Work from Anywhere: A VMware SASE Solution

Secure and optimise your network connectivity while working remotely, with varied deployment options

Enterprises are going through a necessary digital transformation to support the distributed “anywhere” workforce and the proliferation of SaaS and cloud applications. Employees are now mobile, applications are being modernised, and the cloud is being adopted at a rapid pace—all of which blur the enterprise edge. Companies must ensure employees working from anywhere are productive and efficient while simplifying operations for IT teams and securing distributed users, applications, and devices.

To ensure a seamless work-from-home, or anywhere, experience, employees need a technical environment that closely replicates their experience in the office. This means easy, seamless, and secure access to applications as well as consistent and always-on Internet availability. Inefficient network connectivity results in a lack of bandwidth, broken and disrupted connections, and poor application performance. For remote users, secure access to the corporate network to utilise applications and protect these SaaS and web applications for day-to-day work is extremely important.

Solving work-from-anywhere access issues with VMware SASE

For enterprises to provide employees with a better work-from-anywhere (WFA) or work-from-home (WFH) environment, VMware SASE™ combines industry-leading VMware SD-WAN™ with comprehensive security options embracing cloud and SaaS. VMware SASE delivers flexibility, agility, security, and scale for enterprises and enables WAN and edge transformation.

VMware’s unique approach includes SASE points of presence (PoPs) worldwide to serve as an on-ramp to SaaS and other cloud services. These PoPs, strategically located in IaaS and co-location datacentres, deliver optimal performance because they are close to users and applications.

The VMware cloud-native SASE architecture combines VMware SD-WAN, VMware Secure Access™, VMware Cloud Web Security™, firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and VMware Edge Network Intelligence™.

• VMware SD-WAN delivers excellent and optimised network connectivity, assured application performance along with security, providing the quality of service (QoS) users need. VMware SD-WAN also provides operational simplicity by providing centralised monitoring, analytics, and control combined with artificial intelligence to simplify operations.
• VMware Secure Access provides remote and mobile users with consistent, optimal and secure cloud application access through a network of worldwide managed service nodes. This cloud-hosted solution is based on a zero-trust network access (ZTNA) architecture.
• VMware Cloud Web Security protects users and infrastructure accessing SaaS and internet applications from a changing threat landscape. This cloud-hosted solution leverages and integrates a best-of-breed secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP), anti-virus protection, and URL filtering in the SASE PoP to provide secure, direct, and optimal access to SaaS and web applications and reduce the surface of attack.
• VMware Edge Network Intelligence is a vendor-agnostic artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) solution focused on the enterprise edge. Vmware Edge Network Intelligence provides visibility not just into the SD-WAN network, but all the way to the LAN including Wi-Fi networks. It provides IT administrators with end-to-end network visibility to analyse and remediate any network issues.

VMware WFH and WFA subscriptions for the enterprise

As enterprises have a distributed workforce now, where remote employees can either work from home or anywhere, be it a coffee shop or a remote site, it becomes imperative that they deploy new configurations. To help enterprises provide an optimised work environment and experience for remote employees, VMware offers two subscription options: VMware SD-WAN WFH (Work from Home) and VMware SASE WFA (Work from Anywhere) which address the needs based on their usage and connectivity requirements.

VMware SD-WAN subscriptions for WFH enterprise employees

VMware offers two subscriptions powered by VMware SD-WAN that enable users to get the best application performance while working from anywhere: WFH and WFH Pro.

Any VMware SD-WAN Edge can use the WFH subscription license type. The appropriate license type depends on end users’ typical work tasks. Light users who use the network for regular emails and voice calls may use the WFH subscription license. Power users who need to download large files and attend video conferencing calls may need the WFH Pro subscription license. Both subscriptions include access to VMware Edge Network Intelligence.

• Security: Customers should enable 802.1x authentication for all wired ports and wireless SSIDs (except for an SSID or wired port for home users). VMware SD-WAN Edge supports EAP-MD5 password-based authentication as well as Mac Authentication Bypass (MAB) for 802.1x authentication. Enabling 802.1x authentication ensures that only business users and devices can access the overlay and the enterprise network.
• Privacy: Home users and devices connected to the VMware SD-WAN Edge should be assigned to a VLAN that is configured as a private segment. Doing this ensures that traffic from these appliances will go directly to the internet via the underlay and ensures privacy for the home users’ traffic (no flow data is collected or stored for private segments).
• Deployment options: VMware recommends two deployment options to obtain maximum benefit from SD-WAN. As pictured below, all traffic is routed through the VMware SD-WAN Edge in both scenarios. It prioritises work traffic and applies on-demand remediation when poor application performance is detected. This ensures better Quality of Service (QoS) and a better user experience.

VMware SASE for work-from-anywhere subscription options

To help enterprises provide an optimised work environment and experience for their WFA employees, VMware offers three software subscriptions that enable users to get the best application performance and uncompromised security while working from anywhere: Secure Access, Secure Access with Cloud Web Security Standard, and Secure Access with Cloud Web Security Advanced.

All VMware SASE WFA subscriptions provide remote access to the corporate network and contextual access policy with device posture, identity, and user behaviour through VMware Secure Access. The appropriate license type depends on the enterprise’s desired level of control and ideal security posture.

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