Palo Alto Networks extends safe application enablement and breach prevention

Palo Alto Networks, a security company, announced advancements to its Next-Generation Security Platform that extends the ability for customer organizations to safely enable applications, including SaaS options, content and users regardless of location; prevent successful cyber attacks; simplify security operations; and securely embrace the cloud.

Security demands have evolved as new requirements and risks have been introduced, especially as organizations expand their IT architecture from traditional networks and data centers to private and public or hybrid cloud deployments. Add SaaS application usage to the mix, and the need to secure all these architectures against ever-increasing, sophisticated threats and adversary techniques being used to gain access to assets and data regardless of where they are located – the network, in the cloud, or in SaaS applications – and organizations have a multitude of complex security and operational challenges to address in order to prevent cyber breaches and achieve the cloud speed and agility promise.

Traditional detect-and-respond approaches, cloud-only security capabilities,and siloed point products offer limited functionality and lack threat context from the network edge or at the user interface. This makes these options ineffective and administratively burdensome; causes holes in an organization’s security posture;and hinders operational agility, especially in cloud deployments.

The natively engineered Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform addresses all these challenges by deliveringrich context from multiple points across all IT environments to provide consistent levels of visibility, management and security controlsregardless of data location – from the network to the data center and private cloud, in the public cloud, or within SaaS applications.

Building upon existing capabilities in the platform, new advancements included in the Palo Alto Networks platform operating system, PAN-OS version 8.0, Aperture SaaS security service, and new VM-Series virtual firewall models address security needs by extending protections from physical networks to the cloud, further simplifying security operations and infrastructure, and ultimately helping organizations establish an effective and consistent security posture.

Among the more than 70 new features introduced to the Next-Generation Security Platform as part of PAN-OS 8.0, cloud and SaaS feature highlights include:

• Expanded security for public and private clouds, including optimized workflow automation features and integration with native cloud services that ensure the same security measures for a customer’s physical environment can be easily applied to AmazonWeb Services, Microsoft Azure, or any other cloud. The cloud capabilities enable secure, scalable and resilient cloud-centric architectures with easy orchestration and management for operational agility.

• New SaaS application security capabilities, including enhanced visibility and interactive dashboards, new reporting, and automated features like instant quarantine and data sharing limitations. These features increase security, real-time monitoring and compliance enforcement capabilities on cloud-based assets. Additionally, extended application support (Slack and Secure Data Space), language support (German and Japanese) for DLP and machine learning, as well as new data centers in Europe (Germany) and Asia (Singapore), expand global usage and protection options and address regional data privacy needs.

• Increased performance and three new VM-Series virtual firewall models that have been added to the existing virtual firewall family. The VM-Series, which now includes the new VM-50, VM-500 and VM-700, delivers industry-leading performance options ranging from 200 Mbps up to an industry-leading16 Gbps of firewall throughput with App-ID enabled to deliver predictable performance in cloud deployments and address a variety of use cases from virtualized branch office to data center and service provider deployments.