During the pandemic, collaboration apps such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom have played an important role in connecting the distributed workforce and helping organizations to cope with the so-called “new normal.” Even if we are finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel (and this time it’s a real light), the world won’t be exactly the same as it was before.

Today we are very excited to share that Netskope has been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner ® Magic Quadrant ™ for Security Service Edge (SSE). This Magic Quadrant for SSE* is the first such SSE analysis of its kind, and I invite you to read the full SSE report (available here) to learn how Netskope was recognized for its completeness of vision and ability to execute.

For the past 20 years, I’ve served as CISO for companies across different sectors. In this role, I have shouldered responsibility for protecting each organization from a wide swath of rapidly developing cybersecurity threats. I have also learned firsthand how much stress security leaders face day-to-day. Recent conversations with my peers have shown stress in cybersecurity is an industry-wide problem. The CISO role is one of the most stressful in any organization.

Despite the growing interest in cloud accounts by opportunistic and state-sponsored actors, too many organizations fail to implement basic security measures to protect their cloud apps, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) for administrators and users. This is the concerning finding of a report recently released by Microsoft, according to which just 22% of Azure Active Directory customers implement strong authentication mechanisms such as MFA or passwordless authentication.

The nature of business today is increasingly decentralized. Cloud applications are exploding. Data is everywhere. And a large number of users will continue to work remotely even post-COVID-19. While all of these things increase business agility, they also increase an organization’s attack surface. The concept of Zero Trust is generating a lot of buzz as a panacea for these new risk exposures—and for good reason.

Just over three years ago, Joe DePalo joined Netskope as Senior Vice President of Platform Engineering. He had most recently led the infrastructure design and build-out at AWS, the world’s largest public cloud, and prior to that, engineering and operations for one of the largest content delivery networks (CDNs) at Limelight Networks.

State-sponsored threat actors continue to exploit legitimate cloud services. In their latest campaign, uncovered by Malwarebytes during January 2022, the North Korean group Lazarus (AKA HIDDEN COBRA) has been carrying out spear phishing attacks, delivering a malicious document masquerading as a job opportunity from Lockheed Martin (37% of malware is now delivered via Office documents).

Netskope is a leading provider of cloud security with its security service edge, single-pass architecture. Using clients to steer traffic to the Internet through the Netskope Security Cloud means that customers can securely enable data moving into and out of the distributed corporate environment. But this traffic has to originate from an endpoint—and endpoints can be compromised. How do organizations know whether SaaS traffic originating from an endpoint is potentially compromised or at risk?

A new destructive malware called WhisperGate was discovered in mid-January 2022 targeting Ukrainian organizations. This threat emerged during geopolitical conflicts in Ukraine, masquerading as ransomware. However, this malware has a more destructive nature: wiping files and corrupting disks to prevent the OS from loading. Ukraine has suffered other cyberattacks that seem to be connected to WhisperGate, such as the defacement of many websites connected to their governments.

Ever-increasing demands for remote work and the shift to cloud-as-default have propelled many companies to re-energize their data protection and threat neutralization strategies. Successful strategies emphasize robust identity and access management (IAM) and detailed visibility into all traffic and transactions. Okta, one of our strategic partners for IAM, recently published its eighth annual Business at Work report.