Inside Netskope

It is early 2026, and the intersection of AI and security has moved past the "hype" phase into a high-stakes arms race. We are currently seeing a massive shift from simple chatbots to "Agentic AI"—autonomous systems that can take actions on your behalf—which has created entirely new categories of risk. There are different types of AI agents based on reasoning complexity, functional role, system architecture and maturity level. 1. Categorization by Reasoning StrategyThis defines the "cognitive" depth of the agent—how it processes information and makes decisions.Reflexive Agents: The simplest "Trigger-Action" bots. They follow "if-then" rules (e.g., a thermostat or a basic auto-responder). Chain-of-Thought (CoT) Agents: Use LLMs to break down a prompt into a linear sequence of steps before acting. Reasoning-First Agents (ReAct/Tree-of-Thought): These agents "think" before and during execution. They use patterns like ReAct (Reason + Act) to observe the result of an action and adjust their

In this guide, the Netskope Red Team outlines its strategic framework for identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities within AI/LLM ecosystems. Given the unique challenges and threat landscape associated with AI and LLM systems, a specialized methodology is essential to ensure the robustness, integrity, and confidentiality of our AI-driven features and services.Our methodology is designed to be comprehensive, covering the entire lifecycle of the AI/LLM application — from data ingestion and model training to deployment and continuous monitoring. 1. Phased Approach to AI Security TestingSecurity testing for AI applications is structured into four distinct phases, ensuring thorough coverage of all potential vulnerabilities. Phase Description Key Activities Phase 1: Design and Data Security Review Focuses on the foundational security elements before model development. Data Sanitization review, Data governance policy review, Threat Modeling for Produc

LLMs in enterprises have evolved extremely fast. What started as simple chatbots answering questions has now become AI agents that can perform real actions:  like reading files, querying databases. or sending messages in Slack.But early GenAI integrations were messy. If a developer wanted an AI model to connect to PostgreSQL, Slack, and the local filesystem, they had to build three separate connectors, each with its own authentication logic, API handling, data formatting, and error management.As companies scaled, this created a major problem: AI apps + more tools = exponentially more integrations.This is the classic N × M integration problem, and it quickly becomes impossible to maintain securely. To solve this, Anthropic introduced the Model Context Protocol (MCP) in late 2024.MCP is often described as the “USB-C for AI applications.” Instead of building custom connectors for every system, MCP provides a standard way for AI hosts to connect to external tools and data sources through M

The "Missing Chapter" Problem in Product RequirementsEvery new product feature begins with a Product Requirement Document (PRD)—the blueprint of what is to be built. But for security architects, reviewing these documents often feels like looking for a needle in a haystack, or worse, looking for a needle that isn't even there yet.The challenge isn't just finding security flaws; it's identifying architectural omissions before a single line of code is written. Engineers focus on functionality, often leaving security as an "implementation detail" rather than a design constraint. This leads to the "Missing Chapter" problem: PRDs that describe what works, but not how it remains secure. Reviewing these manually is mentally taxing. It requires a Principal-level mindset to look at a high-level plan and immediately spot that the lack of defined tenancy boundaries will likely lead to data leakage.I realized we didn't just need a vulnerability scanner; we needed a design partner. We needed a virtu

The Blank Page Problem in Security TestingEvery security assessment begins with a mountain of documentation and a crucial question: "Where would an attacker start?" For testers, translating functional specs, architectural diagrams, and API details into a concrete set of high-impact security tests is one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of the job. It's a process that relies heavily on experience, intuition, and a meticulous, almost paranoid, mindset.The "blank page" problem is real. You can spend hours sifting through documents, trying to connect the dots between a new feature and a potential vulnerability. It’s easy to get lost in the details, miss a subtle logic flaw, or simply run out of time and fall back on a generic checklist. I realized that what we needed wasn't just another tool, but a partner—a virtual expert that could do the heavy lifting of analysis and brainstorming, allowing testers to focus on verification and exploitation. This led me to create the Abus

