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Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud

22 April 2026 at 18:00

Expand Strategic Collaboration to Secure the AI Enterprise

The transition from generative AI to agentic AI represents one of the most significant shifts in the history of enterprise technology. As organizations move from simple chatbots to autonomous agents that can execute business processes, the attack surface isn't just changing, it's exploding.

At Google Cloud Next 2026 in Las Vegas, Palo Alto Networks is proud to announce a series of groundbreaking integrations with Google Cloud. These innovations are designed to do more than just monitor the new AI-driven landscape; they are built to secure it by design. AI deployment is currently outpacing AI governance. By embedding our security platform into Google Cloud’s infrastructure, we are giving today’s enterprises the foundation to become the autonomous organizations of tomorrow.

Here is a look at the four major milestones of our partnership being unveiled this week.

Secure AI Agents with Google Cloud + Prisma AIRS

As autonomous AI agents become the new enterprise standard, security can no longer be an afterthought; it must be architectural. By integrating Prisma AIRS™ natively with Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, we provide the proactive defenses required to govern complex agentic workflows. This integration ensures that as you scale your autonomous workforce, your security scales with it, providing comprehensive operational integrity without hindering the speed of innovation.

We are delivering capabilities across three critical pillars:

  • Protecting Agent-Specific Runtime Risks: In an agentic ecosystem, the primary risk is unauthorized or a destructive action taken by the AI agents themselves. Prisma AIRS secures the "agent-to-tool" interface, preventing poisoned context from triggering malicious scripts or destructive actions. The solution monitors agent execution in real-time, so agents cannot leak sensitive credentials or tool schemas, maintaining the boundary between agents and their access to enterprise data.
  • Securing the GenAI Application Surface: Modern AI applications and agents require a secure-by-design approach. Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security™ provides prevention of more than 30 adversarial prompt injection and jailbreak techniques, as well as malicious code and URLs within LLM outputs. Prisma AIRS utilizes over 1,000 predefined patterns out of the box and ML-powered Enterprise DLP to stop sensitive data leakage.
  • Enforcing Enterprise AI Safety and Grounding: Trust in AI is built on the consistency and safety of its output. Prisma AIRS allows organizations to define safety policies in natural language and filter toxic content across eight distinct categories to protect brand reputation. Using contextual grounding, Prisma AIRS can prevent misleading outputs that contradict internal RAG data, keeping agents tied to real facts.

This integration ensures that as you scale your autonomous workforce, your security posture scales with it, providing operational integrity without hindering the speed of innovation.

Security-as-Code for Prisma AIRS Integration with Application Design Center (ADC)

The traditional bolt-on approach to security is no longer viable in a cloud-first world. Google Cloud’s Application Design Center (ADC) is revolutionizing how applications are built, using an intuitive canvas and natural language via Gemini Code Assist.

Palo Alto Networks is announcing that it will be published as a template within the Application Design Center, providing more capabilities to engineering teams:

  • Drag-and-Drop Security – Visually "snap" VM-Series firewalls and Prisma AIRS AI protections directly into network flows.
  • AI-Driven Architecture – Use natural language prompts to generate secure-by-default, multiregion architectures.
  • Simultaneous Deployment – Deploy entire application stacks and security services in a single, unified workflow, ensuring protection is present from the very first minute of deployment.

Zero-Day Protection at Scale with Advanced Malware Sandboxing for Google Cloud NGFW Enterprise

The battle against malware has shifted to the cloud. Modern attacks are faster, more evasive and capable of bypassing traditional defenses.

That is why we are excited to announce Advanced WildFire®, powered by Palo Alto Networks, natively integrated into Google Cloud NGFW Enterprise, delivering AI-driven malware prevention directly within Google Cloud environments.

This integration embeds inline sandboxing and real-time threat intelligence directly into Google Cloud’s distributed firewall to stop advanced and unknown threats before they impact workloads, enabling:

  • Secure Detonation – Suspicious files are safely executed in a controlled sandbox environment to uncover hidden and unknown threats.
  • Inline Traffic Inspection – Inbound and outbound traffic is analyzed in real time to prevent lateral movement of malicious payloads across cloud environments.
  • AI-Driven Threat Prevention – Leverages global threat intelligence by Palo Alto Networks to block zero-day threats before they compromise workloads.

