Challenges

Digitalisation and the Shift to Cloud-Centric, AI-Driven Environments

Digital transformation has redefined enterprise IT architectures, displacing the traditional data center as the primary nexus of application hosting, data storage, and access control. The operational environment is now characterised by:

• Decentralised Access and Cloud-Native Shifts
  The majority of user sessions now come from unmanaged devices, while applications increasingly consume SaaS, and workloads are deployed in cloud environments (IaaS, PaaS), moving away from traditional data centres.

• Distributed Data and Increased Complexity
  Sensitive data is spread across multi-cloud or hybrid systems, and traffic patterns redirect to public cloud endpoints, while the rise of AI/ML workloads adds complexity to API traffic and security management across distributed environments.

This evolution in architecture renders perimeter-based, location-dependent security models ineffective, necessitating identity-aware, context-driven, and edge-enforced access control aligned with a distributed application topology.

Expanded Threat Surface and Intensified Attack Landscape

The enterprise security posture is under continuous stress due to a rapidly expanding attack surface and increasingly advanced threat vectors. Key contributing factors include:

• Sophisticated Attack Methods
  Adversaries employ sophisticated techniques such as zero-day exploits, automated botnets, and targeted fraud bots designed to evade traditional detection mechanisms. These attacks leverage obfuscation, behavioral mimicry, and API abuse to compromise applications and exfiltrate data.

• Fragmented Attack Surfaces
  The adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, hybrid application development models, and microservices-based architectures introduces a highly fragmented and dynamic threat surface. These environments expose numerous weak points, including unmanaged endpoints, loosely governed APIs, and service-to-service communications lacking deep inspection.

• Escalated Attack Intensity
  Emerging technologies such as generative AI have lowered the barrier for launching customised, large-scale attacks, including AI-generated phishing, adversarial payloads, and automated vulnerability discovery. Meanwhile, the continued monetisation of cybercrime through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin incentivises persistent and financially motivated attacks, including ransomware, cryptojacking, and service disruption.

This evolving threat environment requires proactive, adaptive, and layered security controls that can operate effectively across distributed workloads and heterogeneous access points.

Architectural Gaps Exposed by Modern Web Threats

The convergence of decentralised access models and an increasingly hostile threat landscape exposes fundamental limitations in legacy security infrastructure. The resulting challenges include:

• Obsolete Network Architectures
  Traditional security models built around centralised data centres fail to address the needs of modern environments. As enterprise resources shift to the cloud and traffic originates from unmanaged, off-network endpoints, perimeter-based defenses struggle to enforce effective policies or provide adequate performance. A transition to identity-and context-driven architectures is essential for securing access in this new landscape.

• Increased Complexity and Latency
  Fragmented security stacks that rely on multiple-point solutions for firewalls, intrusion detection, API protection, and DLP introduce inefficiencies and operational overhead. The need to decrypt and inspect traffic at various points adds latency, degrades user experience, and complicates end-to-end visibility across distributed systems.

• Demand for Integrated Security Solutions
  The complexity of securing distributed applications and the scale of modern threats necessitate a unified security model. A converged approach like Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) integrates multiple security functions - Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), and Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) - into a cloud-native framework, enabling scalable, efficient protection across decentralized infrastructures.