Today we announced that Netskope has been issued United States Patent 9,270,765 for security for network delivered devices. The patent, which is the most comprehensive awarded to any Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) vendor, recognizes our ability to offer real-time visibility and policy control for enterprise users across both sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud apps, regardless of a user’s location or device type.
It is now very common for enterprises to use cloud apps for a number of corporate functions, with the most recent Netskope Cloud Report finding an average of 917 cloud apps in use per enterprise. Most of those are shadow IT. While this is a boon for employee productivity, it presents myriad cloud data protection issues for the enterprise.
Consider an organization seeking to protect its data in today’s work environment with hundreds of cloud apps. The organization may be using Salesforce.com for CRM, Expensify for expenses, Taleo for talent management, Dropbox for file sharing, Evernote for note-taking, Slack for team communications, Marketo for marketing automation, Google Apps for document collaboration, and more. Even though the organization is able to monitor some on-premises usage of those cloud apps with their existing security tools, once the user is off of the corporate network or using a cellular network, the usage is not trackable. The bring your own device (BYOD) trend increases the likelihood of enterprise cloud traffic bypassing the corporate network completely, making it impossible for IT to see that traffic, or enforce policy on it.
Essentially, this patent covers Netskope’s unique ability to enable visibility and control for all modern cloud access patterns, and to associate the user’s enterprise identity with that cloud traffic. Let’s look at three sc