The Best Netskope Alternatives for Insider Threat Protection
Netskope is a cloud-based security platform that can help businesses secure data against insider threats in the digital workplace using a comprehensive suite of security features. However, Netskope isn’t the only available solution for insider threat prevention, and its suitability for your organization should be weighed against its capabilities compared with top competitors in the field. Discover if Netskope is the right solution for you and make an informed decision about insider threat prevention today.
Contents
- What is Netskope?
- The benefits of using Netskope
- How Netskope falls short as an insider threat solution
- Netskope alternatives for insider threat detection
What is Netskope?
Netskope is a cloud security solution that helps defend against common cybersecurity threats in digital workplace tools. Netskope Security Cloud helps organizations to manage insider risk by blocking common attack chains such as phishing, command and control (C2), and user impersonation.
Netskope pairs these capabilities with other solutions to provide comprehensive data protection that integrates with existing IT infrastructure. Using Netskope, IT leaders can better manage the flow of sensitive information within their organization.
The benefits of using Netskope
Netskope provides businesses with a range of products that help protect against insider threat incidents by monitoring how users connect to and use different digital workplace tools. Some key objectives this functionality enables include:
Cloud Security
Regulating access to and data sharing in cloud-based apps.
Data Protection
Tracking the flow of sensitive and restricted data within the company network.
Threat Protection
Providing a line of defense against malware, phishing, and more.
Secure Remote Work
Controlling access to the digital workplace and excluding unauthorized parties.
Compliance Controls
Fulfilling legal and regulatory requirements to protect data.
Shadow IT Reduction
Preventing the use of alternative solutions that introduce new risks.
Collectively, these capabilities enable Netskope customers to reduce insider risk incidents within digital workplace tools by identifying and blocking suspicious or unauthorized behaviors as part of an overall cybersecurity strategy.
How Netskope falls short as an insider solution
While Netskope is a widely recognized and effective cloud security platform, it's important to note its limitations and shortcomings, including:
- Malicious vs Negligent Insiders: Not all insider risk is deliberate—over 60% of incidents are accidental or negligent. However, Netskope’s Behavior Analytics rely on UEBA triggers that look for malicious behavior, potentially overlooking the primary causes of insider risk.
- False Positives: Security systems like Netskope may generate false positive results alongside legitimate results. When searching for insider threats, security teams may find this increases the time spent on internal investigations.
- No Sentiment or Toxicity Detection: Netskope does not score the sentiment or toxicity of employee communications, features that can provide advanced notice of a potential insider risk. Instead, Netskope Advanced Analytics relies on app usage and data movement to identify risky behaviors.
- Lack of Context: Netskope takes a broad, shallow overview of user activity to provide blanket protection across the cyber landscape, but this comes at the expense of contextual understanding of the behavior it monitors.
- Reactive Not Proactive: Netskope and other CASB solutions rely on addressing unauthorized activity as it occurs or reporting for review after the event. Some alternative solutions use AI/ML technology to understand the context of employee behavior and get ahead of unwanted activities.
These are some of the challenges frequently raised by real Netskope users across third-party review sites.
Netskope reviews
“…There is a learning curve for users to understand the product and how to use it. Some users have reported that the product can be slow and unreliable.”
“The dashboard performance could be much better and faster, but because it is a complicated product, it takes time for the dashboard to process.”
“I would have liked to see more visibility on the reporting side and easy disabling of Netskope.”
“…one aspect that I found less favorable was the complexity of its initial setup and configuration. It required a significant amount of time and effort to properly integrate the platform with our existing infrastructure and applications.”
“Extracting and interpreting actionable insights from the data sometimes required additional effort and could be more user-friendly.”
“They are not able to provide a full raw log of endpoint navigation, I find this quite useful on investigations (by the context) together with the alerted logs and all the other enriched information that they provide.”
Netskope alternatives for insider threat detection
Aware for insider threat detection
Aware helps enterprises proactively detect and mitigate insider threats within the digital workplace using industry-leading, proprietary natural language processing analysis. Aware’s AI models are normalized for each individual customer, providing greater visibility and faster insight into anomalous behaviors with fewer false positives. In addition, Aware uses real-time workflows to automatically analyze new messages and detect a wide range of sensitive, confidential, and proprietary data. Aware then prevents from being shared in unauthorized channels and provides automated employee coaching on acceptable use.
Purpose-built to understand the complexities of collaboration tool data, Aware provides insider risk mitigation that shines a light into the dark corners of private groups and DMs where bad or negligent actors can act unseen and unrectified mistakes can cost the company millions in fines and penalties.
