Buyer guide and live tool
SD-WAN & SASE for Hybrid & Remote Work
Hybrid and remote work has turned the office perimeter into a minority interest: the corporate network now has to secure people wherever they sit, on whatever network they join. [STAT: source required, current share of UK organisations operating hybrid or remote working arrangements]. For network and security teams the practical consequence is that private applications, SaaS platforms and the open web all need consistent, identity-aware policy whether a user is at home, in a branch or roaming, which is precisely the problem SD-WAN and SASE architectures were designed to solve.
Three requirements dominate hybrid-work procurement: zero trust network access (ZTNA) so users reach private applications without those applications being exposed to the internet, secure web and SaaS access enforced from any location, and one policy plane that follows the user off-network rather than stopping at the LAN edge. Legacy remote-access VPNs struggle on all three counts, concentrating traffic and implicit trust in exactly the way attackers have learned to exploit. [STAT: source required, recent statistic on VPN or edge-device vulnerabilities exploited in breaches].
SASE and SSE platforms answer this by moving inspection and access control into a cloud service edge close to the user, so the same controls apply on every connection, managed from one console. [STAT: source required, adoption or market forecast figure for SASE/SSE, for example an analyst projection with date]. The ranking and the interactive tool below score 30 SD-WAN and SASE providers against those hybrid-work priorities, computed live by the Netify evidence engine.
Written by Harry Yelland. Fact-checked by Robert Sturt. Draft build: dates to be confirmed when the final copy is signed off.
Best SD-WAN and SASE providers for hybrid and remote work (2026)
Netify’s 2026 hybrid and remote work evaluation ranks: 1. Cato Networks (98.3); 2. AT&T Business (94.8); 3. BT Business / BT Global (94.8); 4. Comcast Business / Masergy (94.8); 5. NTT DATA / NTT Ltd. (94.8); 6. Orange Business (94.8); 7. Telefónica Tech (94.8); 8. Verizon Business (94.8); 9. Colt Technology Services (93.7); 10. Aryaka (92.5). Scores are computed live by the evidence engine at netify.co.uk/sase: 30 vendors graded on 40 capabilities, with remote access, ZTNA and secure web gateway capability weighted up for this priority.
No. 1 · Score 98.3 · Cloud-native SASE / SD-WAN provider · Typical deployment: hours
Single converged platform with no policy or log fragmentation across SD-WAN and security functions.
Watch out: Less suited to best-of-breed buyers wanting Zscaler or Netskope as the SSE layer.
No. 2 · Score 94.8 · Global carrier managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: months
Major US carrier-led managed SD-WAN portfolio with multi-vendor platform options (including Fortinet for AT&T SASE).
Watch out: Underlying platform varies by service tier; buyers should confirm which platform supports the proposed scope.
No. 3 · Score 94.8 · Global/UK managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: weeks
UK market leader for managed SD-WAN with deep access circuit ownership and field engineering capability.
Watch out: Platform choice and packaging vary; buyers should confirm which vendor platform is being proposed and why.
No. 4 · Score 94.8 · Managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: weeks
SASE combining SD-WAN and security available fully managed or co-managed, drawing on Masergy AIOps heritage.
Watch out: International delivery depth depends on partnerships outside North America.
No. 5 · Score 94.8 · Global managed network provider · Typical deployment: months
24x7 managed SD-WAN delivery via global operations centres with strong portal visibility.
Watch out: Platform fit depends on which vendor is being proposed (Palo Alto, Zscaler, others); evaluate platform independently.
No. 6 · Score 94.8 · Global managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: months
Global managed network leadership with strong service assurance, NOC depth and field operations.
Watch out: Platform choice depends on which Orange-supported vendor is selected; underlying platform fit and roadmap should be evaluated independently.
No. 7 · Score 94.8 · Global managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: months
flexWAN and managed SD-WAN delivery with Cisco-based converged SD-WAN, security and SASE service.
Watch out: Platform is largely Cisco-led; buyers wanting platform optionality should evaluate alternatives.
No. 8 · Score 94.8 · Global carrier managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: months
Global carrier-led managed SASE and SD-WAN with strong North American presence and international delivery.
Watch out: Platform is largely Versa-based; buyers wanting platform optionality should evaluate alternatives.
