Barracuda Networks bolstered its emerging secure access service edge (SASE) platform this week, announcing remote access functionality alongside two branch appliances.

The announcement comes just two months after the security vendor launched CloudGen WAN, an SD-WAN built on Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN (vWAN).

"Adding personal remote access to CloudGen WAN provides another key piece as we build out an increasingly robust secure access service edge offering," Tim Jefferson, SVP of engineering at Barracuda, said in a statement.

Users can now connect to applications through CloudGen WAN gateways running in Azure, according to Barracuda. The service uses multi-factor authentication to identify the user and connect them to their authorized applications.

Access is granted on a per-user basis, according to each enterprise's security policies. This, the company says, dramatically reduces network, application, and business risk compared to more traditional remote access technologies like virtual private networks.

Barracuda also launched two appliances designed for industrial endpoints. The CloudGen WAN T93 and CloudGen WAN T193 are equipped with fiber interfaces for high-speed connectivity to Azure vWAN.

Barracuda said its personal remote access service will launch later this year.

Barracuda inched closer to realizing its SASE ambitions back in July when it launched an SD-WAN offering built on Azure vWAN.

The service can be deployed from the Azure marketplace and was designed to tie into Barracuda's existing next-generation firewalls.

“Azure has been a great partner for Barracuda for many years,” Jefferson said in an earlier interview with SDxCentral. “When they launched the [virtual WAN] product, we saw that as an interesting construct that we could use to solve customer problems together.”

By using Azure vWAN, Barracuda is cutting out the need for expensive MPLS circuits. Instead, users connecting to its CloudGen WAN are directed to an Azure vWAN gateway, where they're routed across the cloud provider's private network to the application.

“Now you can build your WAN dynamically,” Jefferson said, at the time. “Because we were able to partner with Microsoft and deploy that natively, that removes a lot of the deployment and management friction.”