Aware responds dynamically to real-time analysis of actual user behavior, enabling users to take a proactive approach to insider risk mitigation, and logs data movement and user activity in a secure, searchable analytics dashboard that can be reviewed if a security incident occurs.
Forcepoint for insider threat detection
Forcepoint Insider Threat is a SaaS solution that helps organizations detect and respond to insider threats. It uses machine learning and behavioral analytics to identify anomalous user behavior and potential risks, improving the detection, identification, and mitigation of insider threats.
Forcepoint uses an established “normal” baseline for each organization to surface anomalous behaviors more quickly. In addition, it provides contextual insight into trigger events to shorten internal investigations and discovery via video replay for both Windows and Mac OS endpoints. However, reviewers find that Forcepoint’s analytics are difficult to interpret or make actionable.
Microsoft Purview for insider threat detection
In addition to DLP protections, Microsoft Purview enables admins to proactively protect against insider threats within Microsoft 365 products using machine learning, user behavior analytics, and data loss prevention to mitigate risk. Purview integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products as part of the E5 Compliance Suite.
Reviewers praise Purview’s customizability and easy deployment within Microsoft 365, but note that false positives may be a concern. Microsoft Purview’s limitation to Microsoft products can also leave security gaps in tech stacks that include other apps and programs.
Learn more about Microsoft Purview for insider threat detection
Proofpoint for insider threat detection
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management (ITM) is a comprehensive SaaS solution that helps organizations shield sensitive data from insider risk and endpoint loss. Using a flexible engine, users can create custom rules to optimize alerts on multiple parameters to target high-risk behavior and users. Proofpoint also analyzes data in motion to track the movement of the organization’s most sensitive information.
Although generally favorably reviewed, some users note that there are gaps in Proofpoint ITM’s command tracking that mean some events can be missed, and the customization options make deployment slow and disjointed.
Varonis for insider threat detection
Varonis provides a comprehensive solution for insider risk management, encompassing data discovery and classification, compliance management, least privilege automation, and more. Their software helps organizations identify and classify sensitive data, ensuring that only authorized personnel have access to it.
Varonis grants users only the access they need to perform their jobs, reducing the attack surface for potential insider threats. Additionally, Varonis's solutions help organizations manage compliance with data privacy regulations and prevent ransomware attacks. However, Varonis’s software has a learning curve that can slow implementation, and alert fatigue may be an issue for some users.
Aware: An all-in-one solution for insider threat detection, DLP, compliance, and security
With Aware, businesses can mitigate risks and implement seamless control over collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom, enforcing acceptable use and regulatory compliance and supporting insider risk detection, data loss prevention (DLP), eDiscovery and more from a single, centralized platform.
Why real users trust Aware:
- “Ability to run quick searches across the enterprise is awesome, even if msg was deleted.”
- “The ability to keep a pulse on employee conversation sentiment has been valuable.”
- “Love being able to pull the exact same report month to month.”
- “Customer support has been amazing!”
- “No complaints while using this software program.”
Learn more about Aware
Aware for Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
- Pinpoint sensitive data sharing within large, complex datasets
Take real-time action when risky behavior is detected - Automate DLP workflows for continuous peace of mind
Aware for Compliance Adherence
- Prevent more instances of noncompliance with automated workflows
- Detect violations and coach employees in real time
- Supports all major compliance regulations, including FINRA, HIPAA, HITRUST, GDPR, PCI
Aware for Data Management & Governance
- Take control of all your collaboration data from one platform
- Reduce false positives by normalizing results for your workplace
- Detect and remediate unauthorized or risky behavior around the clock
Aware for Federated Search & Discovery
- Accelerate internal investigations with search-ready archives
- Enriched metadata enables results refinement by multiple parameters
- Dig deeper into the wider context of messages to understand the big picture
Listen to the voice of your employees
Take a holistic approach to insider risk management and information governance within collaboration tool datasets by elevating the voice of the employee.
Using Aware’s proprietary, industry-leading natural language processing (NLP) AI, organizations can understand the topics having the greatest impact on their people as they occur. Respond in real time to address workplace negativity and toxicity and improve top-down communications, deepening workplace engagement and improving the employee experience.
Learn more about Aware for employee experience
Unify governance and minimize insider risks with one solution
Using Aware, workspace admins can take a unified approach to information security, compliance, and employee experience across their collaboration stack from a single centralized platform. Request a demo today to learn more.
