by AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – South African technology services provider iOCO has expanded its managed cybersecurity portfolio through a collaboration with Cato Networks, bringing the company’s unified, cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform to enterprise customers.
The offering is designed to address the growing cybersecurity demands of South African organisations as cyber risks increase, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption accelerates and hybrid and cloud environments
become increasingly complex.
The collaboration builds on iOCO’s existing Zero Trust and managed cybersecurity operations, providing customers with support ranging from advisory and architecture services to migration, integration, security
operations and ongoing optimisation.
The arrangement is intended to enable organisations to access the required expertise and capabilities without having to build and staff the functions entirely in-house.
Cato’s platform combines networking and security in a single cloud-native environment, providing organisations with unified visibility, context and control over the use of AI tools and agents.
Gartner named Cato a Leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms for the third consecutive year. The service is aimed at small, medium and large enterprises with distributed and complex technology environments, including organisations with multiple branches or operating locations, geographically dispersed
users, hybrid or multi-cloud infrastructure, remote and mobile workforces, and legacy WAN or MPLS networks.
These organisations broadly match the profile of iOCO’s existing cybersecurity customer base.
“Cato provides capabilities specifically designed for managed SASE and security service partners, including multi-tenant management that allows service providers such as iOCO to manage multiple customer environments efficiently,” Neels Pretorius, Managed Security Executive at iOCO, said.
“Together, Cato and iOCO provide the right technology platform with the resources, operational capability, integration expertise and customer context required to turn that technology into a managed business
service.” The companies said the managed cybersecurity model was particularly relevant in a market facing shortages of cybersecurity skills and capacity.
A national cybersecurity survey conducted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) at the end of the 2023/24 financial year found that 63 percent of cybersecurity roles were partially or fully
unfilled.
“South Africa is an important market for us, and working with a provider that already runs security operations at enterprise scale means customers get the architecture and additional operational support and
expertise together,” Richard Tsalavoutas, Enterprise Sales Director for Africa at Cato Networks, said.
Tsalavoutas said AI security had become a growing concern for customers, with Cato incorporating AI security capabilities into its unified SASE Cloud offering to help enterprises govern AI use, protect AI applications and secure AI agents alongside other network interactions.
The collaboration forms part of iOCO’s broader strategy to expand its managed cybersecurity and network services as the SASE market continues to grow.
Gartner expects the global SASE market to exceed US$18 billion in 2026 and forecasts compound annual growth of 23 percent between 2025 and 2030, driven by hybrid workforces, increased multi-cloud adoption and the need to secure access to AI.
Pretorius said the collaboration would combine the Cato SASE Platform with iOCO’s security, networking, cloud and service-management capabilities, supporting customers from initial architecture and migration through to ongoing operations and optimisation.
The objective, he said, was to support organisations undertaking network and security transformation, as well as those seeking a cloud-first alternative to traditional WAN and security architectures.
“We have also seen a significant improvement in cybersecurity posture maturity for our customers adopting SASE, and we expect Cato Networks’ unified approach to accelerate the improvement in cyber-threat and risk
management,” Pretorius said.
iOCO, which is listed on the JSE, is one of South Africa’s largest technology services providers, offering services across the IT value chain, including software development, data and analytics, automation, cloud services, cybersecurity and proprietary applications.
The group employs more than 4 300 people, serves over 4 000 clients and operates in 10 countries.
– CAJ News
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