Symantec SSE Helps Growing Organizations Strengthen Security, Simplify Operations, And Support Secure Growth

Broadcom commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Symantec Security Service Edge (SSE).¹ This spotlight illustrates how organizations with lean security teams and increasingly complex cloud environments can realize value from Symantec SSE based on the experiences of a senior director of IT at a software development organization headquartered in North America. The interviewee’s organization has 2,500 employees and global operations. It delivers cloud-based customer experience solutions and operates a complex environment spanning SaaS applications, cloud infrastructure, data centers, and a distributed workforce.

As growing organizations continue to expand their digital operations, they face security challenges that increasingly resemble those of much larger enterprises. Growth in cloud adoption, SaaS usage, remote and hybrid work, and externally facing applications create new demands on security teams that must protect users, data, and business operations while maintaining operational efficiency.

Unlike the largest enterprises with extensive security organizations and highly specialized teams, though, many growing organizations must balance increasing security requirements with limited resources and increasing pressure to simplify operations. As a result, security leaders at these organizations increasingly seek opportunities to consolidate security tools, improve visibility across cloud environments, and strengthen protection against increasingly sophisticated threats without introducing additional administrative complexity.

Traditional security architectures based on on-premises controls, VPN access, and disconnected point solutions can become difficult to manage as organization grow and may provide limited visibility into users, applications, and data beyond the corporate network. Security leaders increasingly require cloud-delivered security capabilities that provide consistent protection across users, devices, SaaS applications, and hybrid work environments.

The interviewee’s organization experienced these challenges as it expanded cloud and SaaS adoption while supporting a distributed workforce and evolving business requirements. As security risks increased and the interviewee’s organization’s technology environment became more complex, the interviewee sought a modern security platform that could strengthen protection, improve visibility, and consolidate multiple security capabilities within a unified management experience. Symantec SSE became a key component of the interviewee’s organization’s strategy to modernize security operations while supporting future growth.

Investment Drivers For Growing Organizations

As growing organizations expand their digital operations, security environments often become more complex. Growth in SaaS adoption, cloud infrastructure, hybrid work, and internet-facing applications increases the number of users, devices, applications, and data flows that security teams must protect. At the same time, organizations must balance stronger security requirements with the need to simplify operations, improve visibility, and maintain business agility.

The interviewee said their organization adopted Symantec SSE as it expanded cloud and SaaS usage and sought a more modern approach to securing users, applications, and data. Like many growth-oriented organizations, the interviewee’s organization recognized that traditional security approaches were becoming increasingly difficult to manage and lacked the visibility and protection required for modern work environments.

The interviewee’s organization adopted Symantec SSE to address several challenges common among organizations scaling cloud adoption and digital operations, including:

• The need for new security requirements. The interviewee noted that as their organization’s use of SaaS applications and cloud services increased, their security leaders required better visibility into user activity, application usage, and data movement beyond traditional corporate networks. Existing controls were not designed to provide comprehensive protection across cloud-based environments, prompting the interviewee’s organization to seek a more modern, internet-facing security architecture.

• Limited visibility and control across distributed environments. According to the senior director of IT, as their employees increasingly accessed applications, data, and services from a variety of locations, their organization recognized opportunities to strengthen protection beyond VPNs, endpoint security, and traditional network controls. Their organization sought modern capabilities, such as cloud access security broker (CASB), cloud data loss prevention (DLP), remote browser isolation (RBI), and Zero Trust network access (ZTNA), to improve visibility and reduce risk across cloud, web, and SaaS environments.

• Increased operational complexity. Like many growing organizations, the interviewee’s organization had accumulated a variety of security tools over time. While these technologies addressed specific security needs, they also created management complexity and increased administrative effort. Security leaders sought opportunities to consolidate technologies, simplify administration, and gain more consistent policy enforcement across security functions. They also wanted to move away from fragmented security architectures and toward a unified platform that could simplify deployment, onboarding, and ongoing management while supporting future growth.

• The need for stronger and more scalable security protections. As the threat landscape evolved, the interviewee’s organization sought security capabilities that could more effectively protect users from web-based threats, data loss risks, and unauthorized access. Leaders wanted a platform capable of scaling with future business growth while providing enhanced protection across cloud applications, internet traffic, and distributed work environments.

Symantec SSE Features

The interviewee’s organization chose to invest in Symantec SSE for the following reasons:

• Consolidate security management through a unified platform. The interviewee’s organization sought to simplify administration and reduce the operational burden associated with managing multiple security technologies. Symantec SSE provided a unified platform that centralized policy management, security visibility, and administration across several security functions. The consolidated architecture also provided a more streamlined path for onboarding users, policies, and new security capabilities compared with managing multiple independent solutions.

• Improve visibility across cloud environments, SaaS applications, and emerging AI usage. The interviewee said their organization wanted greater visibility into cloud and SaaS usage and sought capabilities, such as CASB and cloud DLP, to identify shadow IT, monitor cloud activity, and extend security controls across SaaS environments. As AI usage expanded across the enterprise, the interviewee’s organization also required visibility into unsanctioned AI applications and emerging shadow AI activity to help ensure data remained protected regardless of where employees worked or which applications they adopted.

• Modernize protection for a distributed workforce. The interviewee’s organization selected Symantec SSE to strengthen protection for users accessing applications and data from a variety of locations. Capabilities including secure web gateway (SWG), RBI, and ZTNA helped address evolving web, cloud, and access-related risks.

• Reduce operational complexity while supporting future growth. The interviewee noted their organization saw an opportunity to replace a collection of point solutions with a consolidated SSE platform. By bringing web security, cloud security, secure access, and data protection capabilities together within a common architecture, their organization simplified administration, reduced complexity, and established a more streamlined path for onboarding new users, policies, and security capabilities.

