Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri. Source: Netskope

Netskope has acquired cloud networking vendor Infiot to get one step closer to delivering a fully integrated, single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) platform. 

The integration of Infiot’s technology will provide the new Netskope Borderless WAN with uniform security and quality of experience (QoE) policies to a range of hybrid work needs, “from employees at home or on-the-go, to branch offices, ad-hoc point-of-sale systems, and multi-cloud environments,” according to the Netskope announcement. 

“We're very cognizant that the goal at Netskope is to converge security and networking,” Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri told SDxCentral in an interview. Beri said the Infiot acquisition brings to Netskope the “foundational technology and team for that solution.”

The announcement comes in the midst of a year of accolades for Infiot. The startup was a two-time winner in the 2022 Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards, and was named to the 2022 Futurium 40, a list of the strongest private companies in key markets for cloud and communications infrastructure, as well as to the CRN 10 Hottest Networking Startup Companies list.

Infiot leverages a cloud-based, zero-touch deployment and provisioning model with multiple physical and virtual appliance form factors. The solution includes built-in routing, a transport-agnostic approach that supports both wired and wireless networking, app-aware QoE enforcement combined with policy-based traffic steering, and other integrated network security functions for deployment at the edge.

Infiot technology will allow cloud-first networking by leveraging Netskope SASE Gateways.

“It really is beautiful, the way that they have built and designed this, and were heavily focused on the development of the product,” Beri said. Infiot designed their solution "the way that in today's modern cloud microservice world, you would, and not the old way you would design a box sitting on prem,” which he said is the way Netskope also approaches designing its products. 

Beri noted that the acquisition was a long process in which company culture was also key.

“The first thing that we focus on is the team, and then the architecture of the platform,” he said. “We don't acquire things because of revenue, we acquire because we need people who have deep experience in the industry. They fit our culture, being very open and collaborative, transparent.” 

The acquisition is Netskope’s second in recent months, having acquired WootCloud in June. The new Netskope converged SASE platform aims to provide AI-driven zero trust security to any network location or device – including IoT, for which Infiot and WootCloud tout their zero-trust capabilities. 

Venture capital (VC) investors have bet big on zero trust of late, pouring nearly $3 billion in funding to equip legacy security models with zero trust from 2018 to 2021, according to GlobalData. 

Netskope was among the startups that banked more than $100 million in VC funding. In June of 2021, Netskope announced a $300 million funding round led by existing investor Iconiq Growth that sent its valuation skyrocketing to $7.5 billion, which more than doubled Netskope’s valuation.

Beri said the Netskope mission is “to build the world's largest, most performant security network.”

Identifying itself as a SASE leader, Netskope got its start as one of the original cloud access security brokers (CASBs). Its SASE platform includes CASB, zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway, and its NewEdge private cloud. Those capabilities, plus multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO), allows Netskope to secure users, applications, data, and resources.

On the security side, Beri said the company is focused on best-of-breed security functionality across web, SASE, public cloud, and on-premise environments. On the networking side, he added, NewEdge was one of the company’s “biggest investments over the past year.”