Cloud security and networking startup Netskope Inc. said today it’s launching a new software service called Netskope Endpoint SD-WAN in order to provide companies with secure and optimized access to endpoint devices in any location.

Founded in 2012, Netskope offers a Secure Access Service Edge or SASE platform that provides discovery, visibility and granular control of sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud apps. The company raised a bumper $401 million funding round earlier this year, and its flagship Intelligent Security Service Edge offers a converged, cloud-based service designed to transform security at the perimeter, helping companies stay ahead of cloud, data and network security challenges.

Netskope Endpoint SD-WAN is a software-defined wide-area network service built atop the company’s SASE platform. Generally available later this year, it will converge SD-WAN and Security Service Edge capabilities, allowing companies to simplify the connectivity of multiple distributed clients and edge devices while ensuring their high performance.

The company says it’s aiming to tackle the limitations of legacy networking architectures, notably the cumbersome SD-WAN infrastructures it says are ill-equipped to handle modern applications, resulting in poor user experiences, inconsistent policies and insufficient security. With Endpoint SD-WAN, users will benefit from the same kind of application experience and security when using their laptops or other devices as they would from within the corporate office.

“Organizations using outdated SD-WAN and security technology have realized they can’t patch their way to a better network, can’t prioritize or secure what they can’t easily discover, and shouldn’t rely on cumbersome SD-WAN architecture that wasn’t built for a highly distributed, cloud-centric workforce,” said Parag Thakore, Netskope’s senior vice president of borderless SD-WAN.

One of the main benefits of Endpoint SD-WAN is it enables artificial intelligence-driven operations, thereby simplifying application and device management with automated troubleshooting and insights into end-user experiences. It also delivers high-performance for voice, video and data applications, with fast and reliable connectivity and application-aware prioritization and dynamic path selection, remediating poor, last-mile performance issues.

User experiences also benefit from simultaneous connectivity to multiple public and private data centers. That eliminates the shortcomings of existing remote access virtual private networks with policy-based, direct-to-app access.

Finally, security is ensured with a unified architecture that extends context-aware zero trust policy controls across the entire network, providing every remote user, device and site with simple and secure access to any application environment.

According to International Data Corp. analyst Brandon Butler, enterprises are giving high priority to unified edge networking and security initiatives, as they want to provide secure, high-quality connectivity to their applications from any user and any device, and from any location. “Netskope Endpoint SD-WAN brings the benefits of SD-WAN and edge security tools together in an end-user and IT-friendly client format,” Butler said. “These tools can be powerful for enterprises and service providers alike to accelerate edge networking and security transformation.”

Image: Netskope