The New Frontier of Agentic Development: Accelerating Developer Productivity

The world of software development is undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by the rise of AI agents and autonomous tools. Factory is advancing this shift through agent-native development, a new paradigm where developers focus on high-level design and agents, called Droids, handle the execution. Designed to support work across the software development lifecycle, these agents enable a new mode of development, delivering significant gains in speed and productivity, without sacrificing developer control.

As developer workflows increasingly rely on autonomous development agents, the way software is built evolves. This shift introduces important security considerations, such as prompt injection, sensitive data loss, unsafe URL access and malicious code execution, which, if left unaddressed, can undermine the very benefits these agents offer. Accelerating productivity depends not just on deploying agents, but on deploying them securely. This is where Palo Alto Networks, with its purpose-built AI security platform, Prisma^® AIRS™, plays a critical role.

The Productivity Paradox: Where Agents Introduce Risk

Autonomous agents operating across the software development lifecycle accelerate developer productivity, while also introducing a complex, language-driven threat surface that traditional security tools are not equipped to handle. As a result, new risks emerge, such as prompt injection or leaking secrets that extend beyond the visibility and control assumptions of traditional security approaches. Addressing these considerations is essential to preserving the benefits that agentic development provides.

Recognizing this shift, Palo Alto Networks has introduced targeted capabilities to accelerate secure development workflows. These efforts focus on three critical defense areas: preventing prompt injection, blocking sensitive data leaks and enabling robust malicious code detection capabilities, all of which are necessary to secure the full lifecycle of agent-driven systems.

The Solution: Securing Agentic Workflows for Acceleration

The solution is designed to convert security challenges directly into deployment confidence, dramatically accelerating productivity. By natively integrating Prisma AIRS within Factory’s Droid Shield Plus, the platform is able to inspect all large language model (LLM) interactions, including prompts, responses and subsequent tool calls, to enable comprehensive security across each interaction with the agent.

Prisma AIRS is a comprehensive platform designed to provide organizations with the visibility and control needed to safeguard AI agents across any environment. The platform continuously monitors agent behavior in real time to detect and prevent threats unique to agent-driven systems.

How Security Drives Speed

Embedding security natively into the Factory platform enables two crucial outcomes. To start, it delivers a secure, agent-native development experience for every developer, fostering immediate trust in the integrity of the generated code and documentation. This assurance removes friction often associated with AI-powered workflows, which can accelerate enterprise adoption and scaling of the Factory platform across the organization.

When developers can trust the agents and the integrity of the generated code and documentation, they can innovate faster and deploy with greater confidence. Instead of waiting for security reviews or dealing with fragmentation, security is woven seamlessly into the development lifecycle.

The integration follows a clear API Intercept design pattern:

• When a user enters a prompt or initiates work in Factory, Prisma AIRS intercepts the workflow. If a malicious prompt is detected, the platform can add logic to coach or block the user.

• Similarly, after the LLM generates code, Prisma AIRS intercepts the generated content. If secrets are detected, the platform again adds logic to coach or block the result before it reaches Factory or the user.

This real-time inspection of prompts and generated code enables development teams to be protected against threats, such as privilege escalation, prompt injection and malicious code execution, without disrupting developer velocity.

Deploy Bravely

Prisma AIRS 2.0 establishes a unified foundation for scalable and secure AI innovation. By combining Factory’s agent-native development platform with the threat detection capabilities of Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS, organizations gain a powerful advantage. Together, this approach helps organizations adopt agentic development with confidence by embedding security directly into the development experience.

For enterprises looking to confidently scale AI automation and realize the immense productivity gains offered by Factory’s Droids, integrating Prisma AIRS is the next step. This combined approach enables teams to "Deploy Bravely." To learn more about this strategic partnership and integration, see our latest integration announcement and review the Droid Shield Plus integration documentation.

