Prisma Access 2.0: Palo Alto Networks Adds ML Security, Self-Healing Networks and a Cloud SWG

Palo Alto Networks has released Prisma Access 2.0, the latest version of its cloud-delivered security platform for people working from any location, which the company calls the most complete in the industry. The update is built around the idea that work keeps moving to new places and still has to be secured wherever it happens without giving up speed, protection or performance. Its main additions are infrastructure that repairs itself to keep the user experience smooth, security powered by machine learning to stop attacks as they happen, cloud secure web gateway (SWG) functions that work wherever a user is, and a redesigned cloud management console.

Why web-only protection falls short

The sudden move to home working in 2020 drove a huge wave of cloud adoption. Users, applications and data are now spread everywhere, and enterprises are struggling to secure them. In the company's view, existing cloud security services cover too few applications and protect them poorly. It says 53% of threats aimed at remote workers target applications that are not web-based, which leaves organisations exposed if their tools guard web traffic alone.

Palo Alto Networks describes Prisma Access as the market leader and says it takes a different route: it secures traffic from every application, web-based or otherwise, with full security from one cloud platform, while keeping access fast and the user experience tuned. According to the company, version 2.0 raises the standard further. It claims ten times the throughput of rival products, giving quicker remote connections, and 4.3 million security updates a day, roughly 25 times as many as its nearest competitor, so that customers can be confident their users and data are protected.

What the new version adds

The company lists the following improvements to performance, security and management:

• Cloud management console. A new cloud-based management experience delivers security updates and best practices in real time, which Palo Alto Networks says puts it well ahead of competitors and produces the best security outcomes.
• Autonomous Digital Experience Management (DEM). The platform can run self-healing infrastructure that fixes network faults automatically, with the aim of giving remote staff a consistently good digital experience.
• Security based on machine learning. Inline machine learning blocks unknown and zero-day attacks in real time. Machine learning also works through large volumes of telemetry to recommend security policies automatically, tightening protection faster than a security team could respond by hand.
• Cloud SWG with an explicit proxy. An explicit proxy has been added to the Prisma Access Cloud SWG, so customers can move off older proxy-based products onto a full cloud-delivered platform without redesigning their network. Later, they can switch to a more secure connection method in Prisma Access that covers every app, port and protocol, web and non-web alike.
• Support for the CloudBlades API platform. CloudBlades integrates third-party services across the SASE offering. In this release it allows approved third-party security and infrastructure services to be plugged in with little effort, starting with remote browser isolation (RBI) services from major vendors.
• Scale and access. Prisma Access 2.0 offers a simplified user experience, service-level agreements guaranteeing application performance, and several Prisma Access locations in Malaysia with built-in redundancy, running on leading hyperscale cloud providers. To serve a workforce that is becoming hybrid for the long term, it adds capacity automatically as demand grows and, the company says, delivers ten times the encrypted tunnel throughput of its closest rival.

The release also brings IoT security features that help organisations defend against IoT threats without installing extra sensors or appliances, alongside CloudBlades for simpler integration of cloud-delivered third-party services, beginning with RBI.

Remote work as a long-term strategy

Simon Green, president for Japan and Asia Pacific at Palo Alto Networks, said most organisations in the region and elsewhere now treat remote work as a critical long-term strategy, as they adopt the cloud and rethink the employee experience. Secure access to every application, with a well-tuned user experience, has therefore become a business requirement. He said the company is working with a growing number of organisations to shift their security architecture towards a cloud-delivered model able to connect any user safely to any application from anywhere.

Eric Parizo, principal analyst at Omdia, said 2020 had unexpectedly made remote work normal for millions of people worldwide. Despite hopes raised by COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, he expects remote work to last, with the cloud as the means of delivering it. In his view, the organisations that do well will be those that protect their data from cyberattacks while also giving remote staff a smooth, dependable digital experience. Omdia expects cloud-delivered security approaches such as Prisma Access to become the dominant architecture for securing and enabling the future of work.