View noticesiOCO expands managed cybersecurity offering through Cato Networks partnership
South African technology services provider iOCO has broadened its managed cybersecurity portfolio through a collaboration with Cato Networks, bringing the company's cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge (Sase) platform to South African enterprise customers, African News Agency reports.
The partnership builds on iOCO's existing Zero Trust and managed security operations, adding advisory, architecture, migration, integration and ongoing optimisation support, and is aimed at organisations with distributed or complex technology environments – including multiple branch operations, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure, remote workforces and legacy wide-area networks.
Cato's platform combines networking and security in a single environment and includes multi-tenant management tools designed for service partners such as iOCO to run multiple customer environments, according to Neels Pretorius, iOCO's managed security executive, who said the combination gave customers both the technology platform and the operational capability to turn it into a managed service.
Richard Tsalavoutas, Cato Networks' enterprise sales director for Africa, said South Africa was an important market for the company, and that AI security had become a growing customer concern, prompting Cato to build AI governance and protection capabilities into its Sase offering.
The companies said the managed model was particularly relevant given South Africa's cybersecurity skills shortage; a CSIR survey conducted at the end of the 2023/24 financial year found 63% of cybersecurity roles in the country were partially or fully unfilled.
Gartner named Cato a leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Sase platforms for the third consecutive year, and expects the global Sase market to exceed $18 billion in 2026, growing at a compound annual rate of 23% between 2025 and 2030. iOCO, listed on the JSE, employs more than 4,300 people and serves over 4,000 clients across 10 countries.