Palo Alto Networks Boosts Cybersecurity Offerings with PAN-OS 8.0

Wazzup PIlipinas!

The Philippines remains to have the fastest GDP growth in Asia with economy growing by 6.8% in 2016 according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. It also is at 3rd spot for having the largest bitcoin users, and with 47 million active Internet and Facebook user, and is at 2nd place for having the most Millennials in ASEAN who are digital natives that embrace the use of online or the Internet integrated with their daily tasks.

Thus, there is no surprise that many Philippine companies are also on their way to include cloud computing among their technology so they could keep up with the rest with regards to being both locally and globally competitive.

With the continuing leap of many businesses towards cloud computing, the threat of cyber attacks becomes more critical especially for companies with large networks. Every Systems Administrator's objective is to keep away any form of unauthorized or suspicious intrusions that could endanger both the data and system of the company they are working for.

One can strengthen the prevention by having a complete visibility of their system or network, reduce the attack surface by proper identification of significant areas to watch out for and protect, and to prevent both known and unknown (zero-day attacks) threats.

Quick response to zero-day attacks could help save a company from losing valuable information to hackers who aim to sabotage companies by using malware, exploits, and new variants, or use the information they would acquire for negative purposes like selling them to competitors.

Palo Alto Networks, led by Kevin Chin, Country Manager of Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam together with Vincent Oh, Director of System Engineering, and Marc Lainez, Solutions Architect based in the Philippines, recently conducted a press briefing to launch their company's biggest product update that offers 70 new cloud features for its next generation security platform.

“The advancements made to the latest version of PAN-OS 8.0 address some of the key challenges customers in the Philippines face in their digital transformation journey. We provide a holistic approach in support of policies and programs in place to prevent successful cyberattacks. We help secure cyberspace so cloud computing can flourish unimpeded and all stakeholders can realize the promises of digital transformation.” says Kelvin Chin, Country Manager of the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Palo Alto Networks areas of innovation include cloud security, multi-method threat prevention, management at scale, new hardware, credential theft prevention which is unique for them and not available from other technology solutions providers.

Below is the official press release from the event so you would get most of the technical details regarding the new features.

Palo Alto Networks Extends Safe Application Enablement and Breach Prevention from the Network to the Cloud with Enhancements to its Next-Generation

Security Platform

New PAN-OS 8.0, Aperture Features and Virtual Firewall Models Enable Customers to Safely Embrace New Cloud Infrastructure; Achieve Security at Speed and Agility of the Cloud

Palo Alto Networks, the next-generation security company, today announced advancements to its Next-Generation Security Platform that extend the ability for customer organizations 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 organizations 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 organizations 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 organization’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 organizations establish an effective and consistent security posture.  

Palo Alto has integrated more than 70 new cloud and SaaS features in this next-generation security platform. The PAN-OS 8.0 feature highlights include the following:

·         Expanded security for public and private clouds, including optimized 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 new VM-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 virtualized 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 the Philippines

According to the 2016 Cloud Readiness Index published by the Asia Cloud Computing Association, the Philippines ranked #9 but scored only 3.5 in cybersecurity posture to effectively combat cyberattacks. A robust cloud computing outlook for the Philippines got an even bigger push when the recently-established Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) adopted a cloud-first policy, making the Philippines one of the first countries in the world to do so.

“The advancements made to the latest version of PAN-OS 8.0 address some of the key challenges customers in the Philippines face in their digital transformation journey. We provide a holistic approach in support of policies and programs in place to prevent successful cyberattacks. We help secure cyberspace so cloud computing can flourish unimpeded and all stakeholders can realize the promises of digital transformation.”

-          Kelvin Chin, Country Manager of the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam

PAN-OS 8.0 is now available globally to customers of Palo Alto Networks with a current support contract. 

To learn more about the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform, visit: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/products/platforms.html.