Secure access service edge (SASE) startup Exium is touting 5G as the “ideal blueprint” for secure, cloud-native networking, although the company’s CEO and founder Farooq Khan admits 5G adoption has been below expectations.

Exium in 2021 announced its “secure 5G network-as-a-service” built on an open, programmable, software-driven cybersecurity mesh technology that relies heavily on strong encryption. The company leverages the scale of public cloud infrastructure and the 5G standard to build out an SD-WAN.

“We are leveraging the global 5G standard,” Khan told SDxCentral. “Billions of dollars of investment have gone into the 5G standard from Google, Apple, Verizon. Everybody's interested in having a robust standard.”

The 3GPP 5G specification is also well suited for transport-agnostic SASE frameworks as it can tap into both radio access networks (RAN) and the cloud. This allows the vendor’s 5G SASE service to operate over multi-mode networks, such as 4G LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi, fiber/cable, and satellites from various providers, including mobile operators and cloud hyperscalers.

Exium integrates a security services edge (SSE) stack, including zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG), and Cloud Access Security Broker, which ties in the security capabilities required for a SASE service.

CMO Farooq Muzaffar said the company focuses primarily on bringing its SASE service to mid-market enterprises through the channel by using partnerships with vendors like Arrow, ConnectWise, and Datto. These vendors provide technology to managed service providers (MSPs) who then sell “that to the end customers Exium works with,” he explained.

“What's unique about 5G is that there are certain capabilities that we get around digital experience, around improving performance, that are inherent to the 5G standards and that our competitors don't have,” Muzaffar said.

One of the 5G use cases many SASE providers have yet to address is IoT security, which the Exium service “can handle,” he noted. Performance, low latency, and the ability to prioritize one user or one device over others are additional benefits Muzaffar said are “inherently built into 5G.”

Exium promotes 5G capabilities as its key differentiator in the SASE market, but Khan admitted that “right now, customers do not even need to know that [the service] is built based on 5G,” because most aren’t capable of 5G deployments on the front end.

“The adoption of 5G has been below our expectations, or maybe everybody's expectations,” he said. “The whole industry was expecting 5G to pick up much more quickly.”

Khan said one of the challenges facing adoption is the “device ecosystem,” echoing Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg who recently said that 5G network opportunities have been hampered due to network radio availability challenges, which have in turn impacted service and deployment pricing options.

Muzaffar made a “conservative” estimate that it will still be two to three years before 5G “really permeates, with more and more 5G devices in the hands of consumers and in the hands of business users.”

Still, Exium is confident that its early bet on 5G will pay off and will give the company an edge over other SASE players who might have to update outdated technology stacks once the device ecosystem has matured.

When this time comes, the Exium service will be an “agentless SASE native to 5G,” Khan said. “Exium’s differentiation is going to shine more and more.”