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Key Takeaways for Secure Agentic Development

When adopting Factory with Prisma AIRS, enterprises realize immediate benefits that accelerate their AI strategy:

1. Specialized Threat Defense
   Enterprises gain real-time, targeted protection against agent-specific threats, specifically prompt injection attacks and data leaks, which legacy tools cannot address.
2. Native, Seamless Security
   Moving from a fragmented review process to a continuous, automated defense via API Interception, security enables compliance without slowing down development velocity.
3. Deployment Confidence
   The native integration transforms security risks into operational assurance, accelerating the large-scale enterprise adoption and scaling of your Factory agent-native automation initiatives.

The post Prisma AIRS Secures the Power of Factory’s Software Development Agents appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Artificial intelligence has shifted to being the primary engine for market leadership. To compete, enterprises are shifting from general-purpose computing to AI factories, specialized infrastructures designed to manage the entire lifecycle of AI. However, this transition requires robust security without sacrificing performance and efficiency.

We are proud to announce that Palo Alto Networks Prisma^® AIRS™, accelerated on the NVIDIA BlueField data processing unit (DPU), is now part of the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory validated design.

The integrated solution embeds zero trust security directly into the AI infrastructure, providing comprehensive protection without impacting AI performance. By deploying Palo Alto Networks Prisma^® AIRS™ Network Intercept directly onto the NVIDIA BlueField and extending to the cloud, Prisma AIRS establishes an essential zero trust governance fabric for the AI factory, enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation while maintaining control.

This critical architectural shift enables optimal AI performance and infrastructure efficiency by offloading security processing to an isolated domain, while leveraging the DPU's hardware acceleration via NVIDIA DOCA to enforce security policies at line speed. The implementation also leverages real-time workload information captured using DOCA Argus, which is then passed to Cortex XSIAM^® where it is used for AI-driven responses using the Cortex XSOAR^® orchestration platform.

Rich Campagna, SVP Product Management, Palo Alto Networks said:

The AI Factory is the new engine for value creation, and securing it is a board-level imperative. The validation of Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS accelerated with NVIDIA BlueField within the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory enables a new security architecture for the AI era. We are embedding trust directly into the infrastructure, giving leaders the confidence to safeguard their proprietary intelligence and deploy AI bravely.

Kevin Deierling, senior vice president of Networking at NVIDIA said:

AI is transforming every industry and security must evolve to protect AI factories. To be scalable, security must be distributed and embedded within the AI infrastructure. This is achieved with NVIDIA BlueField running Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS to deliver robust, runtime security for the AI factory, with optimal AI performance and efficiency.

Deploy AI Bravely with a Future-Proof Foundation

The Future of Secure AI Factories

In addition to deploying Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS on NVIDIA BlueField in a distributed model, it’s essential to maintain a centralized Hyperscale Security Firewall (HSF) cluster at the ingress and egress points of the AI factory to enforce a defense-in-depth strategy. Beyond network segmentation, individual workloads can selectively route traffic through hyperscale clusters to detect advanced application-layer threats and prevent lateral movement. These hyperscale firewall clusters scale elastically with demand, delivering session resiliency and the high availability required for critical AI operations.

This architecture fundamentally improves the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for AI infrastructure. By isolating security functions on BlueField, enterprises enable 100% of host computing resources to be dedicated to AI applications. This elimination of resource contention allows the AI Factory to maximize token throughput and capital efficiency.

This validated design is the blueprint for immediate efficiency. It provides a seamless path for enterprises to shift from general-purpose clusters to secure AI factory infrastructure without costly overhauls. More importantly, this collaboration establishes an unparalleled roadmap for future-proofing your investment. By securing operations with the high-performance NVIDIA BlueField-3 today, the architecture is inherently ready for the next generation, NVIDIA BlueField-4. This forward compatibility helps AI factories immediately handle gigascale demands, scaling up to 6X the compute power and doubling the bandwidth when BlueField-4 becomes available.

The inclusion of the Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS platform in the NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory Validated Design bolsters enterprise AI security. By establishing the zero trust governance fabric of Prisma AIRS runtime security on NVIDIA BlueField, organizations gain a comprehensive defense. Proprietary and sensitive data is secured throughout the entire stack, and models are protected from adversarial threats, such as prompt injection attacks. With Prisma AIRS, the world's most comprehensive AI security platform, leaders gain the confidence to innovate and deploy AI bravely. This validated design is the essential blueprint for securely accelerating your market leadership without compromising security.

