SASE Category Creator Delivered a Breakout 2023 Fueled by Strong Customer Adoption, Ongoing Innovation, Channel Expansion, and Industry Recognition
Cato Networks, the leader in SASE, today announced strong 2023 business results including 59% revenue growth, the addition of more than 700 new enterprise customers, ongoing channel expansion, and continued innovation across Cato’s pioneering SASE platform.
“Nine years ago, we embarked on a mission to revolutionize the cybersecurity industry. Four years later, analysts coined what we had created as SASE and, today, we are the category leader,” said Shlomo Kramer, CEO and Co-Founder of Cato Networks. “But SASE is more than just a category; it’s a concept that is transforming how IT security is delivered. IT organizations globally, regardless of size, skills and resources recognize this, driving more and more to select Cato. The seamless, agile, and elegant experience our SASE platform creates empower every organization with powerful threat prevention, data protection, and timely incident detection and response. Put very simply, enterprises turn Cato on, and it works.”
“Enterprises of all sizes replaced expensive legacy infrastructure and security products with Cato in 2023,” continued Kramer. “New and existing Cato customers swapped out some of the biggest names in IT and networking security during the year, replacing them with our simple to manage yet powerful cloud-native SASE platform. Both resulted in very strong increases in annual recurring revenue and growth, and we see massive opportunities ahead.”
Business Highlights
- Grew GAAP* revenues 59% in 2023 compared to 2022, more than twice as fast as the 29% five-year CAGR forecast for the SASE market.
- Scaled to more than 2,200 customers with the rate of large customers adopting Cato far outpacing the company’s overall customer growth rate. New customer examples include Carlsberg Group, Häfele, and the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E Team.
- Expanded the global channel partner organization with the recruitment of new Cato leaders from AWS, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, ReliaQuest, and VMware.
- Secured partnerships with leading worldwide and multi-regional systems integrators, service providers, and managed service providers. For example: Alestra, BCN, Canon IT Solutions, CommandLink, EGATE Networks, KDDI America, Mosaic NetworX, SB C&S, Teki, Ubik, US Signal, Virtual Sprout, and Windstream Enterprise.
- Expanded its global workforce to approximately 1,000 employees across 30 countries.
- Raised $238M in equity investment at a $3B+ valuation, led by LightSpeed Venture Partners with participation from Adams Street Partners, Softbank Vision Fund 2, Sixty Degree Capital, and Singtel Innov8.
Cato Platform Highlights
- Activated 16 new points of presence (PoPs), growing Cato’s purpose-built SASE cloud network to nearly 90 PoP locations worldwide.
- Introduced Universal ZTNA to become the first SASE platform with ZTNA for remote and local users.
- Introduced AI/ML-powered inline protection to provide real-time identification of malicious domains Cato’s real-time algorithms detected nearly six times more malicious domains than reputation feeds alone. Cato also added DNS protection to secure that threat vector.
- Introduced Cato Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) to its SASE Cloud platform. With Cato RBI, enterprises can deliver RBI to all users worldwide in minutes, allowing them to access unclassified websites and applications, without compromising their security.
- Introduced Cato XDR, the world’s first SASE-based XDR, and Cato EPP. Together, Cato XDR and Cato EPP mark the inaugural expansion beyond the original SASE scope pioneered by Cato in 2016 and defined by industry analysts in 2019.
- Broke the SASE speed barrier (again) with 5 Gbps encrypted tunnels with all inspections enabled to sites and clouds, a record surpassing the capabilities of competitors, solidifying Cato’s position as a leader in the cloud-centric SASE category.
- Nearly doubled the number of applications identified by Cato to 10,200 applications (from 6,200) representing 96.78% of used enterprise applications.
- Added 5,260+ features and improvements to Cato SASE Cloud.
2023 Industry Accolades
- Cato Networks recognized as a Challenger in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Single-Vendor SASE
- Became the first single-vendor SASE vendor to be awarded the “Customer First” badge on Gartner Peers Insights with nearly triple the number of reviews** as our nearest competitor.
- Cato Networks named a leader in the Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust Edge Solutions Q3 2023 report that also recognized Cato as the “poster child” for ZTE and SASE.
- Frost & Sullivan recognized Cato as a growth and innovation leader in SASE and in the 2023 “Product Leadership Award” for its Cato SSE 360, a key component of the Cato SASE Cloud platform.
- Omdia ranked Cato a Leader in SASE with a robust PoP architecture and delivery of core networking and security services.
- Cato Networks named “Leader” and “Outperformer” by GigaOm in its Radar Report for Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and in the analyst firm’s Radar Report for SD-WAN.
- CRN® named Frank Rauch, Cato’s Global Channel Chief, to its exclusive 2023 Top 100 Executives list and its sub-category of Top 25 Channel Sales Leaders.
- Fortune named Cato Networks to the Cyber 60, a list of the fastest growing private security companies in the world.
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