Secure access service edge (SASE) is the aspiration and destination of many enterprises. SASE converges best-practice security features such as Zero-trust network access (ZTNA) with network access technologies such as SD-WAN. SASE is the future of network security and the best way to protect enterprise data and infrastructure from attack.

Moving toward a SASE architecture and selecting the right vendors can be daunting. The landscape includes various vendors who have built their solutions in fundamentally different ways. Migrating to SASE often involves integrating new technologies with an existing network architecture and building on features with new vendors and technology. Add vendor claims, a myriad of public security standards, and artificial intelligence (AI)'s promise (and sometimes hype), and you have a recipe for challenging and protracted evaluation and migration.

Accelerating Your Move to SASE

The first step is defining your specific SASE requirements and issuing an RFP to narrow the range of workable solutions. Decision Insights offers a vendor-neutral SASE RFP template that compiles the top solution requirements gathered from across the industry. Decision Insights collaborated with the vendor community, analysts, and enterprise decision-makers to organize these requirements into a list you can prioritize and customize to your organization’s needs.

However, while an RFP is useful for gathering information, it does not provide real-world validation of how a SASE solution performs under load, handles security threats, or scales in a production environment. That’s where the next step, product evaluation and testing come in.

Trust Data, Not Datasheets

The next step is to trial the finalist solutions in your environment. Trials help evaluate usability, the ability to guard against known threats and integration with your organization’s specific tech stack.

“The proof of concept and ability to evaluate solutions with your data and within your environment to compare and contrast the different tools is the important part.”

- Director of Cybersecurity Operations

Independent testing organizations play a crucial role in assessing solutions against a wider variety of potential attacks, compliance with specific industry standards and real-world performance metrics. Companies like Keysight Technologies and CyberRatings can help. By leveraging real-world testing environments, simulated attacks, and performance benchmarking, these organizations eliminate bias, accelerate selection, and reduce evaluation costs.

Why Datasheets and Vendor Claims Are Not Enough

Every SASE vendor promises best-in-class security, performance, and scalability. While their datasheets highlight impressive-sounding capabilities, the marketing materials rarely tell the whole story.

Common pitfalls of relying on datasheets alone:

• Unrealistic test conditions – Vendors optimize their performance metrics for ideal lab conditions, which do not reflect real-world enterprise environments.

• Lack of transparency – Many vendors omit critical details, such as latency under high traffic loads or false positive rates in threat detection.

• One-size-fits-all claims – Every business operates under unique circumstances, and a solution that excels on paper may not best fit your unique specific security policies, network architecture, and compliance requirements.

A Cyber Solution Manager emphasized the importance of real-world testing:

“I would always test two to three solutions. Just because the tool does everything you need it to do, it doesn’t mean it will integrate nicely with the other stuff you have in your environment.”

- Cyber Solution Manager

Why Independent Testing Organizations Are Essential

Independent third-party testing eliminates bias and provides objective, apples-to-apples comparisons of SASE solutions.

Key benefits of independent testing:

• Security effectiveness – Does the SASE solution effectively detect and block cyber threats? How well does it enforce Zero Trust security policies?

• Performance Benchmarking – How does the solution perform under high-traffic loads? Does it introduce latency that impacts user experience?

• Scalability and resilience – Can the SASE platform maintain consistent performance during peak demand, network failures, or cloud outages?

• Cost-benefit analysis: Does the vendor deliver real value relative to pricing? What’s the total cost of ownership when factoring in performance, security, and maintenance?

Without objective testing, enterprises risk choosing a SASE vendor based on marketing rather than measurable results.

“We usually shortlist products that meet the key requirements and then create a comparative report… We evaluate them based on performance, integration, cost, and security for a side-by-side comparison.”

- Senior Software Engineer

How Keysight and CyberRatings Deliver SASE Insights

Keysight specializes in real-world traffic emulation and security testing. They create enterprise-grade test environments to assess:

• Network scale and load balancing – Evaluate how SASE solutions handle high-volume enterprise traffic.

• Zero Trust enforcement – Measure effectiveness in applying strict access controls and security policies.

• Security posture validation – Simulate real-world cyber threats to test vendor capabilities in malware detection, threat mitigation, and response time.

• Latency and performance metrics – Ensure the solution meets enterprise needs without introducing unacceptable delays.

CyberRatings is an independent security rating organization using Keysight’s tools to test standardized SASE solutions. Their evaluation process includes:

• Security stress testing – Determine how well a vendor’s solution protects against real-world attacks.

• Performance verification – Confirm whether vendor-provided throughput and latency metrics hold up under live conditions.

• Objective scoring and comparative analysis – Help enterprises compare multiple vendors side by side.

Don’t Cut Corners - Secure Your Organization’s Data and Infrastructure

Selecting the right SASE vendor is a critical decision that impacts security, performance, and cost. The first step to documenting your requirements and narrowing the range of solutions is using Decision Insights' vendor-independent RFP. Next, enterprises gain objective security and performance insights by integrating Keysight and CyberRatings into the evaluation process. This approach accelerates vendor selection, reduces testing costs, and ensures your organization adopts a robust, well-tested SASE solution.

Explore independent SASE testing with Keysight and CyberRatings today!