made a recent acquisition of secure enterprise applications without a client. So, client's access to enterprise application, zero trust based. And we see we see usage for it, right, we see organizations that say, hey, you know, what, I used to have these, I know, tier three support people that add access to an application that we never thought had to live outside of the firewall, and now they're providing that support from home and that application, you know, I just need to give them access to that application. And it's not exactly something I can do with reverse proxies and things like that. But, it's just one element until your point, as the organizations are now starting to think about what's the end to end story here for everything? And who can I trust to deliver that end to the end story to me both from access to solutions or products, but also access to services that implemented and think about it and put it all together in a structured way? That will be kind of what stitches together, what SASE looks like going forward.

Todd Waskelis: Right, and that's where AT&T's focus really is, is ensuring we're providing that secure last mile hop down to those endpoints in those areas. Right. So, we believe that's a big play there. We believe that's our position with the Checkpoint partners.

Abe Nejad: I was gonna say, Well, first of all, anything on the SASE front is always an interesting topic that you can drill down on for days. So, it's good to have a perspective, as I always say, from the CSP side, and also from the solution provider supplier side as well. And it's even especially good to have two people on at the same time that have such a close relationship on the business front. So, we appreciate both of your time, Erez and Todd, we know everybody's time is busy. And it's possible that we're all getting back to normal maybe in the next four months or so. So, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I guess. But, again, I also wanted to say a special thank you to Erez's team over at Checkpoint for making this broadcast possible today. So, thank you.

Erez Yarkoni: Thank you, Abe, and thank you, Todd for AT&Ts partnership with us, with Checkpoint. You're a super valued customer and partner to us, and thanks Abe for putting it together.

Todd Waskelis: Likewise, guys, thank you. Appreciated.

Abe Nejad: Yep. Thank you so much. And to our viewers out there, thank you again for our speakers on this executive broadcast called SASE: The Move to Managed Service Providers. For this broadcast on demand and all of our executive sessions, please log onto thenetworkmediagroup.com. So long.

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