3 Questions to Ask Before Your Next SSE POC

Secure Service Edge (SSE) has somehow become the default answer to a very real problem: how do you secure access in a world of GenAI, hybrid work, SaaS sprawl, unmanaged devices, and third-party users, without rebuilding your entire network?

On paper, SSE looks like the modern solution. Consolidation. Centralized policy. One pane of glass.

In practice, many teams discover something uncomfortable after rollout: the POC proved the architecture, not the risk reduction. The demo worked. Production didn't.

Why is this?

• Network "rip and replace." - Most SSE deployments still require traffic steering, tunnels, PAC files, certificate gymnastics, and coordination across networking, identity, security, and IT just to reach baseline enforcement. That's a lot of moving parts before you've reduced a single real risk.
• Limited browser and session visibility. - SSE platforms primarily see connections, not actions. URLs, IPs, flows. But modern risk lives inside the browser and SaaS session: GenAI prompts, copy/paste, exports, OAuth abuse, bulk downloads, malicious extensions, and post-login scripts. If you can't see those, you can't control them.
• The operational tax - SSE isn't just a license cost. It's people. Policy engineering. Exceptions. Performance complaints. Edge cases. Over time, teams spend more energy keeping the system stable than actually managing risk.
• Architectural fragility. - Agents, certificates, routing dependencies, and layered controls create brittle systems. One misconfiguration can lock users out of critical apps. The result? A security stack no one wants to touch.
• The deployment gap. - Many SSE projects stretch into multi-year migrations. By the time rollout is "done," the SaaS footprint, browser landscape, and threat model have already changed. You end up securing yesterday's environment with tomorrow's budget.

Below are three questions I believe every security leader should ask before committing to an SSE proof-of-concept. These questions are designed to expose SSE blind spots early, while they're still cheap to fix.

Question 1: Can SSE Actually Solve My Highest-Priority Risks?

Before you start a POC, be explicit about the outcome you care about most. For example:

• Securing SaaS actions, not just access
• Protecting the browser itself
• Governing GenAI usage
• Enforcing consistent DLP across users and devices
• Reducing risk from BYOD and third-party access

Where SSE often struggles

Granular SaaS control - Many risky actions don't generate distinct network events. Clicking Export, copying text, printing a report - these often happen inside encrypted, stateful sessions that proxies can't meaningfully interpret in real time. API-based CASB helps with visibility, but it's reactive by definition.

Browser-level risk - SSE sits in the cloud. It doesn't see malicious extensions scraping data from the DOM, outdated browsers with known exploits, or local processes injecting code into memory. Once traffic leaves the proxy and hits the browser, control largely stops.

GenAI governance - Copying sensitive data into a GenAI prompt is a local browser action. Network filters struggle to understand intent, context, or nuance. Differentiating a harmless query from IP leakage requires session-level awareness, not just keyword rules.

Consistent DLP - Encrypted messaging apps, local caches, extensions, and unmanaged endpoints all create blind spots. Steering third-party traffic through SSE infrastructure without agents is often impractical.

Unmanaged devices - SSE assumes some level of endpoint cooperation. Contractors and partners don't want corporate agents on personal hardware. Without them, posture checks and malware assurances are largely guesswork.

Question 2: How Frictionless Is Deployment Really?

The best security control is the one that actually gets adopted.

Your POC should pressure-test friction, not just features:

• Endpoints: Does it require agents everywhere? What about BYOD and contractors?
• Network: Are you rerouting traffic, replacing VPNs, or hair-pinning through POPs?
• Rollout: Can you enable controls incrementally by app or risk level, or is it a big-bang cutover?
• Time to protection: How long until you're blocking real risk, not just collecting logs?

Where SSE often struggles

SSE diagrams are clean. Deployments rarely are.

Mandatory agents, tunnels, posture failures, and exception handling slow rollouts and create internal resistance. Every bit of friction becomes a reason to delay enforcement—or turn controls off "temporarily."

Question 3: What Are the Real Costs?

License price is the smallest line item. A meaningful POC should account for:

• Direct costs: Per-user pricing, DLP add-ons, premium features
• Infrastructure costs: Routing, bandwidth, integrations, latency
• Human costs: Staff time for deployment, tuning, exceptions, and alert fatigue
• Time costs: Delayed protection, training, user friction
• Opportunity costs: What doesn't get done because this consumes capacity?

Where SSE often struggles

Many SSE platforms look affordable upfront but require identity rewiring, network re-architecture, parallel policy stacks, and long professional services engagements. Within a year, the operational cost often eclipses the license itself.

A Different Lens: Agentless Session Security

Agentless session security focuses on the actual web and SaaS session inside the browser, without installing endpoint agents, browser extensions, or forcing users into special browsers.

In practice, that means:

• Session-level protection: Enforcing DLP, blocking risky actions, governing GenAI prompts, and detecting anomalous behavior as it happens.
• No agents by design: Nothing to install on endpoints. No extension sprawl. No user friction.
• Browser-native visibility: Seeing what users actually do, not just where they connect.
• Fast time to value: Controls can be enabled selectively, where risk justifies it.

This isn't a replacement for every SSE use case. SSE still makes sense for VPN replacement and heavily managed environments. But for SaaS, GenAI, AI browsers, BYOD, and third-party access, session-level control often aligns better with where modern risk actually lives.

Go deeper - Read the complete whitepaper here.

About the Author: Dedi Shindler is a seasoned technology and cybersecurity leader with a strong track record in product management, business leadership, and security innovation. He currently serves as VP Product at Red Access, where he leads product strategy and business innovation. Prior to Red Access, Dedi spent many years at Checkpoint Software, where he built deep expertise in security product leadership and market analysis, and at Cisco, where he established new solutions for emerging markets.