Netskope’s SASE upgrade targets user experience, network forensics

The PDEM feature is integrated into the Netskope agent on the user’s device. This allows it to gather detailed telemetry data, including: 

• Device-level metrics like CPU, memory and disk usage
• Network performance metrics like round-trip time (RTT) and packet loss
• Visibility into each “hop” in the network path, from the user’s device to the internet and cloud applications

Plaza emphasized that the hop-by-hop inspection provides a comprehensive view of the user’s experience, even when they are outside the corporate network. He also stressed that Netskope is taking a proactive approach. Rather than just monitoring for issues and alerting, PDEM is designed to proactively identify and resolve problems before users even notice them. For example, if a user is experiencing slow performance due to high CPU usage on their laptop or poor Wi-Fi signal, PDEM can detect these underlying issues and provide guidance to the user or IT help desk on how to resolve them. 

Going a step further, as part of a complete SASE architecture, Netskope can also manage the experience. Plaza noted that Netskope has its own private security cloud, and the company owns and manages its interconnection strategy, meaning it owns the network connectivity that goes to the various applications.

“We own the interconnection strategy, meaning I own the BGP relationship between Netskope and Microsoft, Netskope and Google, Netskope and Workday,” Plaza said. “We monitor that using our digital experience management platform.”

 If Netskope identifies a problem, let’s say, in the central US going to Gmail for some reason, the company can proactively inject BGP routing prioritization changes to the network to go around those problems.

Cloud Tap for forensics analysis 

In addition to the PDEM capabilities, Netskope introduced its Cloud Tap feature, which addresses the need for full packet capture and forensics analysis in a cloud-centric environment.