Kuala Lumpur (5 April 2017) — Palo Alto Networks® (NYSE: PANW), the next-generation security company, today announced advancements to its Next-Generation Security Platform that extend the ability for customer organisations to safely enable applications, including SaaS options, content and users regardless of location; prevent successful cyberattacks; simplify security operations; and securely embrace the cloud.
Security demands have evolved as new requirements and risks have been introduced, especially as organisations expand their IT architecture from traditional networks and data centers to private and public or hybrid cloud deployments.
The addition of 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 organisations have a multitude of complex security and operational challenges to address 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 organisation’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 delivering rich context from multiple points across all IT environments to provide consistent levels of visibility, management and security controls regardless 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 organisations establish an effective and consistent security posture.
Palo Alto Networks has integrated more than 70 new features to the Next-Generation Security Platform as part of PAN-OS 8.0. Cloud and SaaS feature higlights include:
- Expanded security for public and private clouds, including optimised 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 Amazon® Web 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 newVM-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-leading 16 Gbps of firewall throughput with App-ID enabled to deliver predictable performance in cloud deployments and address a variety of use cases from virtualised branch office to data center and service provider deployments.
Additional threat prevention, management and hardware highlights are also available with the introduction of PAN-OS 8.0. See these related press releases:
- Palo Alto Networks Raises Bar with New Threat Prevention Capabilities for Its Next-Generation Security Platform
- Palo Alto Networks Delivers Industry-first Capabilities to Prevent Credential Theft and Abuse
- Palo Alto Networks Expands Range of Next-Generation Firewall Devices with New Hardware and Virtual Appliances
PAN-OS 8.0 in Malaysia
According to the 2016 Cloud Readiness Index published by the Asia Cloud Computing Association, Malaysia ranked #8 with 7.6 in cybersecurity posture to effectively combat cyberattacks. With the recent launch of Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) as the first ever trade zone, cyber resilience is crucial for every enterprise to stay competitive with one another within the digital economy hub.
“As customers embrace multi-cloud deployment architectures, Palo Alto Networks is pleased to offer the only built-from-the ground up, natively engineered Next-Generation Security Platform enabling them to safely embrace any cloud – public, private, hybrid and SaaS – with consistent visibility, operations, control and cyberthreat prevention” said Alvin Tan, Regional Head, Malaysia and Singapore, Palo Alto Networks.
PAN-OS 8.0 is now available globally to customers of Palo Alto Networks with a current support contract.