Join our "How to Secure the AI Factory" breakout session at NVIDIA GTC 2026, March 16-19, in San Jose, CA to hear more about this transformative solution and accelerate your AI innovation securely.

The post Palo Alto Networks Announces Support for NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Transforming Real-Time Protection with Cloud-Delivered Security Services

Discover how unified prevention provides IT leaders with real-time protection across every attack surface.

The line between innovation and exposure has never been blurred in today’s hyperconnected digital world. Every new device, application and cloud workload expands the modern attack surface, creating endless opportunities for adversaries who are scaling faster and becoming more sophisticated than ever before. The threat landscape is no longer defined by isolated malware or phishing emails. The modern attack surface has evolved into a dynamic, adaptive ecosystem, driven by automation and artificial intelligence. Traditional security is no longer enough against AI-powered adversaries; protecting the modern attack surface demands a unified, intelligent Cloud-Delivered Security Services (CDSS) platform.

Attackers have learned to weaponize the same innovations that once gave defenders an advantage. Generative AI now enables them to craft convincing phishing messages, generate polymorphic malware that changes with every delivery, and automate reconnaissance at an unprecedented scale. Ransomware groups operate with the speed and agility of modern startups, using AI to identify weaknesses while staying one step ahead of detection. The result is an era where breaches unfold in minutes rather than days. Organizations are left with little room for error, underscoring the urgent need for security that goes beyond traditional approaches.

The Power of a Unified, Cloud-Delivered Security Service Platform

The power of our Cloud-Delivered Security Services lies in our ability to bring together every layer of protection into a single, intelligent, connected system. This unified platform combines Advanced Threat Prevention, Advanced WildFire^® (AWF), Advanced DNS Security (ADNS) and Advanced URL Filtering (AURL) into a single AI-powered fabric that operates at the speed of the cloud.

Powered by Precision AI^®, this framework delivers real-time contextual awareness across every stage of the attack lifecycle. It continuously analyzes billions of signals across networks, users and applications to transform raw data into actionable insights. This capability enables organizations to move from reactive detection to proactive prevention, stopping threats before they can disrupt operations.

Every day, our CDSS services analyze up to 5.43 billion new events, detect nearly 8.95 million never-before-seen attacks, and block up to 30.9 billion threats inline. This scale of visibility is strengthened by AI that’s trained on shared threat data from more than 70,000 customers, creating a powerful network effect that delivers patient-zero prevention everywhere. This depth of intelligence provides the visibility and context needed to understand and stop even the most sophisticated attacks as they evolve.

Shared telemetry flows naturally across services, helping ensure threats are detected and prevented without operating in silos. A phishing domain identified by Advanced DNS Security can immediately inform Advanced URL Filtering to block the malicious site. When Advanced WildFire uncovers a new zero-day technique or malicious artifact, that intelligence is shared instantly across the CDSS intelligence layer. Inline services, like Advanced Threat Prevention and Advanced URL Filtering, are enabled to strengthen protections in real time without manual intervention.

For IT leaders and security teams, this unified approach delivers comprehensive visibility and protection that keeps pace with their environment. Continuous intelligence adapts as conditions change, reducing complexity and improving operational efficiency. With consistent policy enforcement, faster decision-making and unified management across the enterprise, organizations can shift their focus from maintenance to innovation and growth.

The Moment Traditional Security Stopped Being Enough

There was a time when traditional network security was enough. Perimeter defenses and signature-based tools could reliably detect and block most threats before they caused harm. For years, this layered approach gave organizations a sense of confidence and control. But that moment has passed.

Our Unit 42® team has found that attacks are now faster, more sophisticated and more disruptive than ever, with 86% of major incidents in 2024 resulting in business disruption. This shift underscores how quickly traditional defenses are being outpaced and why yesterday’s security models no longer match today’s threat landscape.

