Palo Alto launches Strata Cloud Manager, its AI-powered zero trust management and operations solution

Palo Alto Networks introduced Strata Cloud Manager, its AI-powered zero trust management and operations solution. With its foundation in AI (artificial intelligence) and zero trust, the company works towards protecting the needs of customers. In addition, they have introduced a suite of advanced security capabilities and five new next-generation firewalls to cater to the specific requirements of modern enterprises.

“I’m excited about the new capabilities we are announcing today. Strata Cloud Manager will simplify management and operations across our customers’ entire network security estate,” Anand Oswal, senior vice president and general manager of network security at Palo Alto Networks, said in a media statement. “We continue to innovate with AI and ML in our security services, now stopping advanced attacks, including the first and only instance of a unique attack. This approach effectively prevents patient zero. We are also introducing incredible hardware platforms that offer industry-leading performance with best-in-class security.”

Inadequate predictive and actionable insights, along with a lack of seamless integration across security tools, can result in security gaps and inconsistent policies that compromise protection and operational experience. Strata Cloud Manager improves network security management and operations, bolstering security posture and proactively preventing network disruptions at every enforcement point. 

With Strata Cloud Manager, security teams can:

• Ensure continuous network uptime: With predictive analytics, Strata Cloud Manager helps organizations anticipate capacity bottlenecks and assess deployment health up to seven days ahead, enabling security teams to prevent operational disruptions effectively. 
• Enhance network security with industry best practices: Leverage AI-powered analysis of policies and real-time compliance checks to fortify network security. 
• Streamline network security management for enhanced efficiency: For the first time, effortlessly oversee configuration and security policies across all form factors, including SASE and both hardware and software firewalls, ensuring consistent protection and minimizing operational overhead. 

“The ability to create one configuration and apply it seamlessly across our entire deployment has been a game-changer,” according to Sebastian Schubert, Technology Lead, Tui Hotels & Resorts, said. “Rollouts and management of firewalls are now streamlined and efficient.”

As part of Palo Alto Networks’ cloud-delivered security services, over 60,000 customers benefit from protection against new and advanced threats. These are some of the new capabilities:

• Advanced WildFire blocks ever-evolving and evasive initial attacks by integrating machine learning directly into its cloud-based detection engines. This helps ensure early detection and mitigation, fortifying defense against emerging attacks. 
• Industry-first detection capabilities are designed to proactively prevent threats such as meddler-in-the-middle and SaaS platform-hosted phishing attacks. Additionally, Advanced URL Filtering can anticipate and block a remarkable 88% of malicious URLs a full 48 hours ahead of competing solutions to ensure network security protection. 
• The latest AI-powered Advanced Threat Prevention is purpose-built to counter command-and-control (C2) attacks often propagated via the widely used red team tool Empire. This valuable addition to the advanced threat prevention arsenal now boasts an impressive over 97% success rate in blocking highly evasive C2 attacks.

Palo Alto Networks announced five new Next-Generation Firewalls to expand addressable use cases, from the most high-traffic networks to remote branches, including ones that require 5G connectivity and others that need to operate in the harshest operational technology (OT) environments. 

The new next-generation firewalls include:

• PA-7500 for blazing fast performance: Powered by custom ASICs, the PA-7500 delivers industry-leading security and over 1.5 Tbps App-ID performance to secure the world’s most demanding environments.
• PA-415-5G for 5G networks: As the global reach of 5G networks continues to expand, an estimated 15 billion industrial assets are expected to connect via 5G by 2026. With the advanced firewall solution, organizations gain the flexibility to safeguard their branch offices with comprehensive security for both wired and 5G connectivity, ensuring that their critical assets are protected in this time of rapid digital transformation.
• PA-450R for the harshest environments: Industrial organizations can now leverage the ruggedized firewall solution, providing robust connectivity and security for their OT environments, including exposure to extreme weather and wide temperature ranges.  This ensures uninterrupted operations and peace of mind in challenging environmental conditions.

Palo Alto Networks also introduced the PA-5445 for securing data centers and large campus locations and the PA-455 for securing branch offices that need Power over Ethernet (PoE).

“Network security must continue to evolve. Traditional approaches cannot keep pace with today’s attack landscape, and sprawling environments have made management much more complex,” John Grady, principal analyst at Enterprise Security Group, said. “Palo Alto Networks was an early adopter in leveraging AI across various security services for more effective threat detection. By expanding the use of AI across additional security services, as well as its cloud-based management platform for more efficient and proactive operations, Palo Alto Networks continues to respond to the key pain points organizations face.”

Industrial Cyber News Desk

Industrial Cyber News Desk