Why CISOs are switching to SASE: Fewer vendors and better AI guardrails.

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Cato Network’s oversubscribed Series G Round last week shows that investors believe SASE is capable of driving significant convergence across its core and adjoining markets. Cato reported that Cato is now valued at $4.8 billion. ARR growth of 46% over the previous year (YoY) is projected for 2024. This will outpace the SASE market. Cato will use this funding to advance AI-driven Security, accelerate innovation in SASE, SD-WAN, zero trust network access, IoT/OT and SD-WAN and strengthen its global presence by scaling partner- and customer-facing team. Gartner predicts that the SASE market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26% by 2021. $28.5 billion in 2028

SASE will consolidate dozens point solutions into unified platforms. Gartner’s forecast for worldwide SASE shows that organizations are favoring a dual vendor approachandas well as a shift from a 4:1 to 2:1 ratio by 2028. This is another solid sign that consolidation is coming.

Cashing in on consolidation (#19659011) Consolidating tech stacks is not a novel approach to growth in enterprise software or cybersecurity. Cloud-native app protection platform ( CNAPP (– ) XDR platform sales have been consolidated for years. Cato’s investors base their investment thesis on a proven fact that CISOs always look for ways to reduce app numbers to improve visibility and lower costs. VentureBeat hears from CISOs often that complexity is the biggest enemy of security. Tool sprawl is preventing step-by-step efficiency gains. While CISOs are willing to consolidate and want greater simplicity, many have inherited extremely complex and expensive legacy technology stacks. These include a large number of tools and applications that manage networks and security at the same time. Nikesh Arora is the chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. He acknowledged that consolidations are having an impact on customers. They want consolidation as they are going through three of the largest transformations in history: A network security and cloud transformation and many are unaware that they are about to undergo a security operations centre transformation.

IBM and Palo Alto Networks conducted a study in collaboration to find that the average organization uses 83 different security products from 29 vendors. Majority of executives (52%) believe that complexity is the biggest obstacle to security operations. It can cost up 5% of revenue. It is common to have misconfigurations, which makes it difficult and time consuming to troubleshoot any security gaps. Consolidating cybersecurity reduces complexity, streamlines apps and improves efficiency.

Timing is everything when it comes to capitalizing in a market. Adversaries are notorious for mining legacy CVEs, and launching Living off the Land (LOTL) attacks are a way to breach and penetrate a network using standard tools. Due to the complexity of integrations between platforms, apps, and multiclouds, IT and security teams often are not aware of security gaps until an intrusion or breach occurs.

Enterprises are losing the ability to protect a growing number of ephemeral identifiers, including Kubernetes container and machine and human identies, as each endpoint and device gets assigned. Closing the gaps between infrastructure, app, cloud and identity security, as well as network security, fuels consolidation.

What CISOs say

Steward Health CISO Esmond Kayne advises: “Understand SASE is zero-trust at its core. We’re talking identity, authentication and access control. Start there, then build out.”

The legacy network architectures are notorious for their poor user experience and security gaps. According to Hughes’ 2025 State of Secure Network Access Report () shows that 45% of senior IT leaders and security leaders use SASE to consolidate SD WAN and security onto a single platform. The majority of organizations, 75%are pursuing vendor consolidating, up from just 29% three years ago. CISOs think consolidating their tech stacks can help them avoid missing security threats (57%), and reduce the need for qualified security specialists (56%).

Shlomo Krmer, Cato CEO, told VentureBeat that “SASE is a threat to all network security companies using appliances,” according to Shlomo. “The vast majority will be refactored to cloud services, which means SASE is [is going to be] about 80% of the current market.”

This shift is driven by a fundamental architectural transformation. SASE combines traditionally siloed network and security functions into one cloud-native service. It combines SD WAN with critical security features, including Secure Web Gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) & ZTNA. This allows it to enforce policies and protect data no matter where users or workloads are located.

Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant for single-vendor SASE positions Cato Networks, Palo Alto Networks, and Netskope as Leaders, reflecting their maturity, unified platforms and suitability for enterprise-wide deployments.

Why vendor consolidation is reshaping the enterprise security strategy

SASE from a single vendor has become a strategic consideration among security and infrastructure leaders. Gartner says that By 2027, 65% will be SD-WAN purchases that are part of a SASE deployment from a single vendor. This is up from 20% by 2024. This projected growth reflects the shift to unified platforms, which reduce policy fragmentation while improving visibility across devices, users and applications.

The company’s Magic Quadrant for Single Vendor SASE (19459077) by Gartner identified Cato Networks as the market leader based on their differentiated approach to convergence, user-experience and enterprise-scale deployment.

Cato’s Kramer said to VentureBeat that there is a limited window in which companies can avoid being caught up with fragmented architectural designs. The attackers move faster than integration teams. This is why convergence wins.”

The numbers back up Kramer’s warning. AI-enabled attackers are increasingly exploiting 200-millisecond gaps in tool handoffs between multivendor stacks. Every unmanaged connectivity becomes a potential risk surface.

SASE leaders compared.

Cato Networks Cato SASE Cloud Platform combines SD WAN, security edge (SSE), ZTNA and CASB capabilities in a unified platform. Gartner highlights Cato as having “above-average experience with customers compared to other vendors”and cites its “single UI” for a key strength. The report states that some capabilities, such as SaaS visibility or on-premises firewalling are still in their early stages of development. Gartner notes that the cost of deployment can be affected by bandwidth requirements. Cato is the most investor-validated pure play in the space, following its Series G and 46% growth in ARR.

Palo Alto Networks (): Panw has “strong security and networking features delivered via a single platform” and benefits from a “proven track record in this industry, as well as a large installed base of customers”Gartner notes. The company’s offerings are expensive when compared to those of other vendors. They also note that the new Strata Cloud Manager’s UI is less intuitive than before. Gartner gives Netskopehigh marks for its “strong feature breadth” and “depth” in networking and security, as well as “a strong customer experience” due to the vendor’s localization and data sovereignty. Gartner’s analysis also highlights Netskope’s operational complexity. “Administrators must use multiple consoles in order to access the full functionality” of the platform, Gartner says.

Evaluation of the leading SASE vendors.