Netskope Unmasks Enterprise Cloud App Usage, Eliminates Catch-22 Between Agility and Security

October 3, 2013

New Cloud App Analytics and Policy Company Emerges from Stealth with Fortune 500 Customers and $21 Million in Investment

LOS ALTOS – Oct. 3, 2013 – Netskope™, the cloud app analytics and policy company, today announced its official launch from stealth with the general availability of a cloud app analytics and policy platform and $21 million in funding from The Social+Capital Partnership and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Netskope enables organizations to embrace cloud apps by delivering a solution that makes those apps safe, compliant and high performance. The company will be exhibiting and presenting next week at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo October 6-10 in Orlando, Fla. In addition, Netskope released its inaugural Netskope Cloud Report^TM and infographic, revealing the top 10 enterprise-ready cloud apps. For the full report, go to here.

Businesses now use cloud apps to serve a wide range of purposes, from CRM (e.g. Salesforce), to Data and Analysis (e.g. Google Analytics) to Cloud Storage (e.g. Box). As these apps proliferate in the workplace, employees are perpetuating the trend of “Shadow IT” by using unsanctioned cloud apps, making it very difficult for IT to manage and secure these apps. Netskope was built from the ground up to allow employees to use their favorite cloud apps while enabling businesses to optimize cloud usage with an eye toward speed, performance, and security.

During the last year, Netskope has been extensively vetted and tested by dozens of medium and large enterprises, including Fortune 500 organizations across a broad range of industries. IT and business decision-makers are now using Netskope to discover and determine which cloud apps are enterprise-ready, perform deep analytics on app usage, and enforce business policies in real-time. On Wednesday, October 9, three Netskope customers in the music, entertainment, and healthcare industries will present at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo.

How Netskope Works:

Netskope discovers cloud apps, provides complete visibility and actionable insights on usage, and performs deep analytics that give IT the ability to pivot around cloud app usage details such as apps, users, specific activities such as “download” or “share”; content details, and where and with whom content is shared. Only Netskope provides organizations with this granular level of visibility and lets them enforce sophisticated policies in cloud apps. All Netskope users have access to the Cloud Confidence Index^TM, a database of more than 2,600 cloud apps that have been assessed on 30 objective criteria across security, auditability, and disaster recovery to determine their enterprise readiness. SkopeSights^TM helps IT decide which apps to standardize on and where risky behaviors might be in their cloud app environments.

“Cloud apps are the inevitable future because they let people go fast and work flexibly. Up until now, IT couldn’t embrace cloud apps because they couldn’t see what apps were running, what people were doing in them, or enforce policies,” said Sanjay Beri, CEO, Netskope. “We created Netskope to eliminate the catch-22 between being agile and being secure.”

“Taming cloud use in the enterprise is already a monumental challenge. I was surprised to see Netskope starting out not with application support for 2 or 3 cloud apps, but already scaling into the hundreds,” said Adrian Sanabria, senior analyst, 451 Group. “This is largely due to their approach – their product will easily scale to include new cloud apps when much of the competition won’t be able to. Part of this approach also includes normalizing cloud actions – meaning that if ‘file upload’ is restricted for a user, it applies equally to file upload features in Dropbox, Yammer, or Office365, despite the functional difference of these cloud services.”

Netskope currently employs more than 50 people, including ten Distinguished Engineers and Principal Architects from some of the most innovative networking, security, and analytics companies in the world. The early Netskope team has authored an aggregate of more than 50 patents related to application identification, network acceleration, deep packet inspection, and security architectures.

The company will use the $21 million in funding primarily for sales expansion and product development to meet growing market demand.

Availability:

Netskope is available now. Pricing is on a subscription basis per user per year.

Resources:

Gartner ITxpo/Symposium: Netskope Booth #ET 19
Hear Netskope’s customers speak on Wednesday, October 9
Cloud Report press release
How Netskope Works Infographic
White Paper – “The 5 Steps to Cloud Confidence”

About Netskope

Netskope is the cloud app analytics and policy company. Only Netskope eliminates the catch-22 between being agile and being secure and compliant by providing complete visibility and enforcing sophisticated policies in cloud apps. Netskope performs deep analytics and lets decision makers create policies in a few clicks that protect corporate data and optimize cloud app usage in real-time and at scale. With Netskope, people get their favorite cloud apps and the business can move fast, with confidence.