The 20 Coolest Network Security Companies Of 2024: The Security 100

From vendors offering SASE platforms to those focused on protecting IoT and connected devices, here’s a look at 20 key network security companies.

As anyone paying attention will know, the erosion of the corporate network firewall has led to a massive shift in the network security market over the past decade — particularly since the adoption of remote and hybrid models of work among many employers. The result has been an acceleration in the embrace of the secure access service edge (SASE) model by many vendors that had formerly specialized in next-generation firewalls (such as Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Cisco).

Meanwhile, other vendors that had gotten their start in SD-WAN (such as Cato Networks) have now become major players in SASE as well. SASE integrates security components such as zero trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG) and cloud access security broker (CASB) capabilities with SD-WAN to enable secure remote access to applications, data and other corporate resources.

Outside of SASE, other major vendors helping to protect extended modern networks — often including IoT and operational technology (OT) systems — include Armis, Claroty, Dragos and Forescout.

From vendors offering SASE platforms to those focused on protecting IoT and connected devices, here’s a look at the 20 network security companies that made our Security 100 for 2024.

Armis

Yevgeny Dibrov

Co-Founder, CEO

Armis’ cyber exposure management platform Centrix, integrated a number of new GenAI capabilities to enable natural language queries. The Armis Centrix platform now offers the ability to use natural language to query the company’s asset intelligence engine about security issues affecting devices, as well as vulnerabilities and threats.

Cato Networks

Shlomo Kramer

Co-Founder, CEO

With its SASE Cloud platform bringing together Cato SDWAN with Cato SSE 360, Cato Networks introduced enhancements including extending its zero-trust network access technology to users within office environments. The extension aims to protect organizations against the growing risk of insider threats, according to the company.

Check Point Software

Technologies

Gil Shwed

Founder, CEO Check Point added a key piece to its SASE platform with the debut of its in-house SDWAN offering, enabling the company’s Quantum Gateways platform to provide strong security as well as optimal performance for internet and network connections. Meanwhile, Check Point recently acquired Perimeter 81 for $490 million.

Cisco Systems

Chuck Robbins

Chair, CEO

While continuing to build out its traditional network security offerings, Cisco has also been extending its secure access service edge platform to support additional parts of its portfolio, adding support for Cisco SD-WAN (Viptela) and Meraki SD-WAN. Cisco also unveiled its planned $28 billion acquisition of security-focused data platform Splunk.

Claroty

Yaniv Vardi

CEO

Claroty updated its apabilities for vulnerability and risk management related to cyber-physical systems. The recently added features include a new scoring framework to better quantify cyber risk and more efficient workflows for vulnerability prioritization, as well as support for uploading of software bill of materials files.

Corelight

Brian Dye

CEO

New product introductions from Corelight included expanded AI-powered capabilities for detection of attacks and enrichment of security data with greater context. Corelight also added new techniques for deep learning aimed at identification of malicious domains and URLs.

Dragos

Robert M. Lee

Co-Founder, CEO

Dragos debuted an expanded partnership with CrowdStrike, which has brought two additional integrations for data sharing across the major security vendors. New capabilities included the ability for the Dragos Platform to leverage data from CrowdStrike’s Falcon Insight for IoT offering.

ExtraHop

Greg Clark

CEO

Network detection and response company ExtraHop recently open-sourced its sizable machine learning data set. The company’s strategy to make its 16-million-row data set available as open source is part of an effort to combat security threats such as domain-generated algorithms.

Forescout

Barry Mainz

CEO

Forescout launched its Risk and Exposure Management offering, which collates all sources of connected asset data and then generates a risk score. The offering enables enhanced discovery and classification of devices while also improving awareness of an organization’s cyberrisk posture.

Fortinet

Ken Xie

Founder, Chairman, CEO

Fortinet unveiled secure access service edge updates to better enable distributed work through its FortiSASE platform, including upgrades to the integration with FortiGate Secure Edge. It also rolled out the first firewall to ship with its fifth-generation security processing unit technology, with the new FortiGate 90G.

Gigamon

Shane Buckley

President, CEO

Gigagom updated its Deep Observability Pipeline platform with new Precryption technology to provide better visibility across encrypted traffic. The updates in the Giga-VUE 6.4 software release are aimed at enabling improved detection of threats that attempt to hide behind encryption.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Antonio Neri

President, CEO

HPE acquired Axis Security in a move to boost its secure access service edge offering. The company aims to offer the “most comprehensive” offering in SASE by combining security service edge technology from Axis with the HPE Aruba networking platform, including SD-WAN from the acquisition of Silver Peak.

Illumio

Andrew Rubin

Co-Founder, CEO

Illumio expanded its zero trust segmentation Portfolio with the introduction of CloudSecure, focused on enabling containment of attacks in multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Key capabilities include visualization of cloud workload connectivity, proactive application of segmentation controls and adaptable segmentation policies.

Infoblox

Scott Harrell

President, CEO

Recent updates from DNS security company Infoblox included the introduction of Lookalike Domain Monitoring, focused on identification of sites that attempt to impersonate corporate brands. Other updates have included the launch of threat intelligence data feeds related to emerging threats.

Ivanti

Jeff Abbott

CEO

Key updates from Ivanti have included a partnership with mobile security firm Lookout, which has brought improved mobile threat defense to the Ivanti Neurons platform. The integration enables proactive protection against threats that target mobile devices as well as improved controls needed to meet compliance obligations.

Juniper Networks

Rami Rahim

CEO

Juniper Networks -- which has reached a deal to be acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise for $14 billion—recently expanded its Connected Security portfolio, adding a new Connected Security Distributed Services Architecture that provides improved flexibility.

Palo Alto Networks

Nikesh Arora

Chairman, CEO

Palo Alto Networks extended its next-gen firewall technology to Microsoft Azure with the introduction of Cloud NGFW for Azure. For its secure access service edge platform, Prisma SASE, Palo Alto Networks unveiled new features including AIOps, which is natively integrated to bring greater automation to IT operations.

SonicWall

Bob VanKirk

President, CEO

SonicWall introduced monthly firewall security services bundles for MSSPs and MSPs, enabling a simplified purchasing process. The company also expanded its secure access service edge platform with the acquisition of Banyan Security, a security service edge company focused on enabling adoption of a zero trust posture.

Vectra AI

Hitesh Sheth

President, CEO

Vectra AI debuted an attack detection and response platform that utilizes patented AI-powered technology—dubbed Attack Signal Intelligence—to arm security operations teams with enhanced prioritization of threats. It includes analysis of attacker behavior across endpoints, public cloud, identity, SaaS and networks.

WatchGuard Technologies

Prakash Panjwani

CEO

WatchGuard rolled out a new line of firewalls in its Firebox portfolio aimed at providing improved performance for distributed and remote businesses. It also unveiled the expansion of its network detection and response capabilities through the acquisition of CyGlass Technology Services.