With Advanced WildFire embedded directly into Google Cloud NGFW Enterprise, organizations can extend consistent protection across their cloud infrastructure while maintaining operational simplicity.

Cloud NGFW Enterprise Advanced Malware Sandboxing will be available in Public Preview soon.

Defining the Future with the Google Cloud Marketplace

Palo Alto Networks has joined the Google Cloud Marketplace Agent-as-a-Service as a launch partner to introduce the Prisma AIRS Model Security agent. Operating as an Agent-as-a-Service, this solution scans AI models for vulnerabilities and policy noncompliance before they reach production.

Available in the Agent Gallery inside Gemini Enterprise, this marketplace offering runs entirely within the customer’s own Google Cloud environment, providing both new and existing Prisma AIRS users a seamless and simple deployment experience inside Gemini Enterprise.

Securing AI Innovation at Scale

The collaboration between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud is built on a shared vision: Security should be an accelerator for innovation, not a bottleneck. As we look toward the future of the AI-powered enterprise, our commitment remains to provide the most robust, platform-driven security for every workload, every agent and every interaction.

Want to see these integrations in action? Contact your Palo Alto Networks representative to learn more about how we are securing the future of the cloud together. If you’re attending Google Cloud Next 2026, join us at these sponsored sessions:

The post Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Scaling AI Agents with Confidence

22 April 2026 at 17:59

The Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks Partnership

As AI agents move into business-critical environments, they are transforming everything from security operations to internal workflows. However, scaling these AI applications introduces unprecedented hurdles for security executives, from detecting "shadow AI" and unsanctioned usage to governing complex nonhuman identities across multimodel environments.

To overcome these challenges, organizations need more than just tools; they need a layered architecture built on a foundation of platformization. The long-standing partnership between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud provides this essential framework, offering customers:

  • Integrated Security Ecosystems: Seamlessly manage the full agent lifecycle with visibility and observability across your entire AI infrastructure.
  • Jointly Engineered Solutions: Leverage over 80 co-engineered integrations designed to eliminate the tradeoff between a cloud-native experience and best-in-class security.
  • Proven Scale and Performance: Benefit from a partnership that has already delivered impactful, AI-driven solutions to protect joint customers from evolving threats.

Google Cloud Marketplace enables customers to discover, try, buy and use industry-leading applications that have been validated to run on Google Cloud. Palo Alto Networks has closed $2.4 billion in GCP bookings, helping address evolving customer needs, such as simplified procurement and seamless deployment.

Kevin Ichhpurani, President, Global Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud:

We’re pleased to celebrate Palo Alto Networks as our Global Technology Partner of the Year… Palo Alto Networks has consistently delivered impactful, AI-driven security solutions that help Google Cloud customers better protect their organizations from evolving threats.

The extensive, long-standing collaboration between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud includes jointly engineered offerings, built on 80 solution integrations that help customers build, run and secure AI-enhanced cloud infrastructure and applications with end-to-end protection.

Palo Alto Networks Wins 2026 Global Technology Google Cloud Partner of the Year Award

At Google Cloud Next, Palo Alto Networks has been recognized with four 2026 Google Cloud Partner of the Year awards. By partnering with Google Cloud, we help customers securely leverage the power of the cloud and AI-driven growth with comprehensive cloud-native security offerings. Wins included the following:

  • Global Technology
  • Marketplace: Technology
  • Marketplace: Security
  • Security: Artificial Intelligence

These Partner of the Year Awards underscore our expanding partnership with Google Cloud. We share a mutual dedication to improve cloud, network security and AI observability, as well as the progress we’ve made in protecting our joint customers from today’s and tomorrow’s cyberthreats.

By combining our industry-leading security engineering with Google Cloud’s industry-leading cloud infrastructure and services, we’re providing advanced protection for every stage of a customer’s digital journey. We want customers to feel secure from the formative steps of lifting workloads into the cloud, to expanding digital innovation across platforms, to reaching new levels of business scale and velocity.

