More than a year of near-universal remote work has proven that many of us can reliably stay productive from anywhere — whether it be from home, co-working spaces or otherwise. Businesses have caught wind of this, and according to IDC, 60% of them will continue with remote work or implement a hybrid model even after they reopen their offices again. This calls for a paradigm shift in the way we conduct cybersecurity.

I am excited to share a major milestone for our company: the Lookout Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) has been named a Major Player in the 2021 IDC MarketScape Worldwide Cloud Security Gateways (CSG) Vendor Assessment (Doc # US48334521, November 2021). When Lookout acquired CipherCloud back in March 2021, the two companies came together with a mission to build a platform that provides intelligent Zero Trust access by leveraging in-depth telemetry from endpoint to cloud.

Like other organizations that are adopting a permanent hybrid or remote-first work environment, Lookout is using our Secure Access Services Edge (SASE) platform to implement cybersecurity that is not tied to the physical office spaces where employees used to work. SASE is a security framework defined by Gartner that has been adopted by many organizations to enable intelligent Zero-Trust access from anywhere without hindering productivity.

A few months ago, the largest U.S. pipeline operator, Colonial Pipeline, was forced to halt operations for nearly a week due to a ransomware attack. While it ultimately didn’t stop consumers from buying gasoline, the incident forced the company to pay $4.4 million in ransom payment and illustrated just how vulnerable energy organizations are to cyberattacks.