No. 9 · Score 93.7 · Enterprise managed SD-WAN / connectivity provider · Typical deployment: months
SD-WAN and SASE with strong European data sovereignty positioning.
Watch out: Global delivery depth outside Europe is less prominent than the largest global carriers.
No. 10 · Score 92.5 · Managed SD-WAN / SASE provider · Typical deployment: days
Unified SASE delivered as a managed service from end to end, including the private global core network and WAN optimisation.
Watch out: Smaller PoP footprint and partner ecosystem than the hyperscale SASE vendors; coverage must match your geographic profile.
Full grades, head-to-head tables and the complete field of 30: open the shortlist builder.
Hybrid-work shortlist tool
Which vendors fit your distributed workforce?
The full Netify shortlist engine with hybrid-work weighting: 30 vendors, 40 graded capabilities, with remote access, ZTNA and secure web gateway capability weighted up on every result. Computed live by netify.co.uk/sase.
Hybrid-work priorities
Quick-start presets. Each one sets the matching capability requirements below, where you can refine feature by feature.
Operating model
Distributed estates without a 24x7 team usually need fully managed or co-managed delivery; in-house suits organisations with their own network and security operations cover.
Organisation size
Enterprise buyers need migration sequencing and multi-IdP support at scale; mid-market organisations without a SOC should weight managed security heavily, which this filter reflects.
Regions you must cover
Cover everywhere your people live, travel and roam, not just office locations. PoP proximity decides the remote-user experience, and vendor coverage varies most outside Europe and North America.
Cloud platforms
Grades reflect evidenced on-ramps and gateways into each IaaS platform. SaaS access (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Salesforce) is governed by the secure web gateway and CASB capabilities, which the presets above weight for you.
AI capability
AIOps shortens fault isolation when the affected user is on a home connection you do not control; AI security analytics helps triage credential-led attacks across thousands of remote sessions.
Deployment ceiling
Rolling a client and policy out to a workforce is a dated commitment. This excludes vendors whose typical activation is slower than you need.
Scoring profile
Security led suits VPN-replacement and zero-trust programmes; managed service led suits lean IT teams; network led suits estates pairing hybrid work with a WAN refresh.
Resilience and size
DR evidence matters where the service edge is your only route into applications; shortlist size sets how many ranked vendors you take into an RFP.
Capability requirements (all 40 graded features)
Click once for required (vendors without evidence are excluded), twice for preferred (extra scoring weight), three times to clear. Your hybrid-work priorities above pre-select the relevant features.
Or describe your workforce to the AI advisor
The advisor maps plain language onto these same filters and explains the result. It can also compare two vendors head to head.
How does hybrid and remote work change connectivity and security requirements?
Home and Remote Workers
A home worker sits on an unmanaged broadband connection, often on a shared or personally owned device, outside every control that assumes a corporate LAN. The requirement is an always-on client (or clientless access for unmanaged devices) that enforces identity checks, device posture and traffic inspection before anything reaches a private application or a SaaS tenant, without adding the latency that makes people switch it off. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
Branch and Hub Offices
Offices have not disappeared: they have become meeting and collaboration hubs whose traffic profile is now dominated by real-time media (Teams, Zoom, Webex) and SaaS rather than client-server applications on the LAN. SD-WAN application-aware routing and local internet breakout keep that experience acceptable on ordinary broadband underlays, whilst the security stack that used to live in the branch rack moves to the cloud edge. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
Roaming and Travelling Users
Sales teams, executives and field engineers connect from hotels, client sites and mobile networks across regions. Their experience depends on how close the provider’s nearest point of presence is and how traffic reaches it, which is why PoP footprint, private backbones and regional breakout grades matter more for roaming-heavy organisations than for fixed estates. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
ZTNA vs legacy VPN: what actually changes
A remote-access VPN authenticates once, then places the user on the network: anything reachable from that network segment is reachable from the laptop in the kitchen. ZTNA inverts the model: users connect to a broker, never to the network, and each application is published individually to identified, posture-checked users. The application surface visible to an attacker who compromises a device or a credential shrinks from a network to a named list. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
The operational differences matter as much as the security ones. VPN concentrators are capacity-planned appliances that queue traffic through fixed locations, and they became a bottleneck the day whole workforces went remote. Cloud-delivered ZTNA scales with the provider’s edge, applies the same policy to office and off-network users, and removes the hairpin through a data centre for traffic that was always destined for SaaS. [STAT: source required, if a figure is used for VPN appliance vulnerabilities or exploitation trend, cite the specific advisory or report].