Protecting these journeys requires alignment and modernization of infrastructure (lift and shift), applications (refactoring) and user access models (zero trust). It requires an advanced AI drive security operations transformation across all IT domains, leveraging machine learning and sophisticated models to minimize human interventions and unguarded sides.

Our relationship with Google Cloud is based on a deep engineering relationship, yielding integrated solutions that help customers achieve better digital outcomes. Our partnership can help your organization eliminate tradeoffs between a cloud-native experience and best-in-class security. We have more than 80 co-engineered integrations, helping to improve and protect hybrid workers, cloud migrations and application modernization efforts.

We remain committed to our goals of outpacing cyberthreats, helping customers at every stage of their cloud journey, and creating a world where tomorrow is more secure than today.

Whether you’re just beginning your cloud journey or managing complex transformational projects, our jointly engineered, AI-driven solutions are designed to deliver seamless, scalable security. Explore the dynamic partnership between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud. Join us at Google Cloud Next '26 in Las Vegas from April 22-24 to discover how to secure your development lifecycle from code to cloud.

The post Scaling AI Agents with Confidence appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Announcing ADEM Universal Agent

Delivering Exceptional Branch Experience for Modern Distributed Enterprises

In modern enterprises, the "network perimeter" is a relic of the past. As organizations scale globally to support home offices, satellite branches and third-party clouds, the challenge has shifted. Now the onus is on optimizing the end-to-end digital experience. And to maintain that edge, enterprises must operate at machine speed, supported by agentic autonomous operations. They must make sure that every user, regardless of their location or underlying hardware, experiences uninterrupted performance, seamless security and peak user experience from “Day 0” to keep pace with the speed of business.

To meet this demand, we are proud to announce the general availability of the Autonomous Digital Experience Management Universal Agent, or ADEM Universal Agent, for Prisma® Access customers. This breakthrough marks a significant milestone in our mission to automate deployment and operations by unifying fragmented infrastructure and providing the flexibility to deploy, using infrastructure hardware of your choice.

Continued Data Gap Is a Roadblock for Agentic Operations

Organizations are shifting toward "best-of-breed" architectures to operate at machine speed, but they often lack the unified telemetry required for automated operations. Any tool built on top of this architecture to enhance the digital experience is only as effective as the data it consumes. Traditional monitoring tools often lack the precise data and contextual correlation needed to drive agentic resolution. In this siloed landscape, three critical gaps have emerged:

  • Data Entropy: Fragmented data is inconsistent and leads to unreliable automation. Without unified data, automated workflows become unreliable and risky to execute at scale.
  • Hardware Dependency: Traditional monitoring agents often require specific hardware platforms, which can severely limit deployment speed and the ability to adapt to diverse customer infrastructures.
  • Blind Spots: Data entropy and hardware dependency have resulted in data gaps, and therefore visibility gaps at the edge, and as a result, automated systems cannot pinpoint root causes, leaving IT teams trapped in manual troubleshooting.

To operate at machine speed, enterprises need more than visibility. They need a unified, high-fidelity data engine to create the foundation of fail-safe autonomous operations for a stellar digital experience.

The Universal Agent Contributes to a Unified Data Engine for Agentic Autonomy

The ADEM Universal Agent is a hardware-agnostic solution that can be deployed on any branch site connecting to Prisma Access. It can be hosted on virtual machines or Docker containers, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. ADEM Universal Agent transforms branch experiences by providing a unified data engine for agentic operations:

  • Deploy Anywhere and Monitor Everywhere
    The Universal Agent can be deployed at any branch site connected to Prisma Access, enabling IT teams to run synthetic tests from the branch regardless of underlying infrastructure hardware.
  • Bridge the Gap Between Vendor-Locked Silos and Machine-Speed Operations
    The Universal Agent aggregates disparate environment data into key metrics geared toward agentic operations, enabling IT teams to move beyond fragmented troubleshooting, toward unified, proactive governance of their entire IT footprint.
  • Accelerate Troubleshooting with Granular Path Analysis
    When a user in a remote branch reports a slowdown, IT teams need more than a "red/green" status light. The Universal Agent provides a granular path analysis, delivering a hop-by-hop visualization with both overlay and underlay tunnel metrics, enabling them to quickly pinpoint bottlenecks.

