Managed SASE in 2025: From a Buzzword to a Business Imperative

According to Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms, more than 60% of enterprises are implementing Managed SASE services. The reason is simple. It allows companies to focus on outcomes like agility, reliability, and customer trust, while experts handle the complexity of protection and performance.

Making Waves with Managed SASE

Early SASE projects were often ambitious but fragmented. Organizations tried to assemble multiple tools with core components like SD-WAN, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), and Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), often delivered by multiple vendors, into one complex framework. The goal was sound, but integration costs, management overhead, and inconsistent user experience often limited success.

In 2025, Managed SASE has matured into a unified, cloud-delivered service that integrates these capabilities seamlessly. Providers manage the technology end-to-end, combining network optimization with continuous security monitoring. This model delivers the following tangible business benefits:

• Operational continuity: Consistent, secure access that keeps business processes running without interruption
• Cost efficiency: Centralized management for lower infrastructure overhead and staffing strain
• Faster innovation: Secure, scalable connectivity that allows teams to deploy new applications or services quickly
• Customer confidence: Resilient operations and strong data protection for strengthened trust and brand reputation
• Simplified architecture: Unified security and networking components to streamline infrastructure, reducing complexity and improving manageability

As Forrester’s 2025 SASE Wave states, “SASE has moved beyond convergence — it’s now a framework for performance, trust, and business agility.”

Harnessing Core Capabilities and Their Business Value

Now, let’s take a look at the various core capabilities that we are looking to optimize in the SASE framework and the business value that they deliver.

1. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): Secure access that builds trust

ZTNA ensures users only access what they’re authorized to use, based on identity, device, and context. By replacing legacy VPN based architectures, ZTNA minimizes lateral movement and reduces the attack surface.

Business impact: Consistent access control lowers breach risk, supports compliance, and enables flexible hybrid work without compromising productivity.

2. Secure Web Gateway (SWG): Safe access. Confident users.

SWG filters web traffic to block malicious sites and data leaks.

Business impact: Employees can work freely online without introducing threats to the organization, preserving uptime and user confidence.

3. Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB): Visibility for safe cloud growth

CASB provides clear oversight of SaaS and cloud applications, ensuring sensitive data is used appropriately and remains compliant.

Business impact: This encourages secure cloud adoption by reducing risk of misconfigurations or shadow IT, allowing innovation to scale safely.

4. Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS): Protection without borders

FWaaS delivers a firewall functionality through the cloud, ensuring consistent policies everywhere.

Business impact: It simplifies operations and reduces maintenance costs while maintaining robust defense across distributed sites.

5. Software-defined WAN (SD-WAN): Performance that scales with business

SD-WAN intelligently routes traffic across available connections for optimal speed and reliability.

Business impact: It enhances user experience, reduces downtime, and supports expansion into new regions with minimal setup.

Managed SASE in action

1. Hybrid work enablement

Managed SASE delivers consistent, identity-based protection for remote and office users alike. Employees gain seamless access to applications without any VPN friction.

Business benefit: Organizations maintain productivity and morale across a distributed workforce, while ensuring security and compliance.

2. AI-driven applications and data security

AI and analytics tools rely on constant data movement across cloud. Managed SASE secures these flows end-to-end, protecting sensitive data from misuse or exposure.

Business benefit: Organizations can adopt AI solutions confidently, knowing their data remains protected and compliant, supporting faster innovation cycles.

3. Multi-cloud operations

As businesses diversify across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, visibility and consistency become critical. Managed SASE enforces uniform policies across all environments.

Business benefit: This reduces operational complexity and ensures governance, supporting growth without adding risk.

4. Rapid expansion and agility

Deploying secure connectivity to new locations no longer takes months. Managed SASE allows new branches or regions to go live within days.

Business benefit: With an accelerated time-to-market, new operations start securely from day one.

Delivering More Value

Security and networking are becoming too interconnected and too fast-moving for any single team to manage them alone. Managed SASE solves that challenge by combining expertise, automation and scale.

Here’s how that translates into business outcomes:

• Operational clarity: A single management console reduces complexity and accelerates decision-making.
• Predictable costs: Cloud-based delivery eliminates hardware investment and scales with demand.
• Continuous resilience: Global points of presence ensure stable performance and availability/ uptime.
• Compliance readiness: Providers embed frameworks that align with major regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.
• Shared accountability: Both your team and your provider work toward measurable outcomes — protection, performance, and trust.

By offloading day-to-day management, your IT and security teams gain the freedom to focus on strategic priorities such as digital transformation and innovation.

Six steps for a seamless implementation of a Managed SASE framework

1. Assess business priorities.

Start with the outcomes you need to protect, such as your customer experience, data privacy, and operational uptime, and align your SASE strategy around them.

2. Map your environment.

Identify where data flows, where users connect, and which applications are most critical. Visibility drives effective control.

3. Adopt zero trust principles.

Design access around users and devices, not static network boundaries. Verification should be continuous, not one-time.

4. Select a trusted partner.

Evaluate providers for integrated technology, transparent service delivery, and clear SLAs tied to business results.

5. Pilot with purpose.

Test with a focused use case, such as securing remote workers. Then scale across sites and applications.

6. Measure and refine.

Use analytics to track improvements in uptime, latency, and user satisfaction. Treat SASE as a living service that evolves with your business.

When managed well, SASE becomes a strategic advantage, not just a security framework.

The next frontier: Intelligence and automation

Managed SASE is becoming smarter. Providers are embedding AI-driven analytics that can detect anomalies, optimize routing, and recommend policy updates in real time. This shift from a reactive response to a predictive protection reduces downtime and improves operational continuity. Emerging features like post-quantum encryption and edge-based controls extend security even closer to where data is created and used.

As a result, these innovations don’t just improve security metrics — they strengthen your ability to deliver reliable services, protect customer data and maintain brand trust even under evolving threats.

Security as a business enabler

When your network and security operate in harmony, you gain more than protection. You gain the confidence to innovate, resilience to adapt and credibility to grow.

As Fortinet highlights, aligning security with network performance enables organizations to turn protection into a catalyst for business transformation.

That’s the promise and the reality of Managed SASE in 2025.

It’s not just about securing connections. It’s about strengthening the connections that drive business forward.

>> Connect with me to discuss how we can harness the power of Managed SASE in your business operations.

>> Explore how Atos’s teams can accelerate your adoption of Managed SASE along your digital cybersecurity journey: AI-Powered Cybersecurity Services for Digital Transformation - Atos.