Traditional, siloed architectures simply cannot keep up with modern attackers. What once served as a strong defense is now outmatched by adversaries who use AI to move faster and slip through the cracks of static security controls. Attackers no longer need to rely on predictable patterns or known exploits. They can use machine learning to probe defenses, mimic legitimate activity and disguise malicious activity within normal traffic, allowing them to bypass systems once they are considered unbreakable.

Older security products that depend on static signatures or manual policy updates cannot match this speed and scale. They respond to what has already happened, not to what is happening right now. By the time a new rule is written or a patch is applied, the threat has already evolved. Fragmented visibility and delayed response times give adversaries the upper hand, leaving IT teams defending blind against threats that adapt and shift faster than their defenses ever could.

In an effort to compensate, many organizations continue to add more tools: One for web filtering, one for DNS, one for malware analysis and one for data protection. While each solution provides value, they rarely work together. The result is an overcomplicated ecosystem of disconnected products that create visibility gaps, duplicate alerts, inconsistent policy enforcement and operational overhead. These gaps are exactly where attackers find their opportunity.

The moment traditional security stopped being enough was the moment attackers learned to think and move like machines. The rise of AI-powered threats marked the end of static defense and the beginning of a new kind of warfare, one that demands prevention and is predictive, adaptive and unified.

Today, enterprises don’t need more point products. They need a single, intelligent security fabric so they can see, understand and act across every vector, from DNS to SaaS to endpoint, in one coordinated motion. Attackers increasingly weaponize GenAI to craft more evasive phishing pages, malware and domain infrastructures. So, security teams must rely on defenses that can counter these techniques in real time by effectively battling AI with AI.

That is where cloud-delivered security services (CDSS) redefine the game, bringing AI-driven prevention to every corner of the network.

Your Defense Is Only as Strong as What’s Enabled

Having the proper security tools is only part of the equation. Real protection comes when those tools are fully enabled, integrated and working together to secure the organization. Cloud-delivered security services deliver their greatest value when they are live and continuously analyzing traffic, sharing intelligence and adapting in real time to support the business.

Too often, organizations have the right capabilities in place but leave them underutilized or inactive. Protection begins the moment each service is turned on and working in unison to deliver real-time prevention at scale. Ensuring that these capabilities are fully enabled and actively defending the network is what turns investment into impact.

Prevention is about readiness, not reaction. The most resilient organizations are those that activate early, integrate completely and allow automation to amplify what human oversight cannot. When IT leaders enable Advanced Threat Prevention, AWF, ADNS and AURL, prevention becomes continuous, intelligent and aligned with the pace of modern threats.

The power of our CDSS lies in both their advanced technology and the unity they create. Together, these services form an intelligent defense that connects detection, prevention and response into one seamless operation, all powered by Precision AI.

Now, with AI reshaping both innovation and risk, CDSS helps organizations stay confidently ahead. IT leaders who enable these capabilities strengthen visibility, simplify operations and elevate their overall security posture.

Fully enable your defenses and have them ready to prevent threats at each stage of the attack lifecycle. Learn more about activating CDSS through Strata™ Cloud manager or speak with your Palo Alto Networks representative to see how unified, AI-powered prevention can strengthen your organization’s security posture.

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Key Takeaways

1. Traditional Security Is Insufficient Against Modern Threats
   The rise of AI and automation has created an era in which attackers move faster and are more sophisticated than traditional, siloed security products can handle, leading to an increasing number of major incidents that disrupt business.
2. Unified Cloud-Delivered Security Services (CDSS) Are Necessary for Proactive Prevention
   Protecting the modern attack surface requires a single, intelligent, connected CDSS platform that unifies all layers of protection (e.g., Advanced Threat Prevention, AWF, ADNS, AURL) into an AI-powered fabric, enabling proactive, real-time prevention rather than reactive detection.
3. Real Protection Depends on Full Activation and Integration
   Having the right security tools is only part of the solution. The greatest value and protection are realized when your fully enabled CDSS is integrated and working in unison to continuously analyze traffic and share intelligence.

The post The Power of Unity appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

From Fragmented Fences to Cohesive Control

The attack surface for today’s enterprises is incredibly heterogeneous and dynamic. Applications and data are in constant motion, spanning public clouds, private data centers and edge locations. Users connect from anywhere.

