Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant report for security services edge (SSE) identifies Netskope, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler as leaders and added Fortinet and Versa Networks to the Magic Quadrant and dropped Cisco and Forcepoint compared to last year’s report.

The analysis firm defines SSE as a security framework that safeguards access to the web, cloud services and private applications regardless of user location, device or Application hosting, which enhances security and visibility for software-as-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

The “must-have” capabilities include identity-aware forward proxy; both inline (via identity-aware proxy supporting managed and unmanaged devices) and out-of-band (via API) protection of in-use SaaS apps; adaptive and granular access to private and SaaS applications by both agent and agentless methods, and from managed and unmanaged devices; integration with identity providers for identity context and validation, according to Gartner.

For the second year in a row, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler were named leaders in Gartner’s MQ for SSE report.

Netskope’s primary focus is SSE. Its Netskope Intelligent Security Service Edge product offers points of presence (POPs) close to most major population centers, and has a strong set of controls across all supported traffic channels, but the vendor has been slow to introduce digital experience monitoring (DEM features to its platform and to enhance them, the report wrote.

On the other hand, Palo Alto Networks offers a broad range of security products including Prisma Access as its SSE offering. The vendor is financially secure and continues to invest in and develop its SSE offering. It recently launched a management console — Strata Cloud Manager to unify management for both on-premises firewalls and SSE. But Gartner clients reported that Palo Alto Networks’ licensing model is complex and difficult to understand with inflexible and inflated pricing, according to the analysis firm.

Zscaler also focuses on its SSE solution — Zscaler for Users, which has strong revenue growth from a large base of customers. The vendor has POPs close to most major population centers, but Gartner receives customer feedback about Zscaler’s performance and latency problems more frequently than is typical for other vendors in this market, analysts noted.

In this year’s MQ for SSE report, Fortinet replaced Cisco to become the only challenger. Gartner also identified Skyhigh Security and Lookout as visionaries, and Versa Networks, Cloudflare, Broadcom and iboss as niche players.

Forcepoint was named a visionary in last year's report, but this year Gartner put it in the honorable mentions, along with Cisco, Microsoft and Trend Micro.

The analysis firm explained Cisco’s primary SSE solution — Cisco Secure Access — was publicly released on 13 September 2023, but it didn’t meet the required number of customers and seats to be included in this report, while Forcepoint’s ONE platform didn’t support a mobile traffic steering agent as of 15 October 2023.

On the flip side, Gartner this year added Fortinet and Versa Networks to the MQ for SSE. The firm noted Fortinet is a well-funded company that has publicly stated its plan to invest in its SSE and secure access service edge (SASE) solution — FortiSASE, and the vendor has a strong sales strategy and robust customer support.

Versa Networks also offers both SSE and SASE. Its Versa Security Service Edge offers a flexible and configurable capability for assigning and adjusting dynamic risk scores to both users and devices, according to the report.