About Netskope
Netskope was founded in 2012 by Sanjay Beri, Ravi Ithal, and Krishna Narayanaswamy, based on the observation that as more corporate applications and data moved from traditional on-premises systems to cloud-based software-as-a-service applications, traditional network security tools, particularly firewalls originally designed to protect a defined corporate network perimeter, provided increasingly limited visibility and control over how employees actually accessed and used cloud applications, since much of that access happens directly between an employee's device and cloud services over the public internet, bypassing traditional network security chokepoints that firewalls were designed to monitor.
Netskope's platform provides visibility and security controls specifically designed for the cloud application access patterns that have become dominant in modern corporate computing environments, including monitoring and controlling which cloud applications employees are using, whether officially sanctioned by IT or unauthorized "shadow IT" applications employees have adopted independently, enforcing data loss prevention policies that can detect and block sensitive corporate data from being inappropriately uploaded to or shared through cloud applications, and providing secure access to both cloud applications and a company's own private internal applications and data, regardless of whether an employee is working from a company office, home, or elsewhere. The company has been a significant proponent of and contributor to the broader "secure access service edge" (SASE) security architecture category, which combines networking and security functions, including secure web gateway, cloud access security broker, and zero-trust network access capabilities, into a unified, cloud-delivered security platform rather than the more fragmented collection of separate point security products many enterprises historically operated, an architectural approach that has gained substantial industry momentum as remote and hybrid work have made traditional, office-network-centric security architectures increasingly insufficient. Netskope's customers span large enterprises across many industries seeking modern, cloud-native security architecture better suited to today's distributed workforce and cloud application usage patterns than legacy network security tools. The company has raised very substantial venture funding from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and ICONIQ Growth, reaching a valuation exceeding $7.5 billion, competing with other SASE and cloud security vendors including Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks.
