Gartner 2020 CASB Magic Quadrant - Visionary Performance

According to most definitions, attaining the label of “visionary” indicates that you have arrived as someone who can actively “envision the future”; by some observations it even implies that you may be one having “unusual foresight and imagination”.

In the world of advanced cloud security and data protection solutions – an industry marked by constant innovation – I’d venture that achieving this recognition means that you’re delivering something pretty special in the form of your solutions.

That’s why we’re extremely pleased to note that the Lookout CASB platform has successfully captured the title of “Visionary” from industry analysts Gartner in the 2020 iteration of its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers. In a report crowded with some of the largest technology and cyber platform providers in the world, gaining this level of recognition feels significant. The fact that CipherCloud, recently acquired by Lookout in March 2021, has done so for the third year running makes the accomplishment that much more rewarding.

But what does placement in this annual market overview report really mean?

For starters Gartner calls out every company cited in the “MQ” for its ability to execute and its completeness of vision. Once again we find the “V” word – pinpointing just how critical it is for involved providers to understand the evolving landscape. Execution is obviously everything in business – this is why anyone gaining coverage in one of these critiques should be proud that they are growing a business in a world where some of the brightest ideas never make it into salable products.

Beyond these foundational elements, Gartner goes into detail about each vendor’s particular strengths. In our case, we love that the analysts consistently underline the ability of CASB+ to deliver powerful data confidentiality within SaaS applications. CipherCloud, now a part of Lookout Security, has always been focused on data protection and we maintain that this is the leading driver of CASB adoption today as organizations seek to protect all their sensitive information moving across cloud applications and infrastructure.

Further, Gartner CASB MQ authors Craig Lawson and Steve Riley highlight our solution’s uncluttered interface, ease of use and ability to rapidly create meaningful data security policies as hallmarks of its success. These characteristics are hugely important as they enable customers to deploy and operate CASB in an efficient manner.

Perhaps the most exciting element of the 2020 MQ for Lookout is Gartner’s recognition of our continued innovation and expanding product roadmap over the last year – pushing the platform’s capabilities into key CASB market adjacencies including Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), along with adding dedicated integrations for SD-WAN and web application firewall solutions. To us, as important as it is to perform against the “four pillars” of CASB functionality – visibility, data protection, threat prevention and compliance – we’re also constantly evolving the solution to help our customers stay ahead of the curve. We’re watching eagerly as Gartner develops its emerging SASE methodology as it directly supports the technical path that Lookout has been focused on for many years.

As always, we are humbled and extremely grateful when objective third parties distinguish our software – the result of many years of hard work and dedication – as a solution that today’s buyers should closely consider when seeking out options to protect their users, assets and data, especially sensitive information that relates to their customers, partners and employees.