Key Results For Growing Organizations

The interviewee’s organization’s investment in Symantec SSE delivered value across three key areas: reducing security risk, simplifying security operations, and enabling secure growth. By consolidating multiple security functions within a unified platform, this organization gained greater visibility across users, applications, and data while improving efficiency and strengthening protection.

The results of the investment for the interviewee’s organization include:

Strengthened security posture across cloud, web, and SaaS environments. Symantec SSE helped the interviewee’s organization strengthen protection across users, applications, and data while providing greater visibility into cloud activity and reducing exposure to external threats. Integrated cloud, web, access, and data protection capabilities enabled security teams to address risks that previously lacked equivalent controls while improving oversight across a rapidly evolving technology environment.

• The interviewee described improved visibility and protection as some of the most meaningful outcomes of its deployment, reducing the likelihood of a severe breach caused by an external attack by 75%. Prior to implementing the full breadth of Symantec SSE capabilities, the interviewee’s organization had more limited visibility across cloud applications, user activity, and web traffic. Through integrated capabilities including CASB, CloudSOC, cloud DLP, RBI, SSL/TLS inspection, and ZTNA, security teams gained greater visibility into a SaaS environment consisting of more than 1,000 applications. Cloud DLP capabilities helped extend data protection policies to cloud applications and support governance initiatives around emerging generative AI usage.

• This visibility also helped identify shadow IT and shadow AI activity, including the use of unsanctioned AI applications and services; strengthen governance over cloud applications; and provide additional controls around sensitive data. Combined with policy enforcement capabilities across users, devices, applications, and data, these capabilities improved the interviewee’s organization’s ability to detect threats earlier, prevent unauthorized access, and reduce opportunities for attackers to compromise sensitive information.

• The interviewee also highlighted SSL/TLS inspection as one of the most valuable capabilities delivered through Symantec SSE. As encrypted traffic became the dominant form of internet traffic, security leaders viewed the ability to inspect encrypted communications as critical for improving threat detection and reducing risk. Combined with remote browser isolation, these capabilities helped strengthen protection against malicious websites, phishing attempts, and other web-based threats while maintaining a consistent user experience. Together, these controls helped reduce exposure to the types of attacks that can lead to significant security incidents and data breaches.

Simplify security operations and improve administrative efficiency. Centralized visibility, integrated security controls, and unified administration helped the interviewee’s organization operate more efficiently while reducing the effort required to manage a growing security environment. The interviewee identified operational simplification and consolidation as some of the most meaningful benefits realized from the investment.

• Improved security operations productivity by 15%. The interviewee reported that centralized visibility and management improved operational efficiency for both internal security personnel and external security partners. Symantec SSE serves as a primary source of telemetry and visibility for their organization’s managed security operations provider (SOC) provider, helping security teams investigate activity, monitor threats, and respond to incidents more efficiently. Bringing together multiple security capabilities within a shared management framework reduced the complexity of operating disparate tools while improving access to contextual information during investigations.

• Avoided legacy infrastructure costs. The interviewee identified consolidation as one of the most significant sources of value. By replacing multiple standalone security tools with a unified platform, their organization simplified deployment and onboarding while reducing management complexity. Rather than administering separate solutions across cloud security, web security, secure access, and data protection, administrators managed policies and security controls through a centralized interface. This unified approach improved consistency across security functions while reducing administrative overhead.
  The interviewee’s organization also realized operational efficiencies as it migrated from appliance-based security infrastructure to cloud-delivered services. The interviewee estimated that eliminating the need to manage on-premises secure web gateway infrastructure reduced administrative effort equivalent to one to two full-time employees annually, enabling internal resources to focus on higher-value security initiatives rather than maintaining legacy systems.

Support secure growth, workforce flexibility, and business resiliency. Symantec SSE helped the interviewee’s organization establish a more resilient and scalable security architecture capable of supporting continued business growth, distributed work, and increasing cloud adoption. Security leaders at the interviewee’s organization viewed the platform as an important component of their organization’s long-term strategy for securely enabling future expansion.

• Avoided 14 hours of unplanned downtime annually. The interviewee viewed reliability and accessibility as critical requirements for supporting a distributed workforce. By shifting security functions from on-premises infrastructure to cloud-delivered services, their organization reduced dependency on legacy architectures while improving resiliency and scalability. These improvements helped ensure users maintained consistent access to business applications and services regardless of location.

• Improved end-user productivity through faster and more secure access to applications. The interviewee reported improvements in the user experience as security capabilities became more closely aligned with cloud-based work patterns. Employees at the interviewee’s organization gained secure access to SaaS applications and business resources without relying exclusively on traditional network-based access methods, reducing friction while maintaining security controls. Interviewees in the broader Symantec SSE study also reported measurable user-experience improvements, including 25% to 30% lower latency and 30% fewer web-browsing support tickets after modernizing user access and implementing Symantec SSE capabilities such as Web Isolation.
  The interviewee highlighted ZTNA as an important component of their organization’s long-term access strategy. By enabling identity-based access to applications and resources, their organization reduced its dependence on traditional VPN architectures while providing a more scalable approach to securing employees, contractors, and other distributed users.

• Established a scalable security foundation for future growth. As security requirements continued to evolve, the interviewee viewed Symantec SSE as a strategic platform capable of supporting future business growth for their organization. They emphasized the value of Broadcom’s integrated approach to cloud security, web security, data protection, and secure access, noting that the platform provides the visibility, protection, and centralized management necessary to scale security capabilities without proportionally increasing operational complexity.