Industry Insights

Top 10 Signs You Need a New SSE Solution

By Dan Maier

Chief Marketing Officer, Versa Networks
June 7, 2024

In today’s hyper-connected digital landscape, enterprises need to have a robust and cost-effective Security Service Edge (SSE) solution to combat increasingly sophisticated cyber threats and to support digital transformation. While the foundational technologies behind SSE, such as Secure Web Gateways (SWG), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), have been around for over a decade, their integration into comprehensive SSE solutions has become more prominent and sophisticated over the past five years or so.  

But as the market has evolved and expanded to over 30 vendors, some cracks and shortcomings are starting to show. A number of these SSE offerings and vendors are starting to create technical or business challenges for their customers.  So if you are using a “legacy” SSE product (or even if you just have a couple of standalone point products), how do you know when it’s time to upgrade or replace your existing SSE solution? 

Is your SSE solution or vendor falling short in any of these areas? 

Top 10 signs it might be time to switch: 

1. Increased security incidents: The rapid evolution of cyber threats means that SSE solutions must continuously update and adapt. Vendors that are slow to respond to new threats can leave their customers vulnerable. If your organization experiences a rise in security breaches, malware infections, or other cyber threats, it may indicate that your current SSE solution is no longer effective.  This may be particularly true if you are still using a first-generation VPN solution to manage remote access.  
2. Latency and poor user-to-application experience: Many SSE solutions centralize their security inspection processes in specific PoPs. If these PoPs are not optimally located relative to the users, the result is increased latency due to “hairpinning” or “tromboning” of traffic (basically sub-optimal routing/traffic management).  In addition, when an SSE provider has a limited number of PoPs, or they are unevenly distributed, traffic is forced to travel longer distances for security checks, exacerbating these routing inefficiencies. And finally, many SSE solutions route traffic over the public internet for inspection and policy enforcement, with no ability to guarantee acceptable performance. Note that, while several SSE vendors offer a Digital Experience Management capability to identify traffic problems, very few of them can take any actions to rectify these issues. If your SSE solution exhibits persistent slow network performance and you’re hearing from frustrated end users, it could be a signal that your legacy SSE is insufficient for your needs. 
3. Fragmented architecture – A number of SSE solutions are built on fragmented, bolted-together architectures, which can create a range of problems. For example, one vendor uses separate products and networks for ZTNA (hosted on AWS) and internet security (hosted on Equinix), leading to management complexity, data sovereignty concerns and inconsistent security enforcement. Each product requires its own management console, increasing the burden on admins, and each network requires separate authentication, complicating the user experience. And because the ZTNA solution has limited security capabilities, this leaves private applications vulnerable to malware spreading across the network via lateral movement from infected endpoints. So if your vendor’s SSE is bolted together from piece parts, and not built on a unified platform architecture, it may be time to find another solution. 
4. High total cost of ownership: There are a number of very high-cost brands in the SSE market – after all, you have to pay for that fancy marketing somehow! Stories abound about inflexible and inflated pricing, hidden fees, complex licensing models that combine per user and per bandwidth elements, frequent licensing changes, and unexpected cost increases at renewal time. And for reseller or integrator partners, sometimes they suddenly find that the renewal has been taken over by the vendor, and they are cut out the relationship. If the cost of your SSE solution is high, but does not deliver proportional value in terms of security, performance, and support, it may be worth considering a switch to a more cost-effective vendor. 
5. Inadequate support and response time: Slow or unhelpful customer support, particularly during critical incidents, suggests that the vendor may not prioritize your needs effectively. Customers have reported challenges with technical support services for several vendors in the industry, including long resolution times, insufficient guidance, and a lack of responsiveness. These factors collectively contribute to a negative support experience and overall dissatisfaction. If you are having problems with slow response times, insufficient technical guidance, or a lack of responsiveness during critical incidents, maybe it’s time to look around at other solutions. 