Thus, by mapping the entire path from the Universal Agent to the target application, IT teams can pinpoint exactly where the friction lies.

  • Is it a local network issue?
  • An ISP (internet service provider) bottleneck?
  • A bottleneck at a handoff between providers?
  • Is the application's own network at fault?
Universal Agent example.
ADEM Universal Agent at a glance.

The Universal Agent Offers Inherent Security and Operational Simplicity

To help ensure that organizations can maintain peak performance and security amidst a constant stream of changes, the Universal Agent is built on a foundation of robust features:

  • Native Integration with Prisma Access for Accelerated Troubleshooting
    The Universal Agent is natively integrated with Prisma Access and automatically discovers the POP (Point of Presence) location and IP infrastructure where the branch site is connected to monitor overlay and underlay, hop-by-hop, ISP health, all the way to the application to deliver precise root-cause analysis.
From the Universal Agent to the network node.
Native integration with Prisma Access.
  • Simplified Deployment at Scale
    IT teams can deploy and manage multiple agents at scale with just a few clicks from the Strata™ Cloud Manager Platform. Through our autonomous AI operations platform, we leverage enriched telemetry to watch the network and proactively manage it all from a unified platform.
Dashboard of Access Experience Management
Bulk deployment of Universal Agent with just a few clicks.
  • Comprehensive Full-Stack Visibility
    We utilize a single agent per branch site to deliver deep visibility into both overlay and underlay tunnel metrics. This granular path analysis allows IT teams to pinpoint network bottlenecks using hop-by-hop visualizations from the Universal Agent all the way to the target application.
Application Performance Metrics
Hop-by-hop visualization with overlay and underlay tunnel metrics.

The Universal Agent Optimizes End-to-End Digital Experience with Unified Operations

The launch of the ADEM Universal Agent represents a fundamental shift in how we architect the distributed enterprise, from moving beyond managing data gaps into agentic, machine-speed orchestration. Natively integrated with Prisma Access, the Universal Agent synthesizes disparate network data across multiple branch sites into a unified, vendor-agnostic ecosystem. By eliminating the 'noise' of traditional monitoring, it provides the deterministic precision and real-time context required to fuel agentic autonomous operations, enabling every automated action to be accurate, impactful and optimized for a flawless digital experience.

Ready to gain complete application experience from all branch sites and remote users? Watch our announcement video below to see the Universal Agent in action. Visit the ADEM webpage for more information or request a demo.

The post Announcing ADEM Universal Agent appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Upwind Raises $250 Million at $1.5 Billion Valuation

26 January 2026 at 15:41

The CNAPP company will use the fresh investment to scale its runtime-first cloud security offering across data, AI and code.

The post Upwind Raises $250 Million at $1.5 Billion Valuation appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Comprehensive Google SecOps migration checklist for CISOs and SOC leaders

10 December 2025 at 13:49

There’s a clear trend emerging with many organizations transitioning from legacy SIEMs to Google SecOps. While the Google SIEM platform is powerful, in our experience working with enterprise clients, that power only reveals itself when security leaders make three early decisions correctly:

  • Detection strategy: Whether to migrate existing rules or start fresh with a green-field approach.
  • Data onboarding: How to scale ingestion across multi-cloud environments without breaking pipelines.
  • Operating model: Building workflows that prevent “alert debt” from piling up on day one.

The strategic message is clear. Treat SIEM detection management with the same diligence you treat core security architecture, and augment your analysts with AI-powered triage so your humans can focus on higher-order investigations.

Here’s a practical checklist for discovery, migration, and operational success, designed for CISOs and SOC leaders evaluating a move to Google SecOps.

NOTE: This blog post is relevant to anyone considering a Chronicle SIEM migration as Google SecOps is the new Google branding for Chronicle.

