Netskope today extended its secure access service edge (SASE) platform to include digital experience management (DEM) capabilities enabled by machine learning algorithms and user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA).
Robert Arandjelovic senior director for global product and solutions marketing for Netskope, said these extensions to the Netskope One platform provide IT teams with more granular control over the end user experience.
At the core of that effort is Proactive Digital Experience Management Enterprise (Proactive DEM Enterprise), an extension to the Netskope SASE platform that monitors network traffic and the services being accessed using a packet capture tool dubbed Netskope Cloud TAP that is now generally available.
Armed with those insights, it then becomes simpler to collect the telemetry data needed to troubleshoot issues well beyond simply identifying, for example, an IP address associated with a device, said Arandjelovic.
At the core of that capability is a synthetic monitoring augmentation for real traffic tool that Netskope has integrated with real user monitoring (RUM) and synthetic transaction monitoring. That data is collected via monitoring agents, dubbed enterprise stations, that are installed in the IT environments that Netskope serves.
Additionally, Proactive DEM Enterprise makes use of machine learning algorithm to eliminate the need to hire threat researchers to identify command and control (C2) beacons that enable cybercriminals to evade detection by legacy security defenses. Instead, machine learning algorithms are able to analyze event logs to surface C2 beacons created by cybercriminal syndicates using frameworks such as Cobalt Strike, Mythic, and Sunburst.
Finally, Netskope is adding a Netskope Cloud Risk Exchange (CRE) capability that provides a consolidated business rule framework for continuously identifying and assessing risk signals via integration with platforms from Netskope partners such as CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Okta and Wiz.
In effect, Netskope is making a case for relying on a single vendor to provide both a cloud-based SASE platform along with DEM capabilities enabled by UEBA that will be delivered later this year. Previously, IT organizations would need to contract an additional vendor to access those capabilities.
Netskope claims to have more than 3,500 customers. It’s not clear how many of them might also decide to employ Proactive DEM Enterprise but the pressure to provide a consistent digital experience across a highly distributed computing environment is mounting. The challenge is that in the absence of an ability to collect meaningful telemetry data it’s difficult to assess the root cause of any given issue. Netskope, because it operates its own cloud, is able to collect and analyze telemetry data in a way that makes it possible to now pinpoint the root cause of issues affecting specific end users, said Arandjelovic.
It’s not clear exactly who within organizations is taking the lead when it comes to DEM, but as network and security operations continue to meld it’s only a matter of time before IT service management (ITSM) teams are held more accountable for it. After all, it’s typically an ITSM team that is tasked with discovering the root cause of any application issue. With the rise of DEM, however, it’s at least becoming easier to determine where in the increasingly complex IT environments the problem actually lies.
