SASE for Financial Services: Secure, Compliant, and Cost-Effective Networking for Credit Unions

Financial services and credit unions are under pressure to transform fast. Customers expect seamless digital banking, while IT teams must manage stricter compliance requirements, rising cyberthreats, and the high costs of outdated MPLS or VPN infrastructure. SASE for financial services combines secure access, cloud-native networking, and compliance-ready tools into one solution—empowering credit unions to deliver reliable digital experiences without the complexity of legacy systems. Digital transformation serves multiple purposes: efficiency, cost-effectiveness, agility and scalability. But above all, it provides a better digital customer experience. 78% of Americans prefer to bank via mobile app or website, per the 2024 Digital Banking Survey by Forbes.

Challenges Facing Financial Services IT

  • Security Risks: Cloud adoption, mobile banking, and rising cyberattacks demand stronger, unified protection. 41% of banks (including credit unions) have already adopted a cloud presence. Laptops, mobile devices and other digital methods have replaced physical meetings at the bank and manual paper-based processes.
  • High Costs: Lean IT teams struggle with the expense of legacy networks and managing multiple vendors.Balancing security and performance while reducing cost and complexity is challenging.

  • Compliance Pressure: Strict requirements like PCI-DSS, GDPR, and NCUA standards add complexity and risk.For example, federally insured credit unions are required to report cyber security incidents within 72 hours.

SASE in Financial Services

How SASE Transforms Financial Services

  • Robust Security: Built-in zero trust, firewall, SWG, CASB, and threat detection for every user and location. Every user and location are inspected and optimized through a complete security stack and consistent security policies, while ensuring reliable zero-trust access to resources.

Simplified Management and Maintenance: Zero-touch provisioning, self-service user onboarding, and cloud-based upgrades.

SASE simplifies the architecting, deployment and operation of network security controls. Any team of any size or professional knowledge can easily manage and maintain SASE and gain visibility into the network. For example:

  • Onboarding locations takes place through zero-touch SD-WAN devices or IPSEC tunnels.
  • Onboarding mobile users takes place through a self-service client portal and process
  • New functionalities are added with no hardware or software deployment

Compliance-Ready: Rapid alignment with industry standards through centralized, auditable policies.

SASE enables easily configuring policies that align with compliance regulations, in just a few days.

Why Credit Unions Choose SASE

  • Faster time-to-service for new branches or mobile users.
  • Cost savings by replacing MPLS and multiple point solutions.
  • Better customer experience with secure, low-latency digital banking.

Technology Focus Group Advantage

At Technology Focus Group, we deliver Cato Networks’ SASE platform with hands-on support from design to deployment. Our clients benefit from:

  • No complex hardware rollouts

  • End-to-end implementation and ongoing support

  • Scalable solutions tailored for financial services and credit unions

Transform your network with SASE

Schedule a Demo Call

Stronger security. Faster performance. One platform