Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform comparison

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 24, 2024

We compared Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform and Cato Networks across several parameters based on our user reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

Initial Setup: The user reviews for Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform mention varying durations for deployment and setup, ranging from three months for deployment and an additional week for setup to a week for both. Cato Networks users emphasized the importance of considering the context in which terms like deployment, setup, and implementation are used.

Valuable Features: Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform is known for its robust security measures, seamless integration with existing systems, advanced analytics, simplicity of use, and reliable customer support. Cato Networks is praised for its excellent network performance and reliability, ease of implementation and management, and comprehensive security features.

Room For Improvement: Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform could benefit from improvements in performance, reliability, and user interface. Cato Networks needs enhancements in network speed and stability, GUI for easier navigation, occasional connectivity issues, faster support response times, and more advanced customization options.

Setup Cost: Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform is affordable and offers good value for money, with transparent and flexible licensing terms. Users have also found the cost of Cato Networks to be reasonable, with appreciated flexibility in licensing options.

ROI: Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform offers increased network security, simplified management, improved performance, and cost savings. Cato Networks provides increased efficiency, cost savings, improved network performance, ease of implementation, and secure connectivity across multiple locations. Both platforms offer valuable investment opportunities for businesses.

Customer Service: Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform is praised for its commendable customer service, with top-notch assistance and guidance. Cato Networks also provides highly satisfactory customer service, with customers appreciating the responsiveness and helpfulness of the support team.

Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform is preferred over Cato Networks. This choice is based on user feedback that highlights Versa's robust security measures, advanced analytics capabilities, and seamless integration with existing systems. Versa excels in customer service and support, offering top-notch assistance and guidance to ensure a seamless experience for customers. Users have mentioned that Cato Networks could benefit from enhancements in terms of performance, reliability, user interface, and customization options.

To learn more, read our detailed Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform Report (Updated: May 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

May 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Lookout

Featured Reviews

reviewer2173356

Manager of Product Development Team at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees

May 23, 2023

User-focused design makes it easy to understand, and operations running in background provide peace of mind

In any of the discussions that we've had with their technical teams, they have been very knowledgeable and helpful in certain aspects. They have a lot of partnerships, from what we can tell, and that does start to make the waters a little bit murky. They have third parties that provide functionality and there is a concern that we're going to be bounced around between five different groups to get help for a problem. If you describe it incorrectly, all of a sudden you're with a group that can't help you and they have to forward you to another group. They have been very responsive and super helpful when it comes to any of the issues we've identified. Still, that concern about being bounced around between multiple partners detracts from the overall experience.

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reviewer1355865

IT Manager / Project Coordinator at a healthcare company with 201-500 employees

Oct 15, 2020

Integrates well with everything, technical support is very helpful, and it is all managed from a single pane of glass

I would like to see better integration with identity providers. Right now, they have Azure and they have Okta. For directory synchronization they use LDAP, and it would be better if they moved away from this. My understanding is that they are already working on removing LDAP completely and using web-based authentication for the VPN users and other users. This is not something that is critical for me. I just set up the main services in Azure and use that. This is okay because we don't have a lot of remote users, perhaps 10 or 20 at the maximum, with VPN access. This may change in the future.

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Hassam_Uddin

Director of Pre-Sales at OmniClouds UAE

Dec 22, 2022

A helpful solution to lower our costs with valuable security features

We mainly implement this solution for SD-WAN service, a next-generation firewall, and UTM It has improved our organization because we use SD-WAN for optimizing connectivity, and it has helped lower our costs by replacing legacy WAN links with a modern WAN architecture. The granularity when it…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."

"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."

"The solution is stable."

"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."

"It is a stable solution...it is a scalable solution."

"I haven't had any trouble, and practically forget that I'm using it."

"We appreciate the optimization and acceleration of the performance of SDP users."

"It's a cloud-based solution that integrates well with everything."

"The product is efficient and easy to use."

"Cato offers all the functionality found in other solution. The life cycle management is always very stable."

"It's a pretty straightforward solution."

"When I first encountered Cato, I didn't know how to use it, but after a week of training, I could onboard our systems to it, so the solution was easy to learn and navigate."

More Cato SASE Cloud Platform pros

"Versa is a good centralized solution, where you're setting up your infrastructure in a data center type thing."

"The solution is stable and suitable."

"The division of Control Plane and Data Plane is most valuable. It can be deployed anywhere, and you can control it and configure it from anywhere. This is one of the good features of this solution."

"The initial setup is simple."

"The necessary enhancement pertains to the controller segment, specifically addressing the issue of frequent flapping when a link is left. In the case of Versa Unified, if a link experiences frequent flapping within an entire branch, it triggers instability. Hence, it is imperative that the overall routing system is not contingent solely upon the active dial branches."

