Frost Radar: Secure Access Service Edge, 2025

A Benchmarking System to Spark Companies to Action - Innovation that Fuels New Deal Flow and Growth Pipelines

The convergence of networking and security has become a business necessity. Organizations rapidly adopt cloud-first strategies, hybrid work models, and multicloud environments, making traditional perimeter-based security architectures obsolete. Secure access service edge (SASE) integrates networking and security into a unified, cloud-delivered framework, enabling secure, high-performance connectivity across distributed enterprises.

The SASE market is undergoing rapid transformation, driven by enterprise demand for unified security and networking solutions that can support hybrid work, cloud migration, and zero trust strategies. As organizations re-architect their IT infrastructure for agility and resilience, the ability to evaluate SASE vendors across innovation and growth becomes essential.

This Frost Radar™ analysis combines Frost & Sullivan's proven analytical framework with a focus on market momentum and technological differentiation to help CISOs, IT leaders, and other decision-makers identify which vendors are best positioned to deliver long-term value. From fully converged cloud-native platforms to differentiated security capabilities, the Frost Radar™ reveals who is setting the pace in the SASE race, and why it matters.

Frost & Sullivan analyzes numerous companies in an industry. Those selected for further analysis based on their leadership or other distinctions are benchmarked across 10 Growth and Innovation criteria to reveal their position on the Frost Radar™. The publication presents competitive profiles of each company on the Frost Radar™ considering their strengths and the opportunities that best fit those strengths.

Analyst: Claudio Stahnke

Strategic Imperative and Growth Environment

Strategic Imperative

• The convergence of networking and security has become a business necessity. Organizations rapidly adopt cloud-first strategies, hybrid work models, and multicloud environments, making traditional perimeter-based security architectures obsolete. Secure access service edge (SASE) integrates networking and security into a unified, cloud-delivered framework, enabling secure, high-performance connectivity across distributed enterprises.
• The SASE industry is undergoing rapid transformation, driven by:
• More than 80% of organizations now supporting remote or hybrid work models, creating new security and networking challenges.
• Cloud migration and multicloud complexity, considering that 56% of enterprise applications are now cloud-native, requiring seamless, low-latency, identity-based security.
• Legacy VPNs that are insufficient for modern cybersecurity threats, driving demand for zero trust network access (ZTNA) and dynamic identity-based security.
• Regulatory compliance and data sovereignty, with stricter regulations influencing deployment models and forcing companies to balance security and compliance requirements.
• Ransomware, AI-powered threats, and supply chain vulnerabilities that necessitate real-time threat prevention, automated security enforcement, and behavioral analytics.
• Successful SASE providers deliver fully converged networking and security through:
• Cloud-native architecture, because multitenant, distributed SASE platforms with global points of presence (PoPs) ensure low-latency, secure access.
• AI-driven security and automation, including predictive analytics, behavioral anomaly detection, and automated incident response that improve threat mitigation.
• Single-pass processing-optimized security enforcement that reduces latency and operational overhead.
• Zero trust enforcement-identity-based, least-privilege access across users, devices, and cloud applications.
• Localized SASE deployments to meet data sovereignty mandates.

Strategic Imperative and Growth Environment

Frost & Sullivan expects global SASE market revenue to reach $7.4 billion by 2029 (an increase from $2.9 billion in 2024), driven by cloud migration, hybrid workforces, and regulatory mandates. The industry is in a high-growth phase, with a 2024-2029 compound annual growth rate exceeding 20%.

North America is the leading market because of advanced cloud adoption, followed by the region encompassing Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific (APAC), where regulatory and data sovereignty concerns shape deployment models.

Prominent market players are setting the standard by expanding AI-driven security automation to enhance real-time risk assessment; developing modular, cloud-agnostic solutions to support multicloud environments; strengthening compliance-driven architectures to support evolving regulatory frameworks; integrating secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), ZTNA, firewall as a service (FWaaS), and software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) under a single management console; and partnering with telcos and managed security service providers (MSSPs) to expand managed SASE offerings for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and regulated industries.

SASE adoption will accelerate as enterprises seek to reduce operational complexity, enhance security posture, and ensure compliance in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Organizations must embrace converged, AI-enhanced SASE platforms to remain competitive in an increasingly borderless, cloud-first world.

Best Practices & Growth Opportunities

1 Networking and security in a unified, cloud-native architecture is becoming the industry benchmark. Vendors that streamline management, policy enforcement, and analytics in a single platform are better positioned to deliver consistent performance, reduce operational overhead, and improve user experience.

2 Embedding AI-driven intelligence across security and performance layers is emerging as a key differentiator. Leaders are using AI not just for threat detection, but also for automated response, anomaly detection, digital experience monitoring, and real-time optimization, raising the standard for proactive, adaptive SASE environments.

3 Prioritizing platform simplicity, user-centric design, and managed service flexibility is essential. Companies that combine deep technical capabilities with intuitive interfaces, guided onboarding, and flexible delivery models (e.g., co-managed, service tiers) are succeeding in a fragmented market.

4 AI-powered threat prevention and autonomous security operations are becoming essential for enterprises facing increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Vendors that embed machine learning and behavioral analytics into their SASE platforms enable faster, more precise threat detection, reduce alert fatigue, and support self-healing, policy-driven security environments.

5 The popularity of managed and co-managed SASE services, often provided by MSSPs and telcos, is opening new avenues for adoption, particularly for organizations that lack in-house expertise. Vendors that offer flexible service delivery, support for industry-specific compliance, and integrated AI capabilities are well-positioned to satisfy the demand for scalable, ready-to-use solutions.

6 The expansion of edge computing, IoT, and private 5G drives demand for secure, low-latency SASE architectures capable of protecting data and devices across distributed environments. Vendors offering real-time threat prevention, granular zero trust access, and edge-native orchestration enable secure transformation in smart manufacturing, connected healthcare, and retail analytics.