Introducing Cortex XCOR: AI-Driven Observability that Delivers Autonomous Response with AI SRE

I’ve been tackling the observability problem for more than a decade, since before it was coined observability. From building internal monitoring for EC2 at AWS to building the observability platform for Uber, the holy grail was always to create a solution that would automatically tell you what the issues were and help remediate them, instead of just being a tool that showed you dashboards. But standing in the way were the foundational scale and cost challenges of cloud-native architectures, which is what my co-founder Rob Skillington and I solved by creating Chronosphere. 

With the ability to effectively manage observability data at scale and as we undergo another major industry shift with AI, we’re finally at a point in time where the technology available puts the holy grail within grasp. Six months after joining Palo Alto Networks, we’re taking a major step forward with the launch of Cortex XCOR - an AI-native observability platform that delivers on that long promise of automatically root causing the issue. 

Reimagining Observability for the Modern SDLC

Getting to this point required a fundamental leap in model intelligence. When generative AI was broadly released in late 2022, LLMs were intriguing, but the reasoning capabilities were rudimentary. Although we saw limited applications for chatbots and assistants within observability, those early models could only help the end user, they couldn’t ultimately solve the issue. They assisted investigations by summarizing logs or translating queries, but weren’t transformative. That changed in late 2025 with frontier models like OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet and Opus. 

My own AI moment in observability came a couple of months ago when our chat functionality evolved from acting like an assistant to functioning as an autonomous expert that gave me the answer and showed me how it got there. As I pushed our agents with increasingly complex scenarios, they began reasoning through problems far beyond their initial capabilities. Much like how LLMs have replaced my need for web search, our chat is now my primary interface in our product, completely overhauling how I interact with it. 

This shift for observability is needed now more than ever as operations teams struggle to keep up with the surge in AI-driven software development, caused by the same step up in reasoning capabilities from late 2025. Research shows that 42% of developers now report that AI writes at least half their code, up from 12% last year. Rapid code releases continuously expand the surface area for production failures and drive up the burden on developers and SREs to manually identify root causes. To match this velocity, observability needs to modernize now to avoid becoming the bottleneck for product innovation.

Introducing Cortex XCOR, the Next-Generation AI-Native Observability Platform

That is precisely why we are launching XCOR. We designed it to transform observability from static dashboards and manual remediation to an AI-first experience that automates both routine and complex investigations.

At the heart is our XCOR Operator, an AI assistant embedded throughout the platform that helps operations teams match AI-coding velocity. What makes the XCOR Operator especially powerful is that it understands the user intent and serves as the conversational interface for our specialized agents that execute behind the scenes. The user of an observability platform plays many roles depending on the situation: investigating incidents, tuning alerts and dashboards, optimizing data volumes, and so on. Each of these roles are mirrored by specialized AI agents that have been optimized to complete those task-specific workflows from end to end.

The most challenging role is the AI SRE - investigating an incident to get to the root cause and identify remediation. Triggered automatically when an alert fires, the AI SRE agent autonomously reasons through underlying issues and recommends actions and mitigations in under three minutes on average, with a 75% success rate of root cause analysis in complex production environments and a further 19% of incidents where the analysis was deemed useful. By comparison, manual responses can take 20 minutes just to locate the relevant issues, gather initial context and find the right on-call engineer.

None of this automated reasoning is possible without complete end-to-end visibility and context. With the recent acquisition of Embrace, we now bring together front-end Real User Monitoring (XCOR RUM) and proactive XCOR Synthetics with our backend and infrastructure observability to deliver a true, full-stack platform. RUM captures every web and mobile session in full fidelity without sampling, tying crashes and slow loads directly to session timelines, while synthetics simulates global user traffic to proactively catch regressions before they hit production.

Underpinning this full-stack visibility is the XCOR Fabric, which we engineered to provide our agents with rich, real-time institutional, application and infrastructure context and draws from:

• Knowledge Graph: A real-time, detailed model incorporating your infrastructure, applications and business logic. Unlike many other solutions, it normalizes and incorporates custom telemetry to provide the most complete context.
• Operational Memory: Institutional learnings and historical context captured from past incident investigations.
• User Behavior: Patterns revealing which specific queries and dashboards senior engineers rely on during active resolutions.
• Human Knowledge: Context pulled directly from runbooks, documentation, and operational files.

By delivering total visibility and grounding our AI agents in this deep operational context, XCOR delivers rapid root-cause analysis and recommends steps toward remediation.

Automated Optimization Continues to Deliver the Most Cost-Effective Platform on the Market

Yet observability without cost control is like an untrained puppy, adorable until it chews through your furniture, shoes and budget. Managing observability costs remains a persistent challenge because modern cloud and AI-native architectures produce massive volumes of telemetry data. We designed Chronosphere to solve this exact problem, and it remains a major pillar of XCOR. 

We help customers optimize data by an average of 89% without sacrificing visibility, earning top industry rankings for cost efficiency and the trust of industry leaders like OpenAI, DoorDash and Compass. Now with expanded consumption-based pricing models across the XCOR platform and granular consumption budgets that automatically adjust to usage patterns over time, we eliminate the tradeoff between critical visibility and rising costs. 

The quest for observability’s holy grail is finally within reach. As engineering teams race to keep pace with the speed and scale of AI-driven development, XCOR moves operations beyond static dashboards and manual troubleshooting toward true autonomous remediation. This is observability's AI moment.

