Cloudflare Keeps Its Spot in the 2024 Gartner SSE Magic Quadrant
For the second consecutive year, Cloudflare has been named to the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Security Service Edge (SSE). The company is one of only ten vendors included in this year's report, recognized for both its ability to execute and the completeness of its vision.
Last year's recognition was notable in itself: Cloudflare became the only new vendor in the 2023 report, achieving that status in the shortest time measured from its first product launch. The company's follow-through on its 2023 commitment to accelerate development has now been reflected in this year's placement, with customer feedback playing a significant role.
Cloudflare attributes its market position to the infrastructure investments made over the past 14 years in its global network. The company points to its multi-use global proxy, high-speed DNS resolver, serverless compute platform, and traffic routing and acceleration capabilities as the foundation that allowed it to enter the SSE market quickly. Over the past year, as larger customers adopted Cloudflare One, the company says it applied its existing strengths to new security areas: Web Application Firewall (WAF) scanning capabilities were extended to its Data Loss Prevention (DLP) approach, its internal network measurement tools evolved into a Digital Experience Monitoring (DEX) suite for administrators, and its Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) toolset expanded to scan more applications for additional data types.
The company's customer reviews in the Gartner® Peer Insights™ panel have been positive enough that Gartner named Cloudflare a Customers' Choice for 2024. Cloudflare has reiterated the same commitment it made in 2023: to continue building its SSE platform at an accelerated pace.
Understanding the SSE Landscape
A Security Service Edge (SSE) "secures access to the web, cloud services and private applications. Capabilities include access control, threat protection, data security, security monitoring, and acceptable-use control enforced by network-based and API-based integration. SSE is primarily delivered as a cloud-based service, and may include on-premises or agent-based components."
SSE solutions emerged as organizations faced a fundamental shift: users, devices, and data were moving beyond traditional security perimeters. The older model relied on a castle-and-moat approach, where firewalls and applications resided within the physical confines of an office, and remote users connected through legacy virtual private network (VPN) clients that backhauled traffic to headquarters. That model began to break down when applications migrated to the cloud. SaaS offerings provided cost and time savings that drove IT departments to move resources off-premises, leaving security teams to chase sensitive data as it dispersed.
Simultaneously, remote work became more common, placing strain on VPN infrastructure that was never designed for large numbers of users connecting to a broad range of internet services. The result was a failure of perimeter-based security, sometimes gradual and sometimes sudden. SSE vendors offer a cloud-based alternative: security services operated from their own data centers or on public cloud platforms, maintained by the vendor and scaled to provide budget efficiencies. Users avoid the performance penalties of backhauling, while administrators gain the ability to implement more granular security policies.
The SSE category is broad. It provides a useful framework for organizations adopting a Zero Trust architecture, and typical SSE capabilities fall into several buckets:
- Zero Trust Access Control: enforcing least-privilege policies that evaluate identity and contextual signals on every request or connection to protected applications.
- Outbound Filtering: protecting users and devices by filtering and logging DNS queries, HTTP requests, and network-level traffic.
- Secure SaaS Usage: analyzing traffic to SaaS applications and scanning data within them for Shadow IT violations, misconfigurations, or data mishandling.
- Data Protection: detecting data leaving the organization or bound for non-compliant destinations, and identifying stored data that should not be retained or needs stronger access controls.
- Employee Experience: monitoring and improving the performance of tools and applications used by team members, both on the internet and internally.
SSE represents the security half of the larger Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) market, with networking technologies—connecting users, offices, applications, and data centers—forming the other half. Some vendors focus solely on SSE and rely on partners for connectivity, while others provide only the networking layer. Cloudflare offers both components as part of a single-vendor SASE offering, with this announcement highlighting its SSE capabilities within that broader portfolio.
Cloudflare One: building blocks for the SSE category
Cloudflare positions Cloudflare One as a way to address the full range of security problems that fall under the SSE umbrella, while also letting customers start small. The company notes that organizations do not need to undertake a full digital transformation at once. Each component can be adopted independently, even though the pieces are designed to work together.
Replacing the VPN with Zero Trust access
The most common entry point is replacing a legacy VPN, which typically grants anyone on the private network implicit trust to reach anything else. Cloudflare points to a series of high-impact VPN vulnerabilities in on-premises firewalls and gateways as a driver for this shift. Its Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) offering evaluates every request against trust signals such as identity, device posture, location, and multifactor authentication method.
Administrators can make applications available to employees and third-party contractors through a fully clientless option, which makes traditional tools feel like SaaS applications. For teams that need a private network, Cloudflare supports arbitrary TCP, UDP, and ICMP traffic, including bidirectional traffic, while still enforcing Zero Trust rules. The same policies can extend to external SaaS applications through Cloudflare's identity proxy, allowing granular control over how team members log in to third-party tools.
