Netskope unveils Cloud Exchange as a Managed Service

The company also announced a significant expansion of the solution’s Cloud Risk Exchange (CRE) module with the ability to share application risk scores and insights with key technology partners BitSight, SecurityScorecard, and ServiceNow—helping organizations obtain better visibility of the risks associated with their ecosystem of managed and unmanaged applications.

Improving the overall effectiveness and security posture of infrastructure in the cloud is critical for every organization. According to Foundry’s Cloud Computing Study 2022, nearly 70% of organizations have accelerated their cloud migration over the past year, and the proportion of organizations having most or all of their IT infrastructure in the cloud is expected to increase from 41% today to 63% in the next 18 months.

The byproduct of that migration is a growing attack surface in the cloud that needs efficient risk mitigation supported by skilled personnel, a challenge many organizations continue to grapple with amid a global cyber talent shortage. With Netskope’s new Cloud Exchange as a managed service offering, organizations can immediately leverage Cloud Exchange without having to dedicate staff to provision, deploy, and manage the platform. Security teams can then put intelligence and risk scoring into better context and experience faster time to incident resolution.

“As we continue to see a massive reliance on running more of their business in the cloud, organizations are seeking an easier pathway to ensure more efficiency while improving overall security posture,” said Andy Horwitz, Vice President of Business Development, Netskope. “Cloud Exchange as a managed service fills a significant need for resource-strapped organizations and puts them in a position to expeditiously operationalize Netskope’s valuable cloud intelligence across their security stack.”

To further benefit customers, Netskope is deepening its partnerships and integrations, and expanding Cloud Exchange’s CRE module to include application risk plugins from BitSight, SecurityScorecard, and ServiceNow to improve security risk understanding. The CRE module enables the exchange and normalization of risk scores between security solutions, enables adaptive policy controls to support zero trust principles, and can automatically trigger investigations using Cloud Ticket Orchestration (CTO) service tickets. With today’s expansions, CRE now evaluates security posture and application risk by comparing risk scores from different security applications and uses internal and external telemetry to gain insights into application risk using a unique Netskope Cloud Confidence Index (CCI).

“BitSight is excited to partner with Netskope to empower organizations to minimize risks associated with external parties in its ecosystem or supply chain,” said Anders Norremo, Vice President of Product, Third Party Risk Management, BitSight. “We enable customers to assess and continuously monitor risks throughout the vendor lifecycle, which ensures they meet organizational policy and risk tolerance requirements while improving overall security posture.”

“As the use of third-party vendors grows exponentially, organizations struggle to understand, manage, and minimize the risks associated with third party ecosystems. The SecurityScorecard and Netskope partnership, including our additional integration with Cloud Threat Exchange (CTE), helps customers overcome these challenges by giving real-time visibility into valuable risk scores about their vendor ecosystems,” said Alexander Rich, Vice President of Strategic Alliances at SecurityScorecard.

“In most cases, customers alone don't have access to the same information Netskope and its partners can provide in aggregate regarding the applications within their third party ecosystem,” said James Robinson, Deputy CISO, Netskope. “Netskope’s added provision of application risk scores, combined with the previously established assessment of user and device risks, offers an unmatched understanding of third-party cyber security risks. Netskope’s added capabilities and new partnerships prove its commitment to expanding the functionality and value of the Netskope Platform to meet the growing market demand.”