Moving Beyond VPNs and Enterprise Browsers
Many organizations have tried to bridge this gap with VPNs or specialized enterprise browsers, but both approaches come with trade-offs. VPNs create operational overhead and often lack the fine-grained policy controls needed for Zero Trust. Enterprise browsers, on the other hand, can disrupt user experience and require additional management tools.Brian Anderson, Global Field CTO at Cato Networks, explained to ChannelE2E how the new browser extension addresses both pain points:“The Cato Browser Extension eliminates the complexity of deploying VPNs or dedicated enterprise browsers by delivering Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) directly through a Google Chrome browser. Unlike VPNs or specialized enterprise browsers that introduce operational overhead and user friction, the Cato Browser Extension ensures consistent policy enforcement for unmanaged devices and reduces IT burden by removing the need for additional point solutions.”
Visibility and Control Without Compromise
A key challenge in extending Zero Trust to unmanaged devices is maintaining visibility and enforcement parity with managed endpoints. Cato’s browser extension routes all browser traffic through the Cato SASE Cloud Platform, giving security teams the same control and monitoring they have across the rest of the network.As Anderson noted, visibility is foundational to Zero Trust:“Once browser traffic is routed through Cato, IT and security teams gain full visibility and granular control of their unmanaged devices, equal to what they’d expect from managed devices. IT and security teams can ensure continuous inspection, enforce unified logging and centralized policy enforcement, and reduce compliance risk.”
A Unified Model for Enterprise and MSPs
For organizations managing mixed environments that span corporate, contractor, and BYOD devices, Cato’s UZTNA architecture brings every access scenario under a single policy model. That unified framework is especially valuable for MSPs and MSSPs looking to standardize secure access across diverse customer bases.“With Cato ZTNA, all customer environments, whether contractor-heavy, BYOD-driven, or traditional corporate, can be managed from a single policy framework,” Anderson said. “This reduces fragmentation, simplifies operations, and allows MSPs and MSSPs to deliver consistent, secure access without increasing administrative overhead.”
“The Cato Browser Extension opens the door for MSPs and MSSPs to deliver secure remote access tailored to enterprises with high volumes of contractors or BYOD users. By eliminating the need for full device management, MSPs and MSSPs can offer faster onboarding, lower support costs, and compliance-ready protection. This strengthens their ability to compete in secure remote access opportunities, and create new revenue streams around BYOD policy enforcement, regulatory compliance, and streamlined contractor access.”
With this addition, Cato brings Zero Trust access closer to where modern work happens: in the browser, on any device, without compromise.