"The flexibility is a great feature."

"The product has a dynamic VPN feature for SD-WAN."

"There are great security and ops features without the need for having a different box for security."

More Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform pros

Cons

"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"

"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."

"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."

"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."

"I am located in South Korea, and I can say that most people here have no idea about Cato Networks. I think Cato Networks should promote its network services in various countries."

"We would like the product to continue to improve its security."

"For a packaged solution, needing external intervention or a system integrator to get other features not offered by Cato Networks could be an area for improvement. Cato Networks does what it's meant to do and is even overstretching capabilities when introducing new features. The product can only have very few features added on top of what its currently doing. Managed service providers can deliver the extra features you'd need. It's a set of managed services, and what Cato Networks does is very comprehensive. So, for the time being, when the actual incarnation of the SASE solution is deployed, Cato Networks is a very effective product. Naturally, technology will evolve, so everybody knows that in three, four, or five years, there will be a new kid on the block, a new game. Still, at the moment, Cato Networks only needs to improve a little regarding SASE delivery. The product is doing very well, but one feature the Cato Networks team is doing right is preparing for the future through deploying the SSE 360, so the security service is at that edge. It's an excellent strategy to prepare for the future. SSE 360 is what Cato Networks should invest in the most to keep prospering."

"They can't do one-to-one NAT (Network Address Translation) in AP (their access point), and that is something that Palo Alto can do."

"The tool needs to be more granular. Its reports are not very in-depth."

"The different languages in the user interface should be enhanced."

"A little tweaking or improvement of the UI in terms of logging when troubleshooting would be an improvement because it's very detailed."

"They should add more sophisticated security features. It should also be integrated into the cloud."

More Cato SASE Cloud Platform cons

"The interface could be simpler."

"The support needs to be improved."

"SASE is the next big thing that is coming up, and it needs to be developed in Versa. This is the only thing that needs to be adapted very quickly by Versa. With the pandemic going on, I would like to see more features for working from home. They have launched Versa Secure Access (VSA), but it is currently immature. They need to tighten it up for work from home and SD-WAN concept."

"The VPN feature is relatively new. It came out two releases ago, and they're still fixing that up."

"The stability of FlexVNF's controller and devices could be improved."

"The solution lacks a mobile version where small, manageable platforms can be developed."

"We are thinking about how to make customers consolidate the loads to an SD-WAN network so that the customers can have bigger chunk from the SD-WAN side so that customers can have critical data be transferred with NPS VPN and non-critical data or some labeled traffic can be transferred by the SD-WAN network. I think it's a very important direction for digital transformation."

"Certainly, there are areas that require enhancement, and the current focus is on improvements. Presently, I believe that the emphasis should be on enhancing user interface (UI) features, particularly over end devices. The issue arises when attempting to log in to Versa from other devices, as the UI is not device-specific. Consequently, guiding someone to log in to Versa antivirus becomes challenging. Despite the absence of issues on the website, the lack of a login scope impedes graphical representation of user data or databases. Since work databases support only a limited range of features, I recommend augmenting features for end devices to address these limitations."

More Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs are good. Prisma has much more options and support for security, but it has a higher cost. For example, Lookout costs 2/3rd of Prisma's licensing price."

"The pricing is fair; it's comparable to our previous solution, and we carried out multiple POCs and POVs (proof of value). The product is worth the money we pay for it."

"In terms of feature performance versus cost, they're a good value."

"Lookout is definitely on the lower end when it comes to price point and that seems to be the only differentiator. The technology is in place in this space and it's really about who is coming in at the better price point now."

"The price is not an issue for us, as it is priced more competitively than some other vendors."

"You pay yearly based on the speed of your network. If you increase the speed of your network, you increase the cost for your throughput. It is by bandwidth for the most part and then licenses for VPN. There is some per-seat licensing for VPN access, but the majority of it is minimal. It is like $30 a year per client. The rest is based on how much bandwidth you'll use. You pay for that upfront for the year, and if you have to increase it, you increase it, and then they let you send more data through. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"The product is very competitively priced, and that's compelling. They don't charge the customer based on the operational cost like other brands such as Palo Alto. Cato has its own fully-fledged cloud, with their own data centers, equipment, and so on, which is an advantage. I rate the solution five out of five for affordability."

"Cato Networks seems more expensive than Cisco Meraki."