6. Weak backbone/POP network – A strong PoP backbone network is essential to ensure low latency, high availability, and consistent security enforcement across diverse geographical locations. But PoP coverage is a mixed bag in the SSE market. Some vendors just have fewer PoPs than you would expect; some vendors limit the number of PoPs their customers can use; and a number of vendors do not run all their services on all their PoPs. In addition, many SSE vendors run their PoP backbones primarily over public clouds like Google or AWS, which limits their ability to deliver assured performance and data sovereignty. If your vendor has a weak PoP network, this might be a reason to evaluate other alternatives. 
7. Complex deployment and management: Deploying some SSE solutions can be complex and time-consuming, requiring significant effort to integrate with existing systems and infrastructure. For example, some products require the customer to create a huge number of IPSec tunnels to connect offices and branches; others only provide support for a limited set of authentication mechanisms or lack single sign-on (SSO), and still others require the deployment and maintenance of multiple different VMs for application connectivity and functional support. Many SSE solutions lack a unified console and control plane for administration, instead requiring multiple consoles for different solution components, each with disparate UIs and management approaches. If your SSE solution doesn’t provide easy deployment and management, then it could be time for a change. 
8. Lack of innovation and modern features: Most SSE solutions incorporate a basic set of security capabilities, including secure SaaS and private application access, threat protection, and data protection. But not every vendor is investing in the innovation needed to keep these capabilities on the cutting edge. A surprising number of vendors lack common SSE features such as sandboxing, advanced DLP functionality, Digital Experience Management (DEM), and customizable reporting. Even fewer support advanced capabilities like security for dynamic protocols (SIP, H.323, etc.), AI-based threat detection, security across 5G and satellite networks, and support for clientless use cases like BYOD, IoT devices, and OT networks. If your legacy solution lacks these features, it may be time for an upgrade. 
9. Insufficient reporting and analytics: You can’t secure what you can’t see. Many vendors only provide limited visibility into security events, and poor reporting capabilities make it challenging to assess your security posture and respond to threats appropriately.  SSE vendors with disparate products are unable to unify user, device and application risk to present a singular view of what’s happening in their enterprise networks. So customers end up with fragmented “risk insights” that are not useful for security teams. For effective SSE security, it’s important to see the entire security fabric, including users, devices, cloud gateways, and how traffic is traversing the internet. If your vendor struggles to offer detailed visibility and analytics, you might want to consider alternatives. 
10. Weak SASE roadmap – SASE represents the future of SSE because it offers a unified, scalable, and flexible approach to securing and managing modern enterprise networks across all environments. SASE combines SSE and SD-WAN to deliver cost efficiency and improved performance while addressing the complexities of today’s digital landscape – it’s an important consideration to “future-proof” your network and security infrastructure. That said, many SSE vendors either lack a SASE story or have a weak one. Some vendors offer simplistic “toy” traffic forwarders that they call SD-WAN, but are simply not enterprise class. Many SSE vendors don’t support key connectivity use cases required by enterprises, like site-to-site connectivity, zero trust in the branch, lateral movement prevention in the branch, and dynamic protocol security. Still others have bolted together disparate SSE and SD-WAN solutions, and slapped their logo on the products, but essentially are still delivering a fragmented solution. So if your SSE vendor has not embraced the concept of SASE and provided a compelling convergence roadmap, you may want to find a different vendor. 

As you see the renewal date for your SSE solution approaching, you may want to think about whether you’re getting what you need from your platform. If you feel that your legacy SSE meets any of the criteria listed above, it may be time for you to look for your “next generation” solution. There are definitely some good products on the market – we of course feel partial to Versa SSE, but at the end of the day you need to find the solution that fits your requirements, resources and budget.

Here are a few resources that we think might be able to help you make your decision: 

• Versa SSE Buyer’s Guide 
• Gartner Magic Quadrant for SSE 
• Top 10 Signs You Might Need a New SSE Vendor – Webinar 

Good luck!