2019: The Year of CASB?

The new Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) was released last month and we were pleased to see several of our partners feature. Netskope was named a leader, positioned furthest to the right for completeness of vision out of the 13 vendors that were evaluated. Palo Alto Networks was named as a niche player for Aperture, part of their Security Operating Platform, and Proofpoint was named a visionary.

Here’s how the quadrant appears:

The CASB market is an area of Next-Generation Technology we’ve been following for a while, having first partnered with Netskope in 2015, when the technology sat at the Peak of Inflated Expectations in the Gartner Hype Cycle.

Fast forward to 2018, where CASB now sits in the Trough of Disillusionment in the July 2018 Gartner Hype Cycles for Cloud Security, Application Security and Endpoint and Mobile Security, readying itself to climb the Slope of Enlightenment, which is when the mass adoption process generally begins. So, will 2019 be the year of much heavier CASB adoption?

Many of our customers have certainly been focused on performance of SaaS apps, especially Microsoft Office 365, through 2018. That’s why we launched our SaaS Optimization as a Service offering, to give users better app performance wherever and however they choose to work.

But as organizations of all sizes are now standardizing on O365, that means more and more critical data is being stored in the Cloud, which makes having good control over risky activities in O365 – and other cloud apps – essential.

Netskope has certainly built good momentum over the last couple of years. It’s one of the longest-standing stand-alone players in the market following the wave of consolidation that’s taken place over the last couple of years (McAfee, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco have all made acquisitions among others).

Looking at Netskope’s customer base, the list is impressive. It’s always a good sign when other well-known technology brands, like Juniper Networks, Solarwinds and Tripwire, are willing to trust you to provide their security solution! For example, in this video, Tripwire’s former Senior Director of IT, Security, and IT DevOps, Joel Naumoff, talks about their journey to the cloud and how Netskope helped provide visibility into their cloud usage:

Palo Alto Networks too is seeing success with their platform approach to security through the ‘Security Operating Platform’, which extends out to the Cloud for IaaS and SaaS delivery, as this recent case study demonstrates.

Here’s what we think. SaaS app usage is only going to increase over the coming year, and with that comes more risk. If you’ve not yet explored the world of CASB and how it can help secure your cloud strategy, now’s the perfect time to start. Of course, we’d love to help you do that – please get in touch to arrange some time to talk using the form below.