iOCO today announced a collaboration with Cato Networks that expands its managed security portfolio with Cato’s unified, cloud-native SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform. This service addresses the needs of enterprises in South Africa facing rising cyber risk, growing AI adoption, and increasingly complex hybrid and cloud environments.
The collaboration builds on iOCO’s existing Zero Trust and managed cybersecurity operations for enterprise customers. Through the offering, iOCO will support them with advisory and architectureservices, through migration and integration to security operations and optimisation, so they do not have to build and staff the capability in-house.
Cato brings networking and security together in a single cloud-native platform, giving customers unified visibility, context, and control over how AI tools and agents are used, addressing a governance gap that widens as adoption outpaces the controls around it. Gartner named Cato a Leader in its 2026 Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms for the third consecutive year.
The service targets small, medium, and large enterprises with distributed, complex technology environments. That includes organisations with multiple branches or operating locations, geographically dispersed users, hybrid- or multi-cloud infrastructure, remote and mobile workforces, and legacy WAN or MPLS estates. This is the same profile as iOCO’s existing cybersecurity client 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,” said Neels Pretorius, Managed Security Executive at iOCO.
“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 managed cybersecurity services model is particularly relevant in a market facing cybersecurity skills and capacity constraints, as cyber risk continues to rise daily. A national cybersecurity survey by the CSIR conducted at the end of the 2023/24 financial year found that 63% 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,” said Richard Tsalavoutas, enterprise sales director for Africa at Cato Networks.
“iOCO’s managed services capability is what helps deliver an outcome for the customer. AI security is now a real customer concern, which is why Cato Networks embeds it in the unified SASE Cloud offering, so enterprises can govern AI use, protect AI applications, and secure agents alongside every other interaction.”
The collaboration forms part of iOCO’s wider plan to expand its managed cybersecurity and network services and comes as the global SASE market grows rapidly. Gartner expects it to exceed US$18 billion in 2026 and to grow at a compound annual rate of 23% between 2025 and 2030, driven by permanent hybrid workforces, accelerated multi-cloud adoption and the need to secure AI access.
“This collaboration is an important step in iOCO’s managed SASE strategy,” said Pretorius.
“We are combining the Cato SASE Platform with our security, networking, cloud and service-management capabilities so customers have support from initial architecture and migration through to ongoing operations and optimisation.
“Our objective is to align with market demands to enhance our SASE offerings, enabling us to support customers undertaking network and security transformation and those looking for a simpler, 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.”
