McAfee improves Secure Access Service Edge

Security outfit McAfee announced significant enhancements to its Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution by launching integrations with third-party Software-Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) solutions, and extending its UCE platform tolet  global strategic partners deliver managed SASE offerings.

McAfee has been working with global service providers Atos and BT to offer a range of managed Web, CASB, and SASE offerings to help organisations who are struggling with the challenges of digital transformation.

According to a recent McAfee Cloud Adoption and Risk Report, the “work from anywhere” trend has led to a 50 percent  increase in enterprise cloud use across all industries.

This trend is merely the latest driver pushing many organisations to dramatically accelerate their cloud transformation plans and re-architect their networks to facilitate a “direct-to-cloud” model for remote users and branch offices, the company said.

By integrating MVISION UCE with the direct-to-cloud network functionality of industry leading SD-WAN solutions, organizations benefit from a unified cloud-native offering that facilitates fast, secure, simple, and scalable access to web and cloud resources, in line with the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework.

McAfee  executive vice president and chief product officer, Ash Kulkarni, said the company wanted to help customers securely move their operations to the cloud and help their employees to work from wherever they are in these times.

“With these new enhancements to MVISION UCE, McAfee has delivered a SASE solution that will help customers optimize and secure their work-from-home infrastructure”, he said

McAfee has certified interoperability with six of the industry’s leading SD-WAN vendors, including Viptela (Cisco), VeloCloud (VMware), and Citrix, with even deeper partnerships forged with Silver Peak, Fortinet, and Versa Networks  through McAfee’s Security Innovation Alliance (SIA) program, one of the industry’s largest technology partnership programmes.

Silver Peak vice president, technical alliances Fraser Street said: “To realise the full promise of the cloud and digital transformation, enterprises will need to transform both their WAN and security architectures, and with the McAfee partnership, customers can achieve both with a tightly integrated solution.”

The company said that it has spruced up its partner relationships by extending its UCE platform to enable partners.