Palo Alto Networks Cybersecurity Portfolio Review

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Palo Alto Networks (PAN) offers one of the most recognized and diverse cybersecurity portfolios, ranging from next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and zero-trust support software to the growing security field of extended detection and response (XDR). 

PAN’s expected growth fluctuated some as the world entered into the COVID-19 pandemic, but its upward trajectory has not been stopped. Palo Alto Networks reported $1.2 billion in revenue in 4Q 2021, up 28% from $950.4 million year over year.

“Our strong Q4 performance was the culmination of executing on our strategy throughout the year, including product innovation, platform integration, business model transformation and investments in our go-to-market organization,” said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO, Palo Alto Networks. 

“In particular, we saw notable strength in large customer transactions with strategic commitments across our Strata, Prisma, and Cortex platforms.”

Read on to learn about Palo Alto Networks’ variety of offerings and where the company is positioned in the cybersecurity market:

A Closer Look at Palo Alto Networks

• Palo Alto Networks cybersecurity portfolio
• Palo Alto Networks partnerships
• Palo Alto Networks use cases
• User reviews of Palo Alto Networks
• Industry recognition
• Palo Alto Networks in the market

Read more: Top Cloud Security Companies & Solutions

Palo Alto Networks cybersecurity portfolio

Starting with firewall security, Palo Alto Networks has gained a favorable reputation for cybersecurity solutions in several categories:

Zero trust

• Strata

Cloud security

• Prisma Cloud
• Prisma Access
• Prisma SaaS
• Prisma SD-WAN
• PA-Series Hardware NGFWs
• CN-Series Containerized NGFWs
• Internet of Things (IoT) security

Next-generation firewalls 

• Machine learning (ML)-powered NGFW
• VM-Series NGFW
• PA-Series Hardware NGFWs
• CN-Series Containerized NGFWs
• PAN-OS

Security operations

• Cortex XDR 
• Cortex XSOAR
• Cortex XPANSE
• WildFire Malware Analysis Engine
• Panorama (network security management)

Other security solutions

• DNS security
• 5G security
• URL filtering
• GlobalProtect
• Enterprise data loss prevention (DLP)
• Unit 42 (security consulting)
• Checkov

Also read: Best Threat Intelligence Platforms for 2021

Palo Alto Networks partnerships

Several high-profile companies have partnered with Palo Alto Networks, either offering their products as features in PAN tools or working together to create new cybersecurity tools. 

These are some of the company’s most recent major partnerships:

• Google Cloud partnered with PAN to co-develop a cloud IDS (intrusion detection system), a network threat detection service for cloud customers looking to solve critical network security problems.
• Deloitte, one of the world’s most recognized consulting firms, formed a strategic alliance with PAN, combining its consulting expertise with PAN’s platform strengths. This partnership was created to deliver an integrated, end-to-end zero-trust and multicloud cybersecurity solution, particularly for enterprise and government clients.
• Comcast Business partnered with PAN to offer Comcast’s ActiveCore SDN platform and Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Access platform in tandem, creating a more comprehensive cybersecurity life cycle for cloud users.

Some other noteworthy industry partners for PAN fall into the global system integrator, managed security service provider (MSSP), service provider, and technology partner categories:

• Accenture
• Akamai
• Atlassian
• AWS
• Box
• CloudFlare
• IBM
• Malwarebytes
• McAfee
• Microsoft Azure
• Micro Focus
• NTT
• Nutanix
• Nvidia
• Okta
• Optiv
• Presidio
• Proofpoint
• Quantum
• Red Hat
• ServiceNow
• Slack
• Splunk
• Symantec
• Trustwave
• VMware
• Workday
• Zendesk
• Zoom

Palo Alto Networks use cases

Here are a couple of industry-specific examples of how PAN customers have implemented the company’s cybersecurity solutions:

Health care

“Hospitals are turning to GE Healthcare when looking for medical device cyber security managed services. … We augment their existing resources and capabilities by providing a 24/7 Med Tech Security Operations Center (SOC), offering proactive monitoring, vulnerability management, and remediation through our SKEYE managed services offering. We partnered with Palo Alto Networks, as its IoT Security solution has been specifically designed to look for and protect medical equipment in addition to other IoT devices. This enables us to provide our customers a comprehensive security program with 360-degree visibility to their medical equipment.” -Matt Silva, CISO at GE Healthcare

Manufacturing

“When we saw the Chinese New Year extend into a lockdown, we felt the pressure. Most of our factories were considered essential and could remain open, but our indirect workforce would need to work from home. These are the people who handle critical aspects of the business, including procurement and logistics. Our financial staff were especially important as we were approaching the fiscal-year close. We needed to make sure they had full, uninterrupted access to our financial systems, and it was clear our old VPN solution would not hold up.”

“The ability for our people to work from home was absolutely a factor in enabling that shift to manufacturing ventilators. At the end of the day, a large part of our business is procurement. Our end users are mostly buyers. How we bring in materials and components and put them all together to ship out a finished product is extremely important. With our people securely working from home using Prisma Access, they could still support those processes and allow us to quickly ramp up for the new demand presented by COVID-19.” -Gus Shahin, CIO at Flex

User reviews of Palo Alto Networks

Across several review sites, users rate the following products by Palo Alto Networks with high marks:

Industry recognition

Palo Alto Networks is repeatedly honored for tools and services it offers to enterprise clients, especially in the areas of zero trust, XDR, and NGFWs: Industry recognition

• “The Forrester New Wave: Zero Trust Network Access, Q3 2021,” Prisma Access, leader
• “The Forrester New Wave: Endpoint Security Software as a Service, Q2 2021,” Cortex XDR, leader 
• “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Firewalls, Q3 2020,” Leader

PAN also receives recognition for its diversity and treatment of employees:

• Human Rights Campaign Foundation 2021 “Corporate Equality Index (CEI),” perfect score
• Human Rights Campaign Foundation 2021 “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality”

Palo Alto Networks in the market

Cisco, Microsoft, and Symantec are some of the largest cybersecurity companies in the world and easily pass Palo Alto Networks in terms of revenue. However, they focus on a wider portfolio of offerings beyond cybersecurity, and with their less specialized approach, they don’t consistently deliver the high performance metrics that PAN does. 

For example, take a look at the MITRE Engenuity “ATT&CK Evaluations,” a test of performance for endpoint detection and response (EDR). While Cisco, Microsoft, and Symantec performed about as well as PAN in the protection rate category, Palo Alto Networks scored higher than all three in detection rate for attempted threats. The sensitivity of Palo Alto’s tools to a variety of threats far surpassed these competitors and most others evaluated in the MITRE test.

More on the MITRE evaluations: MITRE Protection Tests Shed New Light on Endpoint Security

In terms of size and approach, Palo Alto Networks most closely resembles these cybersecurity companies:

• SentinelOne
• Fortinet
• McAfee
• Cybereason
• Trend Micro

These five companies also performed well in the MITRE tests and other similar performance evaluations. 

Palo Alto Networks continues to move forward with new innovations and products, offering a 5G-native security solution for several of its NGFWs in late 2020 and acquiring Bridgecrew in 2021 to turn Prisma Cloud into a platform with security across the full application life cycle. This evolving technical development and portfolio help Palo Alto Networks to stand out in the crowded cybersecurity market.

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