For security leaders, this environment has led to an explosion in not only operational complexity, but in many cases, uncertainty. ​​Together, Nutanix and Palo Alto Networks enable security to finally match the speed and scale of these dynamic hybrid cloud environments.

The security ecosystem has become vast and complex. Point solutions accumulate to address specific gaps, yet each adds another interface, another policy language and another integration to manage. However well intentioned, this sprawl can lead directly to fractured visibility, overlapping tools and operational fatigue.

Elevate Perimeter Protection to Defense-in-Depth

Enterprises today face unprecedented security complexity as hybrid and multicloud environments become the new normal. Currently, 94% of enterprises use some form of cloud service, while 89% report having a multicloud strategy in place. This distributed reality means security is paramount: while managing cloud spending is the number one operational challenge (82% overall), security remains a major concern, affecting 79% of all organizations.

Hybrid cloud adoption offers agility, but it also introduces distinct security challenges that strain traditional approaches. Adversaries have taken notice. Hybrid and multicloud environments are prime targets because they connect sensitive data, privileged accounts and critical systems across public, and on-premises infrastructure. Perimeter-based security models, built for static networks and centralized data centers, cannot keep pace in a world where apps and data continuously move between platforms.

Defense-in-depth has become essential for addressing the inherent dynamism of today’s environments. Network visibility is required to monitor and contain east-west traffic and lateral movement of threats inside cloud environments. Identity controls must verify every user, device and interaction across a distributed workforce. Data protection must follow sensitive information as it traverses multiple clouds, data centers and edge locations.

Yet managing these protections as distinct layers is no longer viable. Each cloud provider introduces its own native security controls. Each additional tool adds another interface and another policy set to maintain. Defense-in-depth only achieves its purpose when its layers are fully unified, providing consistent control enforcement from the edge to the core, comprehensive visibility across traffic, and essential data protections for all workloads, wherever they reside.

Freedom of Choice Without Fragmentation

Hybrid environments span public clouds, private infrastructure, SaaS ecosystems and legacy on-premises systems. No single vendor can realistically cover that entire landscape, and forcing security into a single closed ecosystem risks creating gaps where those environments meet.

The answer lies in an open ecosystem approach that allows organizations to assemble best-of-breed capabilities rather than being locked into a single provider’s stack.

This flexibility empowers security teams to adapt to the unique requirements of each environment while still operating through a unified security model. Policies can be applied consistently, intelligence can be shared across layers, and protections can move in step with workloads, regardless of platform. In short, this model can effectively support freedom of choice while relieving the operational burden of managing hybrid and multicloud security.

A Unified Security Layer Across Every Environment

Open ecosystems solve the problem of choice. What remains is the challenge of bringing those best-of-breed capabilities together into a solution that is coherent and scalable.

To transform defense-in-depth from a conceptual framework into a practical system aligned to the realities of hybrid and multicloud deployments, this unified layer should be built on core capabilities:

• Inline visibility for east-west traffic within virtualized and cloud environments, enabled by deploying next-generation firewalls directly inside virtual private networks:
  This approach inspects workload-to-workload traffic, identifies anomalous behavior and stops lateral movement before it spreads.
• Consistent policy enforcement across public cloud, private data centers and edge locations through a centralized management plane:
  A single set of policies should be authored once and pushed everywhere, assuring a consistent security posture across all clouds and environments.
• Abstraction of security intent from network coordinates through tag-driven automation, an approach that allows security policies to be expressed in terms of workload attributes (rather than IPs or locations):
  These protections follow workloads automatically as they move. Through integration with orchestration pipelines, this approach aligns controls with rapid application rollouts in CI/CD workflows, all without manual reconfiguration.

With these core capabilities, security can finally catch up to the fluidity promised by hybrid cloud operating models.

Explore how Palo Alto Networks and Nutanix, work together to make this unified vision a reality, including joint offerings, like Palo Alto Networks secured Nutanix clusters with VM-Series Firewalls for AWS^® and Microsoft^® Azure.

The post Untangling Hybrid Cloud Security appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.