Why CISOs are making the SASE switch: Fewer vendors, smarter security, better AI guardrails

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Why CISOs are making the SASE switch: Fewer vendors, smarter security, better AI guardrails

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now Investors, including venture capitalists (VCs), are betting $359 million that secure access service edge (SASE) will become a primary consolidator of enterprise security tech stacks. Cato Network’s oversubscribed Series […]

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Investors, including venture capitalists (VCs), are betting $359 million that secure access service edge (SASE) will become a primary consolidator of enterprise security tech stacks.

Cato Network’s oversubscribed Series G round last week demonstrates that investors view SASE as capable of driving significant consolidation across its core and adjacent markets. Now valued at $4.8 billion, Cato recently reported 46% year-over-year (YoY) growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2024, outpacing the SASE market. Cato will use the funding to advance AI-driven security, accelerate innovation across SASE, extended detection and response (XDR), zero trust network access (ZTNA), SD-WAN, and IoT/OT, and strengthen its global reach by scaling partner and customer-facing teams.

Gartner projects the SASE market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%, reaching $28.5 billion by 2028.

The implied, real message is that SASE will do to security stacks what cloud computing did to data centers: Consolidate dozens of point solutions into unified platforms. Gartner’s latest forecast for worldwide SASE shows organizations favoring a dual-vendor approach, shifting from a 4:1 ratio to 2:1 by 2028, another solid signal that consolidation is on the way.

Cashing in on consolidation

Consolidating tech stacks as a growth strategy is not a new approach in cybersecurity, or in broader enterprise software. Cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) and XDR platforms have relied on selling consolidation for years. Investors leading Cato’s latest round are basing their investment thesis on the proven dynamic that CISOs are always looking for ways to reduce the number of apps to improve visibility and lower maintenance costs.

VentureBeat often hears from CISOs that complexity is one of the greatest enemies of security. Tool sprawl is killing the ability to achieve step-wise efficiency gains. While CISOs want greater simplicity and are willing to drive greater consolidation, many have inherited inordinately complex and high-cost legacy technology stacks, complete with a large base of tools and applications for managing networks and security simultaneously.

Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto Networks chairman and CEO, acknowledged the impact of consolidations, saying recently: “Customers are actually onto it. They want consolidation because they are undergoing three of the biggest transformations ever: A network security transformation and a cloud transformation, and many of them are unaware … they’re about to go through a security operations center transformation.”

A recent study by IBM in collaboration with Palo Alto Networks found that the average organization has 83 different security solutions from 29 vendors. The majority of executives (52%) say complexity is the biggest impediment to security operations, and it can cost up to 5% of revenue. Misconfigurations are common, making it difficult and time-consuming to troubleshoot security gaps. Consolidating cybersecurity products reduces complexity, streamlines the number of apps and improves overall efficiency.

When it comes to capitalizing on consolidation in a given market, timing is crucial. Adversaries are famous for mining legacy CVEs and launching living off the land (LOTL) attacks by using standard tools to breach and penetrate networks. Multivendor security architectures often have gaps that IT and security teams are unaware of until an intrusion attempt or breach occurs due to the complexity of multicloud, proprietary app, and platform integrations.

Enterprises lose the ability to protect the proliferating number of ephemeral identities, including Kubernetes containers and machine and human identities, as every endpoint and device is assigned. Closing the gaps in infrastructure, app, cloud, identity and network security fuels consolidation.

What CISOs are saying

Steward Health CISO Esmond Kane advises: “Understand that — at its core — SASE is zero trust. We’re talking about identity, authentication, access control and privilege. Start there and then build out.”

Legacy network architectures are renowned for poor user experiences and wide security gaps. According to Hughes’ 2025 State of Secure Network Access Report, 45% of senior IT and security leaders adopt SASE to consolidate SD-WAN and security into a unified platform. The majority of organizations, 75%, are pursuing vendor consolidation, up from 29% just three years ago. CISOs believe consolidating their tech stacks will help them avoid missing threats (57%) and reduce the need to find qualified security specialists (56%).

“SASE is an existential threat to all appliance-based network security companies,” Shlomo Kramer, Cato’s CEO, told VentureBeat. “The vast majority of the market is going to be refactored from appliances to cloud service, which means SASE [is going to be] 80% of the market.”

