Advancements in technology are often driven by bold steps that break the existing mold and chart a different innovation course. With a unified approach to securing multiple enterprise security endpoints, that blueprint holds for Cato Networks Ltd. and its cloud-based network security platform.

“We said, ‘No, [chief information security officers] can’t have dozens and dozens of solutions anymore,'” said Shlomo Kramer (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of Cato Networks. “We’ll create a platform — a cloud platform  — that will simplify and converge all these point solutions into a single cloud service. Very much like AWS did for data centers, we want to do it for network security. That was completely contrarian at the time, and today it’s part of a whole movement of the cloud platforms.”

Kramer spoke with theCUBE’s Bob Laliberte for the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025 interview series, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed Cato’s network approach that challenges conventional wisdom, embraces a platform-first mindset and consistently pushes the boundaries of what’s possible.

Staying ahead in network security with a contrarian mindset

Shlomo’s philosophy of betting on unrecognized opportunities and leveraging them for industry-changing impact has earned him a CUBEd award in the “Most Innovative Tech Startup Leaders” category. His contributions helped ideate Cato Networks’ Secure Access Service Edge approach, which integrates networking and security into a single, scalable service. By consolidating disparate security functions into one seamless platform, the platform provides organizations with operational efficiency, agility and a streamlined user experience.

“I think that one of the most important things that we are doing, and what is actually key to our success, is the ‘how,'” Kramer said. “We bring a completely new ‘how’ to deliver these security capabilities in a way that is operationally efficient, in a way that is business agile, essentially digitally transforming the ‘how’ of security and networking.”

Rather than relying on a singular breakthrough, Cato’s journey has been a series of progressive advancements. Building a cloud-based security platform has meant overcoming major technical challenges — ensuring high reliability, scalability and performance. The company’s journey is similar to climbing successive hilltops, each victory revealing the next challenge to tackle, according to Kramer.

“Can we deliver a rock-solid five-nines network on the one hand, and … the most dynamic network security stack?” he said. “That required multiple points of progression and invention, and each one of them looked like, ‘Hey, we’ve made it,’ and then you have the next hilltop to climb, until we made it to the other pass before winter, as the expression says.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage for the Tech Innovation CUBEd Awards 2025 interview series: 

Photo: SiliconANGLE