BT International and Netskope fuse network and security for the AI era

There is an exciting tech team-up between two major enterprise companies to make company computer networks faster and safer, especially now that businesses are using tons of AI. On 14 October, Netskope announced an expanded partnership under which customers can reach Netskope One, its Security Service Edge (SSE) platform, through BT International’s Global Fabric, an AI-ready network-as-a-service (NaaS) platform. The aim is to give security a faster, more predictable route to the people, applications and AI agents it protects.

To understand it better, imagine a motorway with a customs checkpoint in the middle of it. The road may be wide, but every vehicle still queues at the barrier. For years, that is how many organisations have run security: the network carries the traffic, and the checks happen somewhere along the way. But with this development, BT has built an express lane directly into Netskope’s security checkpoint.

The timing is deliberate. 

Netskope’s Cloud and Threat Report 2026 found that the volume of generative AI data policy violations more than doubled in a year, and that the average organisation now records 223 such incidents each month. More users, more agents and more clouds mean more traffic that needs inspecting in real time. Traditional networks were not built for this kind of traffic jam. Sending all that AI data through old security checks causes lag (latency) and slowdowns.

Security that travels with the traffic

Global Fabric answers with strategically located points of presence and direct IXP peering into the Netskope One platform. Thus, traffic takes a short, consistent path to inspection. Customers also get a single BT-managed secure access service edge (SASE) experience, with improved resilience and path diversity.

Why the network path matters

Parag Thakore, Netskope’s chief product officer for SASE, put the philosophy plainly: “security has to be built into the network path”. It is a view that sits comfortably with the zero trust thinking we have covered before, whether in our feature on moving beyond zero trust talk or in our zero trust best practices checklist.

Netskope also brings credentials to the arrangement. It was recently named a Leader for the fifth year running in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge, and it is one of a select group of SSE integrations available on Global Fabric. For multinationals with sovereignty requirements, the flexibility to choose the level of protection will be welcome. As Matt Swinden of BT International noted, “customers can pick the protection that fits their business.”

The result: consistent policy enforcement wherever users sit, and faster, safer scaling of agentic AI. In the AI era, the road and the checkpoint have to be the same.