The tl;dr version of the Google SIEM migration checklist 

PhaseKey focus
Pre-MigrationInventory, pain-point assessment, business justification
MigrationTool selection, data ingestion, rule/dashboard migration, Integration, governance & risk
Post-MigrationMeasurement of success, continuous improvement, cost optimisation, governance & reporting

Full Google SecOps migration checklist

Let’s dive into the details for each phase of the migration process.

Pre-migration checklist: Establishing the baseline

  1. Inventory current environment
    • Catalogue all data sources feeding Splunk: log types, volumes (GB/day), retention policies, on-prem vs cloud vs multi-cloud.
    • Map all current detections, dashboards, reports, playbooks, SOAR workflows.
    • Identify any compliance/regulatory retention obligations (audit logs, legal hold).
    • Establish current licensing costs, infrastructure (forwarders, indexers), staffing.
  2. Assess SIEM performance & pain points
    • Are you seeing cost escalation vs benefit (slower detection, high false positives, low automation)?
    • Is the SIEM struggling with data volume growth, scalability, multi-cloud telemetry?
    • Are SOC analysts spending more time on infrastructure/configuration than investigations?
    • Are you able to integrate newer requirements (cloud workloads, containers, IoT/OT, multi-cloud) effectively? This 451 Research report indicates many orgs run multiple SIEMs due to tool sprawl.
  3. Define business & security objectives
    • What do you hope to achieve? E.g., faster detection/response, lower cost, improved coverages, cloud alignment.
    • What are the key metrics: mean time to detect (MTTD), mean time to respond (MTTR), cost-per-alert, false positive rate, regulatory coverage, etc.
    • What is your target SOC maturity in e.g., 12-24 months? Are you planning a cloud-first strategy, heavier automation/AI, less on-prem infrastructure?
  4. Build the migration justification
    • Prepare a comparative TCO/ROI: legacy SIEM vs cloud-native. Google SecOps materials claim e.g., “ingest and analyse your data at Google speed and scale” and highlight cost benefit.
    • Understand what it will cost to migrate: re-write detections, dashboards, data flows, training, potential downtime.
    • Present risk assessment: What happens if you don’t migrate (risk of obsolete tool, scaling failure, cost spirals)? The “Great SIEM Migration” guide argues that legacy tools may become “dinosaurs”.

Migration-phase checklist: Executing the transition

  1. Select migration path & vendor/partner support
  2. Data ingestion, normalization & compatibility
    • Ensure: all of your log types/sources in Splunk are supported by the new platform. Google SecOps supports ingestion of Splunk CIM logs.
    • Plan for data mapping: Splunk field names, dashboards, custom fields → new schema.
    • Address historic data: Will you migrate archives? Will you keep Splunk as store-only? Community posts warn that mapping old archives can be complex.
    • Validate performance: test ingestion, query latency, retention policies on the new platform.
  3. Detection rules, dashboards, SOAR workflows
    • Catalogue existing detection rules, dashboards, SOAR playbooks in Splunk.
    • Determine which can be reused, which need rewriting. Ensure parity: detection coverage, mapping to MITRE ATT&CK, business use-cases. Splunk claims strong out-of-box detection library.
    • Build and test new rules/playbooks in Google SecOps; validate they meet or exceed current performance (MTTD, MTTR, false positives).
    • Ensure analyst training and new workflows are adopted: new UI, new query language, new incident-investigation flows (Google SecOps offers “Gemini in security operations” natural-language assistant).
  4. Integration & ecosystem fit
    • Ensure that Google SecOps integrates with your existing tool-stack (EDR, identity, network, cloud logs, SOAR, threat intel). Google advertises 300+ SOAR integrations.
    • Confirm multi-cloud/on-prem data ingestion: check vendor statements.
    • Validate APIs, custom connectors, forwarder architecture. Splunk vs Google SecOps comparison note: Splunk emphasizes hybrid flexibility.
  5. Governance, compliance & retention
    • Check how historic data will be retained, archived, accessed, both for compliance (audits/regulators) and investigations.
    • Confirm where the data resides (region/residency rules), encryption, access controls. Google SecOps claims to treat all data as first-party.
    • Align on SLAs, incident response metrics, roles & responsibilities.
    • Define cut-over strategy: Will Splunk be decommissioned or kept in read-only mode? Define freeze date, dual-runs, parallel operations.
  6. Risk management & business continuity
    • Define fallback/rollback plans: If the new platform fails, do you have the old SIEM in warm standby?
    • Monitor for data loss/misalignment during migration (NXLog warns of risks).
    • Communicate to stakeholders: SOC analysts, business units, auditors. Ensure training and change-management.
    • Set benchmarks and metrics: Time to detect/resolve in new platform vs old; cost per alert; staff utilisation; alert volumes; false positives.