How to Finally Solve the BYOD, Contractor, and M&A Access DilemmaAuthor: Stevan PierceDate: November 9, 2025 The perimeter is long gone, and the "unmanaged device" is the new CISO headache. How do you grant access to contractors, BYOD users, and new M&A employees without opening a Pandora's Box of data-leakage risk?The Netskope One Enterprise Browser is an approach that isolates the application, not the device. It’s a hardened, corporate-managed browser that integrates directly into the Netskope One platform, acting as a new enforcement point for your Security Service Edge (SSE).It is a self-contained corporate workspace that:Separates Work & Personal: Creates a distinct corporate profile on any device, managed or unmanaged, separating all corporate browsing activity and data. Provides Granular DLP: Enforces in-browser controls like copy, paste, print, and screenshots—stopping data leaks at the source. Delivers Agentless ZTNA: Bakes Netskope Private Access (NPA) capabilitie

Generative AI is rapidly reshaping how we work. However, unsanctioned AI tools can create significant blind spots, leading to the potential loss of sensitive data. Security leaders are left with the critical challenge of discovering how to embrace the benefits of AI, without exposing the organization to risk.We are going to cover the who, what, when, where, and how when it comes to discovering the use of generative AI in your organization and how to ensure its safe use with the enterprise. Rapidly Reshaping WorkThe rapid integration of Generative AI into our daily workflows marks a pivotal moment in enterprise technology. These powerful tools are no longer niche innovations but have become standard, expected features within the products and services we rely on, promising unprecedented gains in productivity and creativity. As we embrace this transformative wave, however, we must also recognize that this new frontier comes with inherent challenges. The very nature of AI tools, with their

“Another Security Assessment report to review? I’ll need coffee… and maybe another pair of eyes.” If you’ve ever found yourself buried in long, detailed Security Assessment reports, you know the pain.Pages of findings to go through. CVSS scores that may (or may not) be consistent. Missing screenshots or vague remediation steps. And the endless back-and-forth just to make the report business-ready.Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Manual report reviews are slow, error-prone, and rely heavily on the reviewer’s bandwidth and expertise. But what if we had a smart first-pass reviewer that flagged gaps, standardized structure, consistency in findings & recommendations and freed us to focus on the real contextual risk analysis?That’s exactly what we set out to build — an LLM-powered Report Reviewer. Why Report Reviews Matter More Than EverSecurity assessments don’t end when testing is complete. The report is what travels to:Engineering teams → to guide fixes. Executives and stakeholders →

How the Salesloft Drift breach highlights the urgent need for visibility into SaaS-to-SaaS connections.The recent Salesloft Drift security incident has impacted hundreds of organizations and serves as a powerful reminder of a growing threat: risk from third-party SaaS-to-SaaS integrations.  This attack exploited trusted connections between applications to access sensitive data, bypassing traditional security controls. The attack chain: How stolen tokens led to data exfiltrationThe incident began when a threat actor acquired OAuth and/or refresh tokens connected to Salesloft's Drift application. Drift, an AI chatbot, integrates deeply with platforms like Salesforce to log user interactions, leads, and meeting data. By using these stolen tokens, the attacker could effectively impersonate the legitimate Drift application. This allowed them to make authorized API calls to their victims' Salesforce instances, exfiltrating sensitive customer accounts and meeting information. The full extent

In case you missed the latest webinar in our Inside Netskope series—where Netskope experts show you how we protect our users, applications, and data using our own cloud-based architecture—a recording and recap of our recent session on “Managing Certificate Errors with Netskope Client” can be found below. Feel free to comment and continue the discussion! 📽 Watch on-demand 🍿 Q: Our recommendation from a Netskope implementation engineer was to keep developers in a steering configuration group that was only cloud apps, not all traffic. This doesn't seem like a feasible nor secure option. Is this recommended to most all customers?A: This is the initial approach to temporarily resolve the issue and keep things running. But as mentioned in the webinar, you will have to work with the developers and understand their traffic patterns to add the Netskope CA to tools to securely enable developers. Q: There is a script that is available on your Support site but it doesn't appear to be updated oft

