Cato Networks has long been helping organizations protect networks against threats, wherever they might come from.

Today, the Tel-Aviv, Israel-based SASE provider is going a step further with the launch of a new set of capabilities that the company claims integrates SASE with zero-trust network access (ZTNA) to help limit insider risks. Internal risks come from insiders within the organization that intentionally or unintentionally leak data, download malicious files or take other actions that put their organizations at risk. The new capabilities from Cato include an approach the company is calling RBAC+ that extends role-based access control (RBAC), which is often the foundation of many organizations’ identity and access management (IAM) operations.

Dave Greenfield, director of technology evangelism at Cato Networks, told SDxCentral that his company has always protected users against internal and external threats. For example, with Cato's WAN firewall and internet firewalls, access to corporate internet resources can be restricted at a very granular level while inspecting all traffic for threats.

"But it’s important to have multiple tiers of protection to stop attackers and it’s important to be able to do that in a way that’s simple and intuitive," Greenfield said. "Today’s launch makes secure access simpler with a single ZTNA policy, regardless of the user’s location."

RBAC is often handled internally by organizations using tools such as Microsoft's Active Directory. The overall goal of RBAC is to effectively match the user's role to the right level of access to enterprise resources.

Greenfield commented that with SASE, security and networking operational teams can work from a single platform. But for one platform to support both teams, particularly in large organizations, enterprise IT needs to be able to reflect roles and responsibilities at a very granular level in software.

"Since SASE converges so many different elements, that's very challenging," he said. "The granularity must extend across many capabilities in a seamless way."

The seamless convergence of access control is what Cato means by RBAC+. Greenfield explained that it’s not just about supporting large administrative groupings; rather, it is taking the control down to the individual site and element.

"It’s this incredible granularity down to the element level with ultimate flexibility to reflect any mix of roles in an IT organization that we refer to as RBAC+," he said.

Part of the updated Cato platform is extended DNS protection that is intended to prevent insiders from leaking data and exploiting potential DNS vulnerabilities.

Greenfield said Cato uses its intrusion prevention system (IPS) to give enterprise IT teams granular control over the level of security for DNS traffic in their accounts. Cato’s security team constantly updates and maintains security protection using a range of procedures and techniques. Among the techniques is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

"Companies need multitiered protections that detect the techniques used by attackers across multiple tactics of the MITRE ATT&CK framework," Greenfield said. "Cato already offers that today in a way that can be consumed by any organization. And it will continue to develop and improve those detections and preventive tools moving forward."