"Cato Networks is an expensive product, but it works out of the box, so that's the usual trade-off, make versus buy. If you decide to buy a product that doesn't require much programming, then you'd want to go for Cato Networks, which will work naturally, and immediately without any complex setup. However, the product is a little bit more expensive than the competitors. On a scale of one to five, I'd rate the pricing for Cato Networks as four."

"The solution is reasonably priced since Cato Networks provides features like SASE and monitoring, which I am very happy with currently."

"If you compare with VeloCloud, the price is the same or even cheaper."

"The pricing of this solution depends on what you need. It is based on bandwidth."

More Cato SASE Cloud Platform pricing and cost advice

"I find Versa a little more expensive than VMware in terms of remote access and secure web gateway elements."

"It is not very expensive because of the white box support. Its hardware is much cheaper than other products. With the support for x86 and white box, it is one of the most cost-effective platforms that are currently available."

"It is neither cheap nor expensive. I rate the pricing a five out of ten on a scale where one is cheap and ten is expensive."

"Price wise, it's more expensive than is the competition. I would give pricing a rating of three out of five."

"The price is expensive but it makes sense for the market."

"We provide subscriptions for our customers on a yearly, not monthly, basis."

"While I cannot provide too much commentary on the price, I feel it to be fair for the moment."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

28%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Lookout?

The solution is stable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lookout?

The licensing costs are good. Prisma has much more options and support for security, but it has a higher cost. For ex...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Lookout?

The solution could improve identity integration as well. Zero trust, it's a good start as a zero-trust solution. More...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cato Networks?

The solution is a simple WAN solution. We've onboarded the socket on the Cato platform, and it provides connectivity....

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cato Networks?

We use the solution as a WAN, but we plan to optimize it by incorporating security features like zero trust for enhan...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Cato Networks?

In terms of security, we are planning to deploy more features and our current usage is primarily focused on branch ne...

See all answers

What do you like most about Versa FlexVNF?

Versa is a good centralized solution, where you're setting up your infrastructure in a data center type thing.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Versa FlexVNF?

Both Versa and VMware are cheap in terms of the router. I find Versa a little more expensive than VMware in terms of ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Versa FlexVNF?

We've had the odd occasional stability issue with software upgrades, etcetera. They don't support certain other third...

See all answers

Comparisons

Check Point Harmony Mobile vs Lookout

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Lookout

Compared 14% of the time

Zimperium vs Lookout

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Lookout

Compared 10% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs Lookout

Compared 7% of the time

More Lookout Competitors

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange vs Cato SASE Cloud Platform

Compared 17% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cato SASE Cloud Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco SD-WAN vs Cato SASE Cloud Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Cato SASE Cloud Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Cato SASE Cloud Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Cato SASE Cloud Platform Competitors

Cisco SD-WAN vs Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

Compared 29% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

Compared 15% of the time

VMware SD-WAN vs Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Meraki SD-WAN vs Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange vs Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Lookout

June 2024

Download Lookout product report

Buyer's Guide

Cato SASE Cloud Platform

June 2024

Download Cato SASE Cloud Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

May 2024

Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform report

Download Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform product report

Also Known As

CipherCloud

Cato Networks

Versa FlexVNF, FlexVNF, Versa Titan

Learn More

Lookout

Cato Networks

Versa Networks

Overview

Lookout is a well-established and powerful secure web gateway (SWG) solution that protects more than 200 million users from threats that can result from the penetration of unsecured web traffic into their networks. Lookout is designed to enable organizations to work remotely while maintaining a tight blanket of security over their confidential business data. It provides administrators with security that extends from their endpoints to the cloud service that they are using to run their organization’s network.

Users of Lookout are able to proactively detect threats and keep themselves secure from a field of threats that constantly evolves. IT teams can protect their organizations without having to rely on any other security solutions. This singular solution can run on multiple kinds of mobile devices. The privacy of individuals is preserved while keeping compliance rules intact. Additionally, users gain access to a number of tools that enable them to prevent security breaches from taking place.

Lookout Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by deploying Lookout include:

Ease of deployment. Lookout is a solution whose design makes it easy for users to deploy it. It provides users with simple, step-by-step instructions that remove the need for organizations to devote extensive amounts of time to make sure that it is properly set up. Anyone can quickly set up the solution without undergoing technical training.

Built-in support. Users of the Lookout application have access to built-in demos that can teach them how to use various solution features. Instead of spending time trying to figure out the application, users can watch the demo that is most relevant to them and see for themselves how that particular feature is used.

Easy-to-use user interface. Lookout’s user interface is laid out in an intuitive way that makes it easy for administrators to navigate. This interface is present in both the mobile and desktop versions of this solution.

Settings customization. Lookout has a built-in settings customization menu. This makes it possible for administrators to easily customize their settings so that they best conform to their needs.