In case you missed the latest webinar in our Inside Netskope series—where Netskope experts show you how we protect our users, applications, and data using our own cloud-based architecture—a recording and recap of our recent session on “Netskope Data Loss Prevention for Sentiment Analysis” can be found below. Feel free to comment and continue the discussion! 📽 Watch on-demand 🍿 Q: If we are creating keywords in English, will the dictionary be captured in all regional languages?A: No, I think it would just be for the keywords which are specified within the framework. So as far as regional languages, we'll have to check internally if we are supporting those. Q: When creating and deploying a DLP policy for AI, can you provide some tips on how to identify false positives in the Alerts?A: It involves extensive analysis of the incidence and forensic data because this is something that is a challenge for us as well whenever we implement a new DLP framework or a policy. So, we take a step by

Why Certificates and What is Cert-Pinning?In the internet age, it has become mandatory for all organisations and services which are hosted on the internet to rely on certificate based authentication and authorisation in order to protect the confidentiality and integrity of their data accessible and traversing over the internet. Certificates help prove your identity over the internet when communicating with parties/services which you have not interacted with before. As organisations and service providers started heavily relying on certificates for their security needs, they wanted to be sure that there was no chance of data leakage through techniques such as man-in-the-middle attacks. This led to the rise of adoption of the concepts like trusted certificate stores and certificate pinning.Certificate pinning is a security method which protects the service providers against man-in-the-middle attacks. The server/host is associated with a specific certificate or public key and the applicati

The Netskope One Enterprise Browser (NOEB) is a security solution designed to provide security access to sensitive applications and content in specific scenarios. The NOEB enables Netskope One SSE (Secure Service Edge) services such as Secure Web Gateway (SWG), CASB, as well as threat protection and DLP to be extended to cover corporate users with unmanaged/personal devices, as well as non-employee contractors. NOEB leverages the Netskope One platform, with a single policy engine and admin console. It enables organizations to secure access to sensitive applications and content when devices are unmanaged and also when Netskope client services are not running on devices. NOEB can be deployed through MDM solutions and supports automation for installation and profile management.  How is NOEB used by the customer zero team?At the customer zero team, we have been involved in designing, implementing and validating security use cases and protection strategies with NOEB. Some of the specific sc

Netskope provides a comprehensive data loss prevention (DLP) enforcement solution for cloud applications and public cloud resources that is ideal for addressing regulatory compliance requirements and protecting sensitive data in your enterprise. In addition to securing traditional confidential and sensitive data on the web, Netskope DLP can also be diversified for some creative data analysis. In this blog post, I would like to share one of the use cases that can be implemented with Netskope DLP, which is sentiment analysis of user queries in Gen AI web apps. Sentiment Analysis is a technique used to determine the overall sentiment expressed in a piece of text, such as a customer review, social media post, or email. Sentiment analysis relies heavily on positively and negatively used words to determine the overall sentiment of textual data. To learn more about this topic, read the following and register for our upcoming webinar—where we’ll cover this live in more detail and answer custom

In case you missed the latest webinar in our Inside Netskope series—where Netskope experts show you how we protect our users, applications, and data using our own cloud-based architecture—a recording and recap of our recent session on “Tracking Client Bypasses with Netskope Endpoint SD-WAN” can be found below. Feel free to comment and continue the discussion! 📽 Watch on-demand 🍿 Q: We are in the process of implementing BWAN functionality in OCC. I would love to understand how we can get rid of bypasses, specifically for cert pinned apps such as ZoomA: Well, there's a couple different things. One, in order to see those bypasses we would have to steer it one way, shape, form, or another. So you're either steering it with the NG SWG traditional Client, steering it with the BWAN client, or you're not steering it at all. If you don't steer it at all, you don't get that visibility or that functionality. So it's really who, what, when, where, and how on being able to monitor as well as use

