If there’s one thing remote teams in 2025 quietly agree on—but rarely say out loud—it’s this: VPNs are a headache. They drop connections at the worst time, slow down access, break randomly, frustrate employees, and create more support tickets than they solve. Yet businesses keep pretending VPNs are the backbone of secure remote access. They aren’t. They’re relics—built for a world where “remote work” meant one guy connecting from home once a week.

But the workplace has changed. Distributed teams aren’t rare anymore; they are the new structure. Teams log in from Karachi, Lahore, London, Dubai, and random coffee shops around the world. Employees use mixed devices—office laptops, personal phones, tablets, and sometimes whatever they can borrow when their own device acts up. Workflows span cloud apps, SaaS dashboards, internal tools, and external APIs. This messy, borderless environment makes traditional VPNs look hopelessly outdated.

This is where SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, steps in. And unlike VPN marketing hype, SASE actually solves the problems companies deal with every single day.

The first issue with VPNs is their fundamental design. They funnel every connection through a central gateway—usually a single overloaded point that becomes a bottleneck the moment traffic grows. When 20 employees connect, the gateway struggles. When 200 connect, it collapses. VPNs never expected a world where most of the workforce would be remote at the same time. And even when the infrastructure “works,” performance drops the moment latency kicks in. Anyone who has tried opening Google Workspace through a slow VPN knows the pain.

SASE doesn’t work like that. Instead of dragging people through a single tunnel, SASE connects users to the nearest access point globally, secures the session, and enforces identity-based policies without forcing traffic through a single server. Think of it as security built into the internet edge instead of being squeezed through one outdated box in your office basement. The difference in experience is huge. A SASE-connected employee doesn’t even feel like they’re “on” anything—they just work.

The second major problem with VPNs is the illusion of security. Many Pakistani companies still treat VPN access as a magical safety net: “If they logged in with the VPN, they must be trusted.” But trust based purely on location or connection type is dangerous. Once someone is in, they’re usually free to roam inside the network like they own the place. It’s a model built on blind trust, and blind trust is exactly how breaches happen.

SASE flips that model entirely. Instead of trusting anyone who gets inside, SASE follows the Zero Trust rule: trust no one unless they prove continuously that they are who they say they are, from a device that cyber security requirements, running from a location that makes sense, and accessing a resource they’re actually allowed to use. It feels strict because it is strict—exactly what 2026 needs.

Another problem with VPNs is how they force IT teams to play endless whack-a-mole. Users forget passwords. Certificates expire. Configurations randomly break. Some people can connect, others can’t. A single Windows update can destroy half the remote workforce. And in Pakistan, bandwidth problems turn VPN usage into a daily gamble. IT teams waste hours fixing VPN issues that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

SASE eliminates this entire mess. It doesn’t matter if a user is on 4G, fiber, hotel WiFi, or a coworking space—they authenticate through identity providers, not fragile network tunnels. Everything becomes smoother, simpler, and much harder to break. Most importantly, SASE treats cloud apps like first-class citizens instead of forcing them to travel through a VPN gateway that wasn’t designed for modern traffic patterns.

Performance is another area where SASE wins without even trying. VPNs slow down everything they touch, especially for teams that rely on video calls, cloud storage, large datasets, or real-time dashboards. When traffic is forced through distant VPN servers, latency kills productivity. SASE avoids this by routing traffic intelligently based on the user’s location and the destination. Cloud apps feel faster. File syncs complete sooner. Everything flows like the VPN never existed.

Security teams also benefit from SASE’s design. VPN logs are notoriously vague and limited. It’s hard to know who accessed what, when, how, and whether the device was even safe. With SASE, every session is logged clearly. Every request is inspected. Every device posture is evaluated. Companies finally get visibility instead of guessing—or worse, assuming.

The biggest misunderstanding about SASE is that it’s “too advanced” for small or medium businesses. In reality, SMEs need SASE more than anyone. They’re the ones dealing with remote teams on unpredictable networks. They’re the ones relying heavily on SaaS tools. And they’re the ones most at risk when a compromised VPN credential gives attackers a free tour of the company network.

At its core, SASE isn’t complicated: it’s secure access built for the actual world we’re living in, not the one from 2005. It removes the pain of VPNs, closes the security gaps they leave behind, and gives teams a safer, faster, and more reliable way to work.

VPNs had their era. But that era is ending. Distributed teams need something better, and SASE is finally delivering what remote work has been missing for years: security without suffering.