Palo Alto Networks introduces new cloud security suite

Palo Alto Networks has announced Prisma, a new cloud security suite designed to help its customers lead a more secure digital life.

The world needs cloud security that is simpler, more secure, and more complete than ever before.

It aims to be the new benchmark in cloud security, transforming the cloud journey by simplifying access, data protection, and application security.

Prisma builds on the back of Palo Alto Networks cloud security products and delivers new experiences with the Prisma suite.

With approximately 9,000 enterprise customers, Prisma has become the largest cloud security business in the world.

"Our approach to cloud security is aimed at delivering the best security while embracing the unique needs of the cloud," says Palo Alto Networks chief product officer Lee Klarich.

"We want to provide customers with complete visibility as well as recommended configurations across their entire cloud environment to ensure a strong security posture from the start and consistently prevent attacks.

"With Prisma, organisations can securely connect office branches and mobile users to the cloud, confidently embrace the use of SaaS applications, and rapidly develop and deploy cloud applications."

Prisma delivers what customers need 

Prisma gives customers what they need to consistently govern access, protect data, and secure applications.

The suite consists of four key components:

• Prisma Access secures access to the cloud for branch offices and mobile users anywhere in the world with a scalable, cloud-native architecture, blending enterprise-grade security with a globally scalable network. It will soon run on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), extending the service to more than 100 locations for an even faster and more localised experience. Customers will also have access to a streamlined cloud management user interface (UI) that enables rapid onboarding of branches and users. In addition, Prisma Access will include capabilities specifically designed for service providers to enable the rapid provisioning of secure outbound internet connectivity for their customers.
   
• Prisma Public Cloud provides continuous visibility, security, and compliance monitoring across public multi-cloud deployments. Powered by machine learning, it correlates data and assesses risk across the cloud environment. Starting today, customers can further reduce their attack surface early in the development cycle through a "shift left" approach to security. With the ability to detect vulnerabilities and fix improper configurations in customers' infrastructure-as-code templates, developers can reduce risk without sacrificing agility.  
   
• Prisma SaaS is a multi-mode cloud access security broker (CASB) service that safely enables SaaS application adoption. It provides advanced capabilities in risk discovery, adaptive access control, data loss prevention, compliance assurance, data governance, user behaviour monitoring, and advanced threat prevention. New integrations will bring improved administration experience across IT-sanctioned and IT-unsanctioned SaaS applications with unified visibility and management.
   
• VM-Series is the virtualised form factor of the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall that can be deployed in private and public cloud computing environments, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), GCP, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and VMware NSX. The VM-Series is also enhanced through infrastructure-as-code automation for deployment and configuration, which reduces complexity for customers.