A few weeks ago, over 101,000 top decision-makers, inventors, and innovators came together at the world’s largest connectivity event, Mobile World Congress. Leading telcos, global system integrators (GSIs) and enterprises showcased and discussed many key themes and innovations including 5G connectivity, which has been a catalyst for building intelligence at the network edge. Key discussion points included:
- The rapid evolution of 5G, which highlights a transformation toward intelligent networks integrated with artificial intelligence (AI)
- The need for collaboration across the ecosystem, including infrastructure and security vendors, to build and maintain adaptable and cost-effective networks
Enterprises are turning to 5G networks to take advantage of increased bandwidth, lower latency, greater flexibility, and lower network costs as more Internet of Things (IoT) devices need to connect to networks and cloud adoption surges.
The opportunity with 5G is immense. According to Omdia, the global 5G services market is estimated to reach $2.2 trillion by 2030, and Grandview Research maintains that 57% of enterprises are planning to invest in 5G in the next one to three years.
Despite the benefits 5G brings, it also opens the door to greater cybersecurity risk. According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), 5G networks can expose infrastructure to malicious or poorly developed hardware and software, increasing the risk of confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.
Secure access service edge (SASE) has become the framework that secures and transforms the 5G ecosystem by providing enterprise-grade security with granular and dynamic security controls. By combining the high-speed and low latency connection of 5G with SASE, enterprises can give users direct, secure, and controlled access with continuous Zero Trust to all users, apps & data, at all times, regardless of location.
SASE also combines software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) with 5G to enable enterprises to scale teams and networks with a new level of control, reliability, and coverage. With 41.6 billion IoT devices estimated to connect to the internet by 2025, SD-WAN can provide real-time IoT monitoring, leading to greater agility for networking teams.
Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE provides a scalable platform for managed service providers (MSPs) to rapidly deploy enterprise SASE services for 5G networks. It provides secure, direct, least-privileged access to ensure employees get corporate network access to the applications and data they need to get work done from anywhere.
Prisma SASE natively converges best-of-breed 5G network and cloud-delivered Zero Trust security that enables enterprises to consistently secure all apps used by the workforce across numerous network access types.
This gives MSPs and telcos the complete flexibility to offer managed SASE services over 5G, Private 5G, and wireline networks that they manage and deploy. As enterprises look to leverage the low latency and high speeds of 5G, Prisma SASE enables secure access to all applications across all locations (internet, cloud, data center).
As organizations continue to grow and evolve their 5G strategy, we encourage you to learn more about what Palo Alto Networks offers by reading Anand Oswal’s blog ”Accelerate 5G with AI-Powered Cybersecurity.”