Netskope CEO Sanjay Beri: We Are ‘World’s Largest Cloud Network’ For Security

August 01, 2023, 11:37 AM EDT

In an interview with CRN, Beri says Netskope’s technology can provide the ‘most granular view’ of user activity available in the SASE and SSE market, offering a major enhancement to security.

Beri On The Record

Among the three leading vendors in the security service edge (SSE) market, Netskope ranks the highest on both vision and execution, according to Gartner. And notably, the company has accomplished this without the visibility advantage of being a publicly traded company, unlike its two SSE leaders quadrant rivals, Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks. During a recent interview with CRN, Netskope Co-Founder and CEO Sanjay Beri said that the company currently has no need to go public for financial reasons, but may still pursue an IPO in the coming years to help with “continuing to grow our awareness.” At the same time, “our customers [already] know that this is a large, global company that services some of the largest companies in the world,” he said.

The exact size of Netskope’s business would be one difference that comes with being privately held rather than publicly traded. The company hasn’t disclosed dollar amounts or specific growth numbers for its revenue, but Beri said that Netskope has historically been growing in the vicinity of 50 percent a year. In January, Netskope did its “public round privately” by raising $401 million through a convertible notes offering, he said. Netskope was last valued at $7.5 billion in 2021 in connection with its $300 million Series H funding round, which has placed it among the highest-valued cybersecurity unicorns.

On the technology side, Beri has a lot more to say — contending that the company’s SSE and SASE (secure access service edge) platform offers a number of “fundamental differences [from] Palo Alto Networks or Zscaler.” Among those differentiators is that Netskope operates “the world’s largest cloud network from a security vantage point,” which gives a major boost to performance and a significant reduction to user latency, he said. The company also offers enhanced security capabilities by providing the “most granular view” of user and device activity available in the sector, Beri said.

In the interview with CRN, Beri also discussed Netskope’s investment in its channel partner program, which has included “amping up our enablement” of partners. In mid-July, subsequent to the interview, Netskope announced a new MSP program that serves as an “extension” of the company’s Evolve Partner Program, and offers a new “as-a-service business model framework,” the vendor said in a news release.

What follows is an edited portion of CRN’s interview with Beri.

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Kyle Alspach

Kyle Alspach is a Senior Editor at CRN focused on cybersecurity. His coverage spans news, analysis and deep dives on the cybersecurity industry, with a focus on fast-growing segments such as cloud security, application security and identity security. He can be reached at kalspach@thechannelcompany.com.