In case you missed the latest webinar in our Inside Netskope series—where Netskope experts show you how we protect our users, applications, and data using our own cloud-based architecture—a recording and recap of our recent session on Client Troubleshooting can be found below. Feel free to comment and continue the discussion! 📽 Watch on-demand 🍿 Q: Is there a solution to force Netskope to switch multiple devices (>100) to a specific POP in case of issues with one POP?A: It is my understanding that our GSLB will detect those issues and reroute you to a new POP very quickly.  Q: How to troubleshoot issues with uninstallation process for older Netskope clients? (Netskope client unable to be removed)A: I recommend renaming the folder. After renaming it, you can uninstall the old client. Here is a great troubleshooting guide! Q: How would you go about troubleshooting a Microsoft Teams call performance issue to confirm if Netskope proxy is the root cause or its something else?A: For me,

Many organizations lack a structured and practical approach to enhance their cybersecurity maturity, resulting in inconsistent security practices, increased vulnerability to cyber threats, and difficulty in demonstrating compliance.Organizations often struggle to effectively improve their cybersecurity posture due to the absence of a clear, actionable roadmap. This lack of guidance leads to ad-hoc security measures, gaps in protection, and an inability to measure and track progress. "A Hands-On Guide to Improve Cybersecurity Maturity" addresses this problem by providing a practical framework, such as OpenSAMM, to systematically assess current security practices, identify weaknesses, and implement targeted improvements. This approach enables organizations to move beyond reactive security measures and proactively build a robust and mature cybersecurity program, ultimately reducing risks and enhancing overall security resilience. Understanding OWASP SAMMSAMM stands for Software Assurance

When I was asked to write an article on identifying, troubleshooting, and resolving common Netskope Client-related issues, I initially thought, "Sure! How hard can it be?" However, I quickly realized that troubleshooting is a broad and open-ended topic, varying significantly depending on the specific issues encountered.In this article, we will explore common Netskope Client problems, their root causes, and the best tools and methods to resolve them. These insights align with the key topics we will cover in our live presentation.Those topics are as follows:Understanding Netskope Client Architecture – How the client interacts with cloud security services and network components. Common Client Issues and Root Causes – Connectivity failures, latency, and policy misconfigurations. Troubleshooting Tools and Logs – Leveraging Netskope Client Debug Logs, Packet Captures, and Browser Developer Tools. Best Practices for Resolution – Steps to address common client-side issues and optimize deployme

In case you missed the latest webinar in our Inside Netskope series—where Netskope experts show you how we protect our users, applications, and data using our own cloud-based architecture—a recording and recap of our recent session on Operationalizing UEBA UCI Alerts can be found below. Feel free to comment and continue the discussion! 📽 Watch on-demand 🍿 Q: How can UEBA be used to detect when someone may be looking to leave the company. Can they automatically be added to a “watch list"?A: This is one of those cool ones. I've always thought UEBA has the potential to predict when someone's leaving the company before they've fully made up their mind.The two custom alerts that Uday talked about are some of the key features. For example, if those types of things start happening where a user is uploading to personal spaces instead of going to the corporate environment, which is not normal for them, this would definitely be a trigger. The automations that Uday talked about when the UCI sco

User and Entity Behavior Analytics, UEBA, is a platform used to spot anomalous actions through users behavior. This platform leverages algorithms and machine learning to continuously learn and evolve based on each behavior Our analytics program includes a wide variety of detections to help provide our analysts with the best visibility. Allowing our analyst to get more insight rather than focusing on alerts made in Security Information and Event Management (SIEMs) or Endpoint Detection and Response (EDRs), having the use of UEBA can fill in the void where visibility is lacking.  As the security team continues to integrate UEBA within the SOC, it's crucial to understand its functionality and how it operates. All of the information can be reached through Netskope’s user-interface (UI), but for more in-depth information you can check out the online reference information for it here. The benefits of Netskope using UEBA include detecting anomalous insider behavior, identifying unknown data m