DNS filtering and Secure Web Gateway
Cloudflare operates what it describes as the world's fastest DNS resolver, which can filter DNS queries whether users are on a coffee shop connection or inside some of the world's largest networks. Beyond DNS filtering, the Secure Web Gateway (SWG) inspects HTTP traffic leaving a device or an entire network, checking each request for dangerous destinations or potentially malicious downloads.
Traffic can be routed to Cloudflare from mobile devices or from office and data center networks. Every request and DNS query is logged and available in the dashboard or exportable to third-party logging tools. Cloudflare also notes that its forward proxy infrastructure powers Apple iCloud Private Relay and Microsoft Edge Secure Network.
In-line and at-rest CASB
SaaS applications create new security headaches even as they offload hosting and maintenance work. Shadow IT — employees using unapproved tools — can result in surprise fees, compliance violations, and data loss. Cloudflare's offering scans and filters for such usage, letting administrators block unapproved tools or enforce granular controls. For example, a marketing team using Google Drive with a vendor could be restricted to downloads only, or users could be allowed to read an application while all text input is blocked.
Approved applications can also cause problems. A company may rely on Microsoft OneDrive yet have compliance policies that prohibit storing files with employee Social Security numbers there. Cloudflare's Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) routinely scans SaaS applications to detect improper usage, missing controls, and potential misconfiguration.
Digital Experience Monitoring
Enterprise users expect consumer-grade connectivity, and IT help desks often lack the tools to diagnose latency issues. Cloudflare One's Digital Experience Monitoring toolkit is based on the tools Cloudflare says it uses internally to monitor its own global network. Administrators can measure latency at a global, regional, or individual level, and IT teams can troubleshoot connectivity for single users from the dashboard.
Data security as a priority
Cloudflare identifies data protection as the most pressing concern among CIOs and CISOs over the past year. The company acknowledges that many point solutions for data security end up as shelfware because they are difficult to deploy or slow down teams. Cloudflare has made data security its largest single area of investment in Cloudflare One.
The data security portfolio, including data loss prevention (DLP), scans both data leaving the organization and data stored inside SaaS applications. It can prevent loss based on exact data matches provided by the customer or through fuzzier patterns. Other capabilities include optical character recognition (OCR) to find potential loss in images, one-click scanning for public cloud keys, and predefined ML-based source code detections for software companies. Cloudflare says data security will remain its biggest focus in Cloudflare One over the coming year.
Beyond the SSE definition
Cloudflare argues that issues outside the SSE category can compromise a team. Email remains the most common attack vector, with multi-channel phishing and social engineering campaigns targeting employees' inboxes. Cloudflare One includes cloud email security that works across channels: inbox (cloud email security), social media (SWG), SMS (ZTNA together with hard keys), and cloud collaboration (CASB). One option allows team members to click potentially malicious links in emails while forcing the destinations to load in an isolated browser that is transparent to the user.
Connectivity is another area where other SSE vendors partner with networking providers, adding hops and latency. Cloudflare One offers a complete WAN connectivity solution delivered from the same data centers as its security components, allowing organizations to use a single vendor for both secure connectivity and networking without extra hops or invoices. Cloudflare's Web Application and API Protection (WAAP) platform also extends protection to applications that customers build for their own end users.
What customers see
Tens of thousands of organizations use Cloudflare One. Over 200 enterprises have submitted reviews of the Zero Trust platform on Gartner Peer Insights, and Gartner named Cloudflare a Customers' Choice for 2024. In direct conversations, customers cite the opportunity to consolidate point solutions at a lower cost, ease of use (many practitioners get the platform running before engaging with Cloudflare's team), and speed — Cloudflare says it is 46% faster than Zscaler, 56% faster than Netskope, and 10% faster than Palo Alto Networks.
Building on the recognition
Cloudflare started 2024 with a dedicated week of new security features available for immediate deployment. For the remainder of the year, the product roadmap concentrates on deepening the Secure Web Gateway offering, simplifying access control tools, and expanding investments in the data protection platform, digital experience monitoring, and both in-line and at-rest CASB capabilities. Teams should also watch for an overhaul of analytics presentation and compliance reporting features.
This year's commitment mirrors 2023: helping teams solve more security problems so they can focus on their core mission. Cloudflare positions itself as the accessible option among SSE leaders — nearly every Cloudflare One feature is available at no cost to teams of up to 50 users, whether for a small organization or as a proof of concept within a larger enterprise.
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1Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge, By Charlie Winckless, Thomas Lintemuth, Dale Koeppen, April 15, 2024
2Gartner, Voice of the Customer for Zero Trust Network Access, By Peer Contributors, 30 January 2024
3https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/security-service-edge-sse
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