In the era of distributed work, organizations are challenged with how to secure the network edge. AT&T aims to assuage these concerns with a number of zero-trust consulting and managed secure access service edge (SASE) offerings.

“Edge has surprisingly strong momentum, despite the perceived risk,” Theresa Lanowitz, head of cybersecurity evangelism at AT&T Business, told SDxCentral. A recent AT&T survey found that 75% of respondents either planned to, had partially deployed, or had fully implemented an edge deployment use case

However, as more organizations embrace hybrid models for networking and cybersecurity controls, they have to evaluate if legacy controls still work, Lanowitz said. “The edge really brings security and network much closer together.” 

As “a big advocate for zero trust,” Lanowitz says the strategy can help overcome the challenges that come from moving to the edge. “If you can start to implement zero trust, you're going to be that much better prepared for when you do get to your edge implementations,” she explained.

“A big part of zero trust is to be able to secure the applications, secure the users, and also security infrastructure,” she added.

To help customers better understand the zero trust strategy and edge movement, new tools and practices were required, Lanowitz explained. These included managed security services, like SASE, endpoint security, and threat detection and response capabilities. 

“Working with a managed security services provider like AT&T Cybersecurity really helps organizations especially if you're working with AT&T from your manage network side as well,” Lanowitz said. “ You have that single point of contact for the network as well as for cybersecurity.”

Early last year, AT&T announced a single-vendor, managed SASE services beginning with Fortinet and later added Palo Alto Networks and Cisco.

“SASE combined with zero trust are certainly two things that everybody is concerned about,” Lanowitz said. “SASE becomes really important as we see more and more use cases moving to the edge." 

The network is no longer in a hub and spoke topology, and this introduces complexity, she added. “It's a perfect time for managed SASE to be able to come in and help these organizations,” so they can focus on their core business.