SSE

securitycloud

Stands for: Security Service Edge

Gartner's 2021 name for the security half of SASE: secure web gateway, CASB, and zero trust network access delivered as one cloud service, with the networking left out.

When SASE proved to be two purchases wearing one acronym, Gartner split it in 2021: SSE names the cloud-delivered security stack (secure web gateway, cloud access security broker, zero trust network access, with firewall as a service and data protection in practice), while the SD-WAN networking half stays a separate decision. The split let security teams modernize inspection and access control without waiting for a WAN refresh, and SSE promptly got its own Gartner Magic Quadrant. The three letters are heavily overloaded outside this field, and context is everything: in web development SSE means Server-Sent Events, and in CPUs it means Streaming SIMD Extensions, neither of which will secure anyone's SaaS traffic.

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