Most buyers run the two side by side during migration. A credible supplier response should set out the coexistence plan: which user groups move first, how legacy VPN use cases (thick clients, server-initiated connections, OT access) are handled, and the criteria for switching the concentrators off. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
Security and compliance drivers for hybrid work
UK GDPR, DPA 2018 and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025
Hybrid work moves personal data processing onto home networks, personal devices and consumer-grade connectivity, without moving any of the obligations. UK GDPR, the DPA 2018 and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (Royal Assent 19 June 2025) still govern how that data is collected, processed, stored and transmitted, with fines up to £17.5m or 4% of global annual turnover for serious breaches. A hybrid-work security architecture is, in practice, a data protection control: DLP on SaaS and web traffic, access control on private applications and auditable logs of both are what an ICO investigation will ask about. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
The Hybrid Threat Surface
The attack paths that matter most for distributed workforces are credential-led. Phishing and infostealer malware harvest identities from personal and corporate devices alike, and exposed remote-access infrastructure (VPN portals, RDP, unpatched edge appliances) remains a primary initial-access route. [STAT: source required, named report figure on credential/phishing-led initial access, for example a recognised annual breach report with year]:
- Credential theft and reuse against VPN portals and SaaS tenants, where a single factor still protects too many front doors. [STAT: source required if a figure is quoted]
- Unmanaged and BYOD devices reaching corporate SaaS with no inspection or posture check, leaving CASB and DLP grades to do the work an agent cannot
- Exploitation of internet-exposed remote-access appliances, the pattern behind several widely reported CVEs in recent years. [CLAIM: source required, name the specific advisories if this bullet ships]
SASE architectures reduce these paths by removing the exposed concentrator, brokering application access through identity and posture, and inspecting SaaS and web sessions wherever the user is. For unmanaged devices, agentless or API-based controls (reverse-proxy ZTNA, API CASB) extend cover where no client can be installed. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
Hybrid-Work SD-WAN/SASE Procurement: What Your RFP Must Pin Down
Generic SD-WAN and SASE question sets underweight the areas where hybrid-work deployments actually succeed or fail. A structured RFP tailored to a distributed workforce forces suppliers to answer specifically on user experience, coverage and the unmanaged-device problem, rather than reciting platform capabilities. The areas where hybrid-work briefs most commonly need to go further than a standard question set are:
- User experience, measured and enforced: ask how the platform measures per-user experience (digital experience monitoring), what the escalation path is when a named executive’s home connection degrades, and whether experience SLAs exist for remote users rather than only for sites. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
- PoP proximity and roaming behaviour: require the current PoP list for the countries where your people actually live and travel, the peering or backbone route between them, and what happens to a session when a user moves between networks mid-call.
- Unmanaged devices and BYOD: specify which user populations will never take an agent (contractors, auditors, offshore teams) and require the agentless answer for each: reverse-proxy ZTNA, API CASB, browser isolation, with the licensing model for each named explicitly.
- Identity integration: name your IdP (and any second one inherited from acquisitions), require SCIM provisioning and continuous or per-session posture evaluation, and ask what breaks when the IdP itself is unavailable.
- Coexistence and VPN retirement: require a phased migration plan with entry and exit criteria per user group, the treatment of legacy use cases that ZTNA does not cover on day one, and the commercial treatment of the overlap period.
- Off-network policy parity: ask the supplier to demonstrate, not assert, that the policy applied to a user in the office is the same policy applied at home and roaming, including SSL inspection behaviour and blocked-category handling.
Enterprise vs Mid-Market Hybrid-Work Challenges
Enterprise-Scale Organisations
Large organisations buy hybrid-work security as a multi-year consolidation programme: thousands of roaming users across regions, several identity providers, works councils and regulators with views on employee monitoring, and an incumbent estate of VPN concentrators, proxies and CASB point products with staggered renewal dates. Procurement needs to sequence the consolidation, so the RFP should weight migration planning, coexistence and global PoP coverage as heavily as feature grades, and should test the supplier’s references for deployments of comparable scale. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
Mid-Market Organisations
Mid-market buyers typically run lean IT teams without a dedicated SOC, which makes the operating model the pivotal decision: a managed or co-managed SASE service can put 24x7 eyes on alerts that an in-house team of four cannot cover. Single-vendor platforms with straightforward per-user licensing tend to fit better than best-of-breed stacks, and the tool below includes a mid-market organisation size filter precisely because vendor fit differs at this scale. [DRAFT: writer to refine]
Frequently Asked Questions
Which SD-WAN and SASE providers are best for remote and hybrid workforce?