Post-migration checklist: Optimizing & sustaining value

  1. Validate outcomes & measure success
    • Measure MTTD, MTTR, alert volumes, analyst productivity pre- and post-migration.
    • Compare actual cost savings vs business case.
    • Assess detection coverage: Are all critical use-cases still covered? Are any gaps emerging?
    • Run periodic health checks (some vendors like CardinalOps offer detection-rule health monitoring with MITRE ATT&CK coverage for Google SecOps).
  2. Continuous improvement & SOC maturity evolution
    • SOC maturity doesn’t stop at migration. Use freed-up resources to focus on advanced use-cases (threat hunting, proactive detection, automation, investigations).
    • Tune detection rules, remove noise, refine playbooks.
    • Leverage AI/natural-language features (Google SecOps touts “Gemini in security operations”).
    • Plan for future: hybrid/multi-cloud expansions, new telemetry sources, OT/IoT, supply-chain threats.
  3. Decommission legacy infrastructure & optimise cost
    • If the migration path included decommissioning the old SIEM (or reducing its role), ensure you turn off unneeded licences/infra.
    • Monitor the cost model of the new platform: ingestion volumes, retention policies—ensure you don’t inadvertently pay for excess.
    • Re-allocate resources: freed licences, server hardware, staff time — invest into SOC capability rather than maintenance.
  4. Governance, audit and stakeholder reporting
    • Update your SOC governance frameworks: incident-response playbooks, escalation paths, KPIs aligned with the new platform.
    • Communicate to board/executive leadership key outcomes: improved detection/response, cost rationalization, strategic alignment.
    • Ensure audit/compliance reports reflect the new tooling (document changes, validate controls).
    • Set up periodic reviews of tool performance, vendor roadmap, SOC maturity.

Final thoughts

Migrating to Google SecOps isn’t a simple platform swap, it’s a redesign of how your SOC operates. The upside: cost efficiency, scale, and automation can be immediate. The risks: migration complexity, content gaps, and operational disruption are real and must be managed deliberately.

As a CISO or SOC leader, treat this as a transformation program. Use the table and/or the full Checklist above to drive decisions; follow a strategic landing plan to sequence work; and anchor on the three non-negotiables outlined above:

  1. A clear detection strategy (migrate only if the value is there; rebuild the rest in YARA-L),
  2. Data onboarding at scale with a parser matrix and cost guardrails, and
  3. An operating model that prevents alert debt from day one through automation and measurable KPIs.

If you want help getting there faster, we can provide a SIEM jumpstart (curated + bespoke YARA-L rules, MITRE gap analysis and coverage, detection reviews, continuous improvement with Intezer engineers), a parser/ingestion plan for multi-cloud, and of course, Intezer Forensic AI SOC’s triage to meet on day-one, 100% alert coverage with full auditability so your analysts focus on the few cases that truly need their context and expertise.

Learn more about how Intezer can help you with your SecOps migration.

The post Comprehensive Google SecOps migration checklist for CISOs and SOC leaders appeared first on Intezer.

The Browser Defense Playbook: Stopping the Attacks That Start on Your Screen

3 December 2025 at 01:00

85% of daily work occurs in the browser. Unit 42 outlines key security controls and strategies to make sure yours is secure.

The post The Browser Defense Playbook: Stopping the Attacks That Start on Your Screen appeared first on Unit 42.

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