Athena SASE - Secure Access Service Edge

While Athena SASE is scalable and flexible enough to support organizations of various sizes and industries, it delivers the greatest value to mid-sized to large and highly distributed enterprises. It is particularly well-suited for businesses with over 300 end users and more than 20% of their workforce operating remotely or in hybrid roles, especially those still relying on VPNs for access. Organizations managing operations across multiple branches, cloud environments, and SaaS platforms—often using legacy architectures like MPLS or backhauling traffic through centralized security stacks—stand to gain the most. Athena SASE simplifies and modernizes this complexity, providing secure, high-performance access with unified policy enforcement and centralized management.

Athena SASE is purpose-built to support a modern, distributed workforce by delivering both speed and security at the edge. Through WAN optimization, it ensures remote and mobile users experience fast, stable access to the applications and resources they rely on. At the same time, its integrated Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) capabilities safeguard every connection, preventing compromised devices or unsecured networks from becoming entry points for threats. By combining performance optimization with end-to-end security, Athena SASE enables employees to work confidently and productively, no matter where they are.

Athena SASE significantly strengthens an organization’s security posture by consolidating multiple security functions—such as next-generation firewall, intrusion prevention, secure web gateway, advanced threat protection, and Zero Trust Network Access—into a single, integrated platform. This unified architecture ensures consistent policy enforcement for all users, no matter where or how they connect, eliminating the inconsistencies and coverage gaps that can arise from managing separate tools. Centralized management also streamlines administration, allowing IT teams to respond faster to threats and maintain tighter control over the entire security environment. With AI-driven, real-time threat detection and prevention, Athena SASE not only protects against current risks but adapts quickly to emerging ones, keeping organizations secure and agile.

• Different Uses: SGA is focused on internet access security, including web threats (SWG), internet threat intelligence, FWaaS (cloud IPS), and behavioural analysis to defend against threats. ZTG mainly protects internal applications, such as ERP, CRM and financial systems, hosted in an organization’s data centre or cloud (IaaS or PaaS) through granular user access control and application segmentation to prevent lateral movement. Note that SGA and ZTG can be used as standalone service components or together as an integrated solution to provide more comprehensive security protection.
• Different Deployment Methods: SGA is a pure cloud-based deployment solution, meaning users directly connect to the SGA service to securely access the internet through software clients or gateway devices. ZTG is a hybrid solution that is hosted as a cloud service but requires additional connectors (software) to establish connectivity with private applications hosted in an organization’s data centre or cloud (IaaS or PaaS).