How Cloudbrink Outperforms Traditional SASE in Solving Remote Work Challenges

With more than half of companies reporting that employees work at least one day each week remotely, security for remote work has become an increasingly pressing issue. Across the world, organizations that are using Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to bolster their connectivity and security continue to experience problems with performance, higher costs, and overly complicated system management. The working world is moving toward remote and hybrid work at large has made secure off-site access more critical than ever before. However, as these performance issues persist, so do the challenges companies face regarding the security of corporate files and client information. This article reviews the shortcomings of traditional SASE in optimizing remote work experiences and the options for reliable solutions to help alleviate these problems by leveraging the latest Cloudbrink publication, “2025 Trends in Hybrid Work Report: The Facts Behind Balancing Security and Performance.”

Current SASE Struggles for IT Teams

The biggest challenge for IT teams at most companies is the security related to remote work access for employees working virtually. Being able to work from anywhere means that the fidelity of access at any given time for any given employee is variable since locations can include perilous home wi-fi and public networks. Allowing the right workers into the correct virtual spaces with the appropriate amount of authority in those spaces can be hard to coordinate consistently. Yet, remote and hybrid work models cannot function without such security.

Poor quality of video conferencing creates issues with communication between team members as well. File transfers can be slow, especially with larger files containing things like videos, animations, and high-definition images or photographs. Web applications can also become slower, increasing the amount of time that it takes to retrieve information, send data to others, and complete tasks and projects overall. This problem is present most often simply because there isn’t enough bandwidth for various applications to do their jobs. But another contributing factor is programs using the provided bandwidth inefficiently. For example, if a conference call app keeps having to reconnect to the server in order to function, that takes up more bandwidth than it normally would if it were operating at peak efficiency.

Why Traditional SASE Isn’t Delivering on Performance

These shortcomings exist within SASE because it is a mechanism that was built for businesses to branch out. This meant having relatively independently operated locations that were simply extensions of one business’s headquarters. While it may seem similar at first glance, this is a wildly different networking dynamic when compared to employees working within the same system but from different locations around the world. The connectivity and security of each employee can vary because they are logging on from various devices (laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, etc.), in various locations (their apartments, libraries, cafes, grocery stores, co-working spaces, etc.), and in various manners (via dated web-browsers, while trying to juggle multiple digital tasks at the same time, etc.).

In some cases, IT teams have not been trained to understand the impact that multiple layers and types of security can have on the end user’s experience. This means that they can implement certain measures that can render systems overly cumbersome to workers and clients who are attempting to complete tasks or transactions. This includes latency and packet loss. Network latency denies applications full bandwidth. The loss of packets is precipitated by congested networks, coding bugs, device glitches, and bandwidth demands that are too high for the system to handle.

Investing in the Wrong Fixes

Though some organizations do recognize these issues, when they come up with solutions, they are often ineffective or make the problems worse. An example would be a system struggling with performance issues that has its hardware upgraded. This was the top-reported “fix” with more than 50% of respondents stating this was a “go-to” solution. But if the network inefficiencies aren’t addressed, having newer devices isn’t going to have much, if any, influence on the performance of the system overall.

It can be difficult to see bottlenecks related to performance. With only 19% of IT teams reporting full system visibility, even when the team realizes that something is wrong, it’s difficult for them to actually see the issue. This lack of visibility makes finding the origin of the problem and coming up with an appropriate solution virtually impossible.

A Smarter Approach to Securing Remote Access

A more intelligent strategy for remote work security involves performance-aware technology. An example would be reducing latency induced by security. Personal SASE and high-performance Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) models designed for individual users are more sophisticated than individual workers using networks built for entire offices. This combination provides safe, flexible networking that centralizes visibility and creates an environment for excellent performance access from anywhere while also minimizing latency.

By improving the visibility that IT teams have of a system, issues with troubleshooting can be drastically reduced. Congested networks, loss of packets, and overall latency hurts the entire system all the way through to the end user.

Companies should invest in solutions that function well for workers wherever they are, not depend on optimizations focused on data centers. Especially since data center networks are believed to be the cause of performance problems in nearly 38% of cases. Even though the average packet loss in the United States is 1.8%, peak optimization should have rates lower than 0.005%.

Solving SASE Performance for Remote Work

SASE has ushered in improvements to the way that workers do their jobs remotely. But, in order to bring this technology up to the level of quality needed for most businesses, various accommodations, updates, and adjustments need to be made. The improvements available through SASE haven’t addressed performance in hybrid and remote work situations. SASE has become more expensive over the years, in addition to being increasingly difficult to manage, an opinion reflected by more than 70% of IT professionals surveyed for the report. Organizations must turn to more comprehensive approaches that allow security and high-speed connectivity to both be achieved with high fidelity. Getting the appropriate technology to allow workforces to thrive by using work-from-anywhere setups, secure connectivity, and greater IT team visibility is critical for future-proofing hybrid work environments.