The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly accelerated the shift of workloads to the cloud, combined with a massive increase in remote work. Companies are struggling to keep their cloud estates and endpoints secure as continuous change, disruption, and persistent threats create gaps in security postures.

Often, security controls are not designed for the dynamic, distributed, and virtual nature of cloud environments, and widely dispersed remote working. Companies tend to react to cloud security challenges by adopting multiple point solutions to plug gaps and address varying needs, including Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) technology to secure SaaS traffic, and Secure Web Gateway (SWG) technology to secure web traffic. Each solution needs to be configured and managed —this creates complexity and risk. Failing to apply any setting correctly can prove to be disastrous.

This paper uses inputs from discussions with technology decision makers across ASEAN. It highlights some of the main security challenges faced by companies in ASEAN as they seek to leverage cloud technology. It will focus on:
• The cloud and remote working security gaps created by the pandemic
• The ways of addressing cloud security gaps, particularly by using a zero-trust approach to security
• SASE technology as a cloud adoption enabler, and solution to cloud security concerns
• Key SASE considerations.