A fundamental architectural transformation is driving that shift. SASE converges traditionally siloed networking and security functions into a single, cloud-native service edge. It combines SD-WAN with critical security capabilities, including secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB) and ZTNA to enforce policy and protect data regardless of where users or workloads reside.

Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant for single-vendor SASE positions Cato Networks, Palo Alto Networks, and Netskope as Leaders, reflecting their maturity, unified platforms and suitability for enterprise-wide deployments.

Why vendor consolidation is reshaping enterprise security strategy

Single-vendor SASE has become a strategic consideration for security and infrastructure leaders. According to Gartner, 65% of new SD-WAN purchases will be part of a single-vendor SASE deployment by 2027, up from 20% in 2024. This projected growth reflects a broader shift toward unified platforms that reduce policy fragmentation and improve visibility across users, devices and applications.

In its Magic Quadrant for Single Vendor SASE, Gartner identified Cato Networks, Palo Alto Networks and Netskope as market leaders based on their differentiated approaches to convergence, user experience and enterprise-scale deployment models.

Cato’s Kramer told VentureBeat: “There is a short window where companies can avoid being caught with fragmented architectures. The attackers are moving faster than integration teams. That is why convergence wins.”

Numbers back Kramer’s warning. AI-enabled attacks are increasingly exploiting the 200-millisecond gaps between tool handoffs in multivendor stacks. Every unmanaged connection becomes a risk surface.

SASE leaders compared

Cato Networks: The Cato SASE Cloud platform combines SD-WAN, security service edge (SSE), ZTNA, CASB, and firewall capabilities in a unified architecture. Gartner highlights Cato’s “above-average customer experience compared to other vendors” and notes its “single, straightforward UI” as a key strength. The report notes that specific capabilities, including SaaS visibility and on-premises firewalling, are still maturing. Gartner also notes that pricing may vary depending on bandwidth requirements, which can impact the total cost, particularly concerning deployment scale. Following its Series G and 46% ARR growth, Cato has emerged as the most investor-validated pure-play in the space.

Palo Alto Networks: PANW “has strong security and networking features, delivered via a unified platform,” and benefits from “a proven track record in this market, and a sizable installed base of customers,” Gartner notes. However, the company’s offering is expensive compared to most of the other vendors. They also flag that the new Strata Cloud Manager is less intuitive than its previous UI.

Netskope: Gartner cites the vendor’s “strong feature breadth and depth for both networking and security,” along with a “strong customer experience” and “a strong geographic strategy” due to localization and data sovereignty support. At the same time, the analysis highlights operational complexity, noting that “administrators must use multiple consoles to access the full functionality of the platform.” Gartner also says that Netskope lacks experience compared to other vendors.

Evaluating the leading SASE vendors

Vendor	Platform design	Ease of use	AI automation maturity	Pricing clarity	Security scope	Ideal fit
Cato Networks	Fully unified, cloud-native	Excellent	Advancing rapidly	Predictable and transparent	End-to-end native stack	Midmarket and enterprise simplicity seekers
Palo Alto Prisma	Security-first integration	Moderate	Mature for security ops	Higher TCO	Strong next-generation firewall (NGFW) and ZTNA	Enterprises already using Palo NGFW
Netskope	Infrastructure control	Moderate	Improving steadily	Clear and structured	Strong CASB and data loss prevention (DLP)	Regulated industries and compliance-driven

SASE consolidation signals enterprise security’s architectural shift

The SASE consolidation wave reveals how enterprises are fundamentally rethinking security architecture. With AI attacks exploiting integration gaps instantly, single-vendor SASE has become essential for both protection and operational efficiency.

The reasoning is straightforward. Every vendor handoff creates vulnerability. Each integration adds latency. Security leaders know that unified platforms can help eliminate these risks while enabling business velocity.

CISOs are increasingly demanding a single console, a single agent and unified policies. Multivendor complexity is now a competitive liability. SASE consolidation delivers what matters most with fewer vendors, stronger security and execution at market speed.

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Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

Authors
Brendan Tracey, Jonas Buchli

Our novel Deep Loop Shaping method improves control of gravitational

Gemini achieves gold-level performance at the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals

AcknowledgementsWe thank the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) for their support.This project was a large-scale collaboration, and its success is due to the combined efforts

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