Lookout Features

Activity monitoring and activity tracking. Lookout’s activity monitoring and activity tracking capabilities enable users to keep a close eye on the activities that are taking place in their networks. IT teams and administrators have the ability to watch their networks for any unusual activity. These features ensure that organizations can keep ahead of any potential threats. They provide the kinds of insights and warnings that make the jobs of those IT teams and administrators much easier and more streamlined.

Encryption. Organizations that employ Lookout can encrypt their networks and keep crucial business data from being read by unauthorized parties. This feature keeps the secrets organizations are trying to keep out of the wrong hands.

Anti-virus tools. Lookout provides users with tools to block threats from harming their networks. These tools can successfully block 99.6 percent of threats without raising false alarms.

Cato Networks is a leading SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform, combining SD-WAN and network security to obtain a cloud-native service. Cato Networks optimizes and secures application access for users and identities. The platform delivers a next-generation secure networking architecture that minimizes legacy IT infrastructures’ complexity, costs, and risks. The goal of Cato Suite is to connect any user to any application securely and optimally.

Cato Suite runs on a private global network of more than 65 PoPs (points of presence) connected via SLA-backed network providers. The service can connect branches, data centers, users, and clouds. Cato can be deployed in stages to augment legacy network services.

Cato Suite delivers end-to-end route optimization for WAN and cloud traffic. The architecture is self-healing, enabling a high service uptime.

Cato Features

Cato Cloud has a global backbone to deliver a reliable, global network. Here are some key SD-WAN features of Cato Cloud.

Optimizes traffic flows: The Cato Suite can individually optimize traffic flows in the last mile - from the customer’s location to the point of presence, and also between PoPs. This feature eliminates the need for internet providers to hand off traffic to each other, avoiding the resulting latency and congestion.
Controls and manages bandwidth: The software-defined overlay is encrypted across the entire cloud infrastructure. This overlay uses application-aware routing, analyzing latency and loss data to choose the best route according to network conditions. These features, like protocol priority marking, enable the system to ensure the performance of real-time applications.
Delivers redundancy and failover: By connecting the points of presence with multiple Tier-1 IPs, Cato builds the redundancy needed to ensure security and highly available service.
Cloud-native: Cato is built as a scalable, resilient, and elastic cloud service.
Converged: The platform converges SD-WAN and network security into a single infrastructure framework.
Secures all edges: Cato Network can secure and optimize traffic from all users, locations, applications, and clouds.

What challenges does Cato Network solve?

Migration to SD-WAN

MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) networks are usually expensive and limited in their capacity. Cato simplifies migrating to a faster, higher-capacity internet and SASE cloud. Cato SD-WAN appliances enable customers to improve usable capacity and resiliency.

Global connectivity optimization

Customers who suffer from the challenge of high latency and network inconsistency can use Cato to deliver a consistent connection and user experience to access on-premises and cloud applications.

Securing branch internet access

Cato’s complete network security stack connects all branch locations to the Cato cloud, therefore protecting all traffic, both internet-bound and WAN, with enterprise-grade, cloud-based security services. This capability avoids having to backhaul internet traffic to a data center or hub or having to implement stand-alone cloud security solutions.

Cloud acceleration and control

Organizations using Cato notice an acceleration of cloud traffic. Cato achieves this by routing all traffic from the edges to the PoP closest to the data center. Because of the close distance between the two, the latency is near zero.

Reviews from Real Users

An IT manager/project coordinator at a healthcare company says that “[Cato is] a cloud-based solution that integrates well with everything. They are the classic SaaS solution.”

Yeong-Gi L., a network engineer at Snetsystems, notes that “The solution is very stable. The scalability is quite good. Technical support was always helpful and responsive. The integration capabilities are not a problem at all.”

"The most valuable feature is that it also works as a next-gen firewall because it has security features," says Lorenzo S., senior solutions consultant Lead at MDI.

The Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform is a comprehensive solution that provides secure access to cloud applications and services. It combines networking and security functions into a single platform, making it easier for organizations to manage their network infrastructure. The platform includes features such as SD-WAN, VPN, firewall, web filtering, and more. It also offers advanced security capabilities such as intrusion prevention, malware protection, and threat intelligence. With the Versa SASE Platform, organizations can ensure secure access to their cloud applications and services from any location, while also reducing costs and simplifying network management.

Sample Customers

Paysafe, AdRoll, Pet Lovers Centre, Arlington Orthopedics, Humphreys & Partners Architects

CenturyLink, RCN Business, Colt Technology Services

Buyer's Guide

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

May 2024

Free Report: Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Versa Unified Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.

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