The ranking above lists the current top providers for remote and hybrid work, computed live by the Netify evidence engine with hybrid-work weighting: remote user access, ZTNA and secure web gateway capability carry extra weight. The leaders change as vendor evidence changes, which is why this page recomputes hourly rather than freezing a list. Use the interactive tool to reflect your own operating model, regions and device mix.
How is this ranking calculated?
All 30 providers in the Netify capability matrix are scored on a weighted average across 40 graded capability features (graded yes, partial, via partner, via managed service, not primary or not confirmed), with the hybrid and remote workforce priority boosting the most relevant features. The same engine powers the interactive shortlist builder, the machine-readable data.json twin and the MCP tool, so results are reproducible. Grades are based on public evidence; confirm anything decision-critical through a structured RFP.
Can I refine this list?
Yes. The shortlist tool on this page layers your operating model, organisation size, regions, cloud platforms, AI requirements and per-feature must-haves on top of the hybrid-work weighting, and every scenario opens as a shareable configuration in the full builder at netify.co.uk/sase/shortlist. You can also describe your estate in plain language to the AI advisor and let it set the filters.
Is ZTNA a full replacement for a remote-access VPN?
For most user-to-application access, yes, and with a smaller attack surface: applications are published individually to identified, posture-checked users instead of exposing a network. Some use cases need a plan of their own (server-initiated connections, thick clients, some OT and admin access), which is why credible suppliers propose a phased coexistence rather than a big-bang cutover. Your RFP should require that plan explicitly. [DRAFT: writer to confirm final wording]
How should BYOD and unmanaged devices be secured under SASE?
Through the agentless controls in the platform: reverse-proxy (clientless) ZTNA for private applications, API-based CASB for sanctioned SaaS, and browser-based isolation where offered. The capability grades differ meaningfully between vendors, which is why the tool’s BYOD and unmanaged devices preset weights CASB and DLP capability. [DRAFT: writer to confirm final wording]
What does hybrid work mean for UK GDPR compliance?
The obligations do not change with location: personal data processed from home networks and personal devices remains governed by UK GDPR, the DPA 2018 and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. In practice that means demonstrable access control on private applications, DLP on web and SaaS channels, and audit logs that cover off-network activity. Employee monitoring aspects of those controls may require a data protection impact assessment; take advice on your specific position. [DRAFT: writer to confirm final wording]
How we researched this page
The written guidance is drafted by Harry Yelland from Netify's hybrid-work and VPN-replacement RFP work, with fact-checking by Robert Sturt, Netify's Managing Director. Statistics on this page are shown only with a named source and the date it was checked; entries marked as requiring a source are pending that check and must not be cited until it completes.
The rankings and the tool borrow directly from the Netify comparison platform at netify.co.uk/sase/shortlist rather than restating it. The platform grades 30 SD-WAN and SASE vendors against 40 capabilities using public source evidence, on a six-level scale from confirmed capability to not confirmed. This page requests the hybrid and remote workforce ranking from that platform every hour and the tool sends your filter choices to the same scoring engine, so a shortlist built here always matches one built on the platform itself. None of the vendor grades are written or stored on this page.
Regional, cloud, AI and resilience grades are indicative desk research. Confirm anything that matters to your procurement through a structured RFP, which Netify can issue to your shortlisted vendors.
Cite this research
Netify, "SD-WAN & SASE for Hybrid & Remote Work (2026)", written by Harry Yelland, fact-checked by Robert Sturt: https://netify.co.uk/sd-wan-sase-for-hybrid-remote-work/
Machine-readable: https://netify.co.uk/sd-wan-sase-for-hybrid-remote-work/data.json · Live ranking source: https://netify.co.uk/sase/best/sd-wan-sase-providers-for-remote-and-hybrid-work/data.json · Programmatic shortlists: POST https://netify.co.uk/sase/api/mcp
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