Enterprise security is converging around a simple premise: the systems that watch over artificial intelligence use, sensitive data, and network access should not operate as separate products stitched together after the fact. GigaOm, an independent technology research firm, has named iboss a Leader in its Radar for Zero Trust Network Access, placing the company in the Enduring Innovators quadrant. The recognition centers on how iboss unifies policy, visibility, and AI-driven insight across what is normally a fragmented set of security tools.
Why access decisions need explaining, not just enforcing
Zero Trust Network Access, or ZTNA, replaces the older model of broad network access with a narrower approach: every request to reach an application is checked against identity and context before it is granted. That shift has become standard practice as remote work and cloud adoption eroded the usefulness of traditional network perimeters. But granting or denying access is only half the problem. Security teams increasingly need to understand why a particular decision was made, especially when regulators, auditors, or incident responders come asking. GigaOm's assessment singles out a feature called Policy Tracing, which exposes the underlying policy and security-engine logic behind each access event, rather than leaving operators to reconstruct decisions after the fact.
One policy plane, not a patchwork
A recurring weakness in enterprise security architecture is duplication: one tool governs cloud applications, another inspects data loss, another manages access, and none of them share context. iboss built its platform around a single policy plane that spans public and private resources, meaning the same rules and visibility extend across environments that used to require separate consoles. Inline, API, and endpoint signals all feed one AI engine, which in turn populates one console, one policy engine, and one data lake. The practical effect is that a security team writes a policy once and sees its consequences - AI activity, data movement, application use, network access - in a single place, regardless of whether a human employee or an autonomous software agent triggered the activity.
Governing both human and machine behavior
Artificial intelligence tools have introduced a new category of risk that most legacy security products were never designed to address. Employees routinely paste sensitive material into chat-based AI services, and a growing share of AI activity now comes from autonomous agents acting without direct human oversight at each step. iboss addresses both. The platform offers visibility into conversations with services such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Claude, and it can detect new or unsanctioned AI tools without waiting for a signature update. Real-time data loss prevention is designed to stop source code, customer records, and other sensitive material before it reaches an external AI platform, while policies can be scoped by user, group, or department, with an audit trail attached. For autonomous agents, the platform monitors what tools, APIs, and applications an agent is permitted to reach and retains a record of what it actually did.
Data protection that does not stop at the login screen
Much of the platform's design reflects a lesson the security industry has learned repeatedly: encrypted traffic that goes uninspected is a blind spot, not a safeguard. iboss decrypts SSL/TLS traffic by default across protocols, then applies deep content inspection, including file analysis and optical character recognition, so that sensitive information hidden inside documents or images does not slip past automated checks. Integration with Microsoft Purview extends that control to labeled and unlabeled content alike, while built-in risk scoring and one-click reporting are aimed at easing compliance obligations under frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and SOX. Application discovery extends the same logic to newly built or so-called vibe-coded software that has no established security signature, scoring risk at both the application and data level.
Paul Martini, iboss co-founder and CEO, framed the recognition as validation of a broader architectural bet: that access control, data protection, and AI governance belong on the same stack rather than as bolted-on additions. iboss reports protecting more than 10 million users across over 100 countries through a global network of points of presence, and the company has made its reprint of the GigaOm Radar report available for organizations evaluating Zero Trust strategies of their own.
