Industry Embraces Single-Vendor SASE as Cato Reports Record Growth

Massive enterprise adoption of SASE propels Cato towards IPO

TEL AVIV, Israel, Feb. 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cato Networks, provider of the world's leading single-vendor SASE platform, reported today its 2022 business results. Highlights include ARR exceeding $100M in record-breaking time, enterprise customers increasing by 45%, and more than 3,000 updates being made to Cato SASE Cloud in 2022. Today, 1,600+ enterprises with 28,000+ sites and 520,000+ remote access ZTNA users across 150+ countries rely on Cato every day.

"Despite a stiffening market, enterprises continue to need better networking and security to support growth and digital transformation," says Shlomo Kramer, co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks. "Cato's strong performance attests to those needs, enabling enterprises to meet their strategic business outcomes while improving their operational efficiency, agility and risk posture."

Single-vendor Architecture Becomes the SASE Standard

Founded four years before SASE, Cato pioneered the convergence of security and networking into a global cloud service. Single-vendor SASE, at the time, was considered revolutionary, but today has become the accepted future of enterprise infrastructure. According to Gartner, by 2025, one-third of new SASE deployments will be based on a single-vendor SASE offering, up from 10% in 2022. Cato was recognized by Gartner as a Representative Vendor in the Gartner Market Guide for Single-Vendor SASE.

"The most notable vendor from a software architecture perspective out there today is probably Cato Networks. They have a very strong, unified software architecture and they were actually probably one of, if not the first, vendors doing SASE, and so they started with SASE," SDxCentral quoted Gartner VP Analyst Andrew Lerner.

Porsche Motorsport and Other Large Enterprises Choose to Partner with Cato

SASE industry adoption propelled Cato's ARR across $100M mark in just five years, becoming the fastest growing enterprise network security startup. More than 500 enterprises became Cato customers in 2022, an increase of 45% YoY. Existing customer commitment remained high as reflected in a Net Dollar Retention Rate of 120%. Significant wins in 2022 included:

• SSE: A major automotive manufacturer preferred Cato over one of the world's largest security vendors. So impressed was the IT team with Cato's security capabilities that the manufacturer chose to use the existing firewalls at 3,000 sites as only SD-WAN devices, connecting to Cato's SSE 360 for security processing.
• SASE: Forvis, a leading accounting firm formed through the merger of Dixon-Hughes (DHG) and BKD, extended DHG's Cato deployment to BKD despite the presence of legacy SD-WAN infrastructure. Along with Baker Tilly, Cato now serves two of the 10 largest CPA firms in North America 
• CASB: A $4B chemical company that chose Cato in April 2020, elected not to renew their subscription with a leading CASB provider, instead choosing Cato's CASB and DLP built into the Cato SASE Cloud.  
• Global Connectivity: Porsche Motorsport chose to partner with Cato on their Formula-E race car. With this collaboration, Cato secures and connects Porsche's racing teams worldwide to the cloud and Porsche headquarters.

Massive Product Innovation Extends Across Cato SASE Cloud

In 2022, Cato expanded the Cato SASE Cloud, extending the Cato Global Private Backbone to 80+ PoPs, a nearly 20 percent YoY increase. Simultaneously, Cato issued 3,213 feature updates and enhancements including:

• Cato SSE 360, which is the only Security Service Edge (SSE) architecture to provide total visibility, optimization, and control of traffic across all ports and protocols whether bound for the Internet or internal resources. SSE 360's Cato CASB and Smart DLP were also introduced last year.
• Network-based Ransomware Protection, which uses heuristic algorithms and deep network insight to detect and prevent the spread of ransomware across the enterprise without requiring endpoint agents.
• Risk-based Application Access Control, which extended ZTNA with real-time, device context inspection even when restricting access within corporate applications, as well as Internet and cloud resources.

Cato also broke industry records for CVE mitigation times and security responsiveness, developing and deploying 397 new IPS signatures in record time. For example, Cato protected customers against Log4J within just 17 hours, which continues to be a problem for many enterprises. 

Cato Invests in the Channel and Wins Accolades from Partners

Cato continues to invest in the channel at all levels. Frank Rauch joined as Global Channel Chief, headlining a series of channel promotions and hirings.

Cato partnered with Windstream Enterprise, a leading managed communications service provider, to deliver the first comprehensive managed SASE solution in North America. More recently, Windstream Enterprises launched its Cato-based SSE solution. Overall, contributing partners increased by 38% YoY and partner registered deals for new customers grew by 70% YoY.

Cato was also recognized for its channel excellence by leading Technology Service Distributors (TSDs). AVANT awarded Cato 'Top Supplier for SD-WAN', Intelisys awarded Cato the 'Top Sales Engineering Team', and Telarus recognized Cato for 'Top Supplier for Cybersecurity'.

Demand for Technical Training Soars with SASE Adoption

Interest in SASE/SSE fueled enrollment in Cato's hands-on training. Cato saw 3,500 new users take its partner training with a 36% increase in course completions. There was 106% growth in registrants for Cato's SSE/SASE training and 129% growth in course graduates.

To learn more about Cato, visit us at https://www.catonetworks.com

Supporting Quotes

Nick Fan, vice president of global sales, Cato Networks

"As enterprises across the Americas returned to their offices, Cato's ability to fluidly support all forms of work helped grow our business, particularly in larger enterprises. Large customer acquisition grew by 36% YoY in the Americas with most organizations tapping our ability to connect and secure users in and out of the office."

Luca Simonelli, vice president of EMEA, Cato Networks

"Despite the Ukraine war's impact on the economic climate, European businesses continued to invest in Cato. We added more customers in Q1 2022 than any other previous quarter, only to break that record again in Q4 2022."  

Graham Pearson, vice president of APJ, Cato Networks

"Within APJ, Cato saw 133% YoY growth as enterprise customer deployments within region doubled. Even in a tough market, Cato grew revenue and our customer base with manufacturing, in particular, seeing strong adoption across the region."  

Digital Assets 

• [Photo] Shlomo Kramer
• [Photo] Nick Fan
• [Photo] Luca Simonelli
• [Photo] Graham Pearson
• [Image] Cato Networks logo

Supporting Resources 

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About Cato

Cato provides the world's leading single-vendor SASE platform, converging Cato SD-WAN and a cloud-native security service edge, Cato SSE 360, into a global cloud service. Cato SASE Cloud optimizes and secures application access for all users and locations everywhere. Using Cato, customers easily replace costly and rigid legacy MPLS with modern network architecture based on SD-WAN, secure and optimize a hybrid workforce working from anywhere, and enable seamless cloud migration. Cato enforces granular access policies, protects users against threats, and prevents sensitive data loss, all easily managed from a single pane of glass. With Cato your business is ready for whatever's next.