The market shift to cloud-based security services was highlighted at the Ignite Europe 2019 held by Palo Alto Networks in Barcelona, where the company announced a few product enhancements in an effort to round out its offerings to meet what it expects will be growing market demand.
A key element of its go-to market strategy is in response to market demand to reduce the complexity of security and to reduce the number of suppliers by adding cloud-delivered so Software-Defined Wide Area Network SD-WAN and DLP (data loss prevention) capabilities to its Prisma Access product.
The move not only removes the need for separate SD-WAN suppliers but also rounds out Prisma Access to deliver converged networking and security capabilities in the cloud to address the limitations of traditional architectures.
Palo Alto Networks is not alone in going after this market, but it is the latest player in the so-called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) market to add SD-WAN capabilities to combine edge computing, security and wide-area networking (WAN) into a single cloud-managed platform.
The move builds on core company strengths and is therefore logical. Failure to have done so would have missed a market opportunity and would have been surprising.
Data drives better threat detection
In line with the company’s belief that threat intelligence should be shared, that security operations centers (SOCs) need to be more data-driven to support current and future threats, and the company’s drive to enable greater interoperability between security products, the second key announcement at Ignite Europe 2019 is the extension of its Cortex XDR detection and response application to third-party data sources.
In addition to data from Palo Alto Networks and other recognized industry sources, Cortex XDR 2.0 (which automates threat hunting and investigations, and consolidates alerts) is designed to consume logs from third-party security products for analytics and investigations, starting with logs from Check Point, soon to be followed by Cisco, Fortinet and Forcepoint.
SD-WAN market shakeup
The expansion by Palo Alto Networks into the SD-WAN market makes commercial sense to round out its Prisma Access offering to meet market demands for simpler, easier, consistent security with fewer suppliers and support the growing number of Managed Security Service providers.
However, it also signals a change in the relationship between Palo Alto Networks and its SD-WAN integration partners and in the market overall, although executives are downplaying the negative impact on SD-WAN partners, saying relationships are continually evolving and will inevitably change as market needs change.
The big takeaway from Ignite Europe 2019 is that Palo Alto Networks is broadening its brands and capabilities as a cloud-based security services company and that in future, selling through partners such as Managed Service Providers will be a critical part of its go-to market strategy.
It will be interesting to see whether the bet by Palo Alto Networks pays off to steal a march on competitors also rushing to the market with similar offerings such as SD-WAN firm Open Systems, networking firm Cato Networks, IT automation and security firm Infoblox, and virtualization firm VMware.