Security transformation doesn’t succeed without network transformation. The two go hand-in-hand when it comes to building the secure access service edge (SASE) architecture of the future, and if security degrades the network experience, or the network experience bypasses security, each of those trade-offs introduces more risk to the enterprise—it doesn’t have to be that way.
With hybrid work now the new normal in every business, it’s no surprise that those businesses want to work with technology providers that can credibly address both security and networking transformation requirements without adding complexity. According to Gartner, by 2024 80% of SD-WAN deployments will incorporate security service edge (SSE) requirements, up from less than 25% in 2022. That’s just one stat which underscores how purchasing decisions for “both sides” of SASE—which converges networking and security—will be made with fewer vendors that offer the most compelling mix of SASE-ready capabilities.
With that in mind, Netskope today is proud to announce our acquisition of Infiot, and with it, the introduction of Netskope Borderless SD-WAN. As Infiot’s founders and we agreed during our earliest meetings together, we have all experienced huge demand from enterprises that want to extend the same secure access and application assurance employees enjoy at the corporate office to the widest range of hybrid work use cases, from employees at home or on-the-go, to branch access, to an ad-hoc point-of-sale system, or multi-cloud environments that span all users, devices, sites, and clouds.
There are many challenges with this. Disparate technologies—such as remote access, SD-WAN, 4G/5G, and multi-cloud—must work together, but that gets very complicated both from an end user and from an IT operations perspective. The result, which we often see, is fragmented architecture that leaves teams unable to apply uniform security or quality-of-experience (QoE) policy across all users, devices, sites, and clouds.
Founded in 2018 by veterans of the SD-WAN industry, Infiot solves this. Its technology leverages a cloud-based, zero-touch deployment and provisioning model with multiple physical and virtual appliance form factors. The solution includes built-in routing, a transport-agnostic approach that supports both wired and wireless WAN networking (4G/5G), app-aware QoE enforcement combined with policy-based traffic steering, and integrated network security functions critical for deployment at the edge.
As the foundation of Netskope Borderless SD-WAN, Infiot technology will combine with Netskope Intelligent SSE, enabling customers to create secure, optimized connections between any enterprise location, including site-to-site, or the cloud. Part of Borderless SD-WAN are new Netskope SASE Gateways, which enable optimization for app performance, provide real-time link monitoring for increased network resilience, and offer access policies to apply zero trust principles to the network. Bringing together the capabilities of both Borderless SD-WAN and Netskope Intelligent SSE means Netskope has a fully converged SASE platform, which provides AI-driven zero trust security with simplified, optimized connectivity to any network, location, or device. For customers, all of these capabilities are delivered in a single architecture and platform, using one policy framework, one common global high performance and available NewEdge network (and where desirable a single agent), which dramatically simplifies operations for thinly stretched networking and infrastructure teams.
As part of offering a fully converged SASE platform, Netskope is committed to providing customers with choice and will continue integrating with key SD-WAN partners. This ensures that customers benefit from the capabilities of both Netskope Intelligent SSE in mixed-vendor environments, while maintaining flexibility and choice in vendor partners.
Netskope Borderless SD-WAN critical use cases include:
- Easy access to industry-leading Netskope Intelligent SSE services, a cloud-native converged security platform to protect web, cloud, SaaS, and private apps and IaaS infrastructure that increases business agility while lowering both cyber risk and operating costs
- All-in-one—intelligent access, routing, wireless WAN, network security, and app assurance combined with one-click service delivery leveraging edge compute—accessible from one console as an effective way to modernize the network and implement a SASE architecture
- The ability to offload MPLS and eliminate backhauling, thereby cutting network costs and boosting performance by sending more traffic direct-to-net, and leverage fixed/mobile connectivity options (such as 4G/5G)
- Optimized WAN connectivity for greater resilience and to ensure optimal end-to-end user experience, from the “last mile” to the cloud or public/private data center
- Simplified operational overhead associated with running applications from the Netskope App Catalog or custom third-party applications at the network edge for real-time processing or simply for box consolidation
We are so excited to welcome Infiot as part of our team and to share Netskope Borderless SD-WAN with you. Learn more about Netskope Borderless SD-WAN.