The post Observability’s AI Moment appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

We are thrilled to announce that KDDI Corporation, a long-standing NextWave partner of Palo Alto Networks and a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) with whom we have built a strong partnership, has launched an innovative new service, "SASE Gateway powered by Palo Alto Networks," equipped with our latest "SP Interconnect (SPI)" architecture. 

As the implementation of AI in business operations and the shift to the cloud accelerate, and enterprise data becomes more distributed than ever, cyberattacks are also leveraging AI to become more advanced and sophisticated. In such an environment, enterprise security must completely transition from traditional perimeter defense to a Zero Trust architecture that continuously verifies all traffic. Our Prisma SASE is the industry's premier platform built to defend, scale, and secure your enterprise at the speed of AI. Powered by Precision AI®, it enforces dynamic Zero Trust guardrails to proactively defend against frontier AI attacks and secures the adoption of GenAI and autonomous agents across the enterprise.

The "SP Interconnect (SPI)" adopted by KDDI this time is a next-generation architecture that directly interconnects telecommunications carriers' high-quality networks with our Prisma SASE. This integration makes it possible to directly connect traffic from closed networks (KDDI Wide Area Virtual Switch 2: WVS2)—which remain highly demanded among Japanese enterprises—to SASE, in addition to internet connections. In particular, the latest SPI achieves the flexibility and performance required to meet the strict requirements of the Japanese market, including the elimination of IPsec connection overhead . As a result, an ideal infrastructure foundation has been completed that uncompromisingly balances the communication quality of the carrier backbone and the latest security of Palo Alto Networks, allowing unified management under a single policy engine.

Executive Perspective: KDDI Leadership on Next-Gen Security

Regarding this release, Junji Hori, General Manager of Product Management at KDDI Corporation, stated:

"With the launch of Prisma SASE with SP Interconnect, the convergence of closed networks and the internet has accelerated. This service serves as the core first-phase solution in the Security-as-a-Service domain under KDDI’s 'AccelWaves Vision,' and we position it as a major milestone toward realizing 'KDDI AccelWaves Network,' an autonomous network service for enterprises scheduled for release in 2028.

By simply unifying the individual design and management of security across both closed networks and the internet, this newly announced service reduces the operational burden on security and networking while contributing to rapid response in the event of an incident. This is an advanced initiative made possible by combining the long-standing partnership and expertise cultivated between both companies.

Equipped with AI security capabilities, we are confident this service will deliver new value not only to existing WVS2 customers, but also to customers aiming to centralize security operations and optimize their networks.

KDDI will continue to further strengthen its partnership with Palo Alto Networks and strive to deliver innovative services that accelerate our customers' AI implementation." 

Key Architectural Advantages of SP Interconnect 

The SP Interconnect that underpins the "SASE Gateway" offers the following outstanding benefits to customers: 

• Direct Connection to KDDI's Closed Network and Ensuring Reliability: Achieves a low-latency and stable communication environment through the high SLA and cloud scale of Prisma SASE, and closed connection with KDDI's high-quality, wide-band backbone.
• Realization of Comprehensive ZTNA: Consistently applies best-in-class Zero Trust security to access SaaS and private applications, regardless of the line type (closed network, Internet, etc.).
• Securing the AI-Driven Enterprise: By routing high-speed closed network traffic through Prisma SASE, organizations can safely adopt GenAI and agentic AI tools. SP Interconnect enables  this traffic to benefit from machine-speed inline inspection, stopping automated, frontier AI attacks (like machine-scale vulnerability scanning and prompt injections) while enforcing complete visibility, identity control, and advanced data loss prevention (DLP).
• Proactive IT Operations Powered by AI: Accelerate time-to-value by transforming reactive IT support into proactive, self-healing operations. It leverages AIOps and ADEM (Autonomous Digital Experience Management) to comprehensively visualize and manage transport networks across branches, clouds, and data centers, predicting and resolving network issues before users even notice them.

Furthermore, to realize a platform-based approach to security, KDDI offers the "SASE Gateway" service alongside the extensibility to introduce advanced security solutions such as our "Cortex XDR" and "Prisma Browser" (a secure enterprise browser). Additionally, to provide end-to-end support for customers' security operations and management, this offering can be combined with SOC and IR (Incident Response) services provided by LAC Co., Ltd. 

Palo Alto Networks is confident that this "SASE Gateway" will become an essential business foundation supporting secure DX (Digital Transformation) for many Japanese enterprises advancing AI adoption, hybrid work and cloud migration. Through our strong alliance with KDDI, we look forward to further deepening our technical collaboration and greatly expect them to powerfully lead the expansion of sales and adoption among enterprise companies as a strong core solution for KDDI's "AccelWaves Vision".

KDDI’s SASE Gateway with Palo Alto Networks is now available as part of the companies’ joint integrated security portfolio.

Modernize Your Closed Network Security Today

Ready to simplify your hybrid network management and protect your organization against AI-driven threats? Contact us to schedule a custom architecture review or explore how KDDI SASE Gateway can fit into your cloud strategy.

The post “SASE Gateway” provided by KDDI : How SP Interconnect Simplifies Closed Network Zero Trust appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Most cloud and security teams struggle with two fundamental questions: What is actually running across our clouds, and what is exposed? As workloads sprawl and AI models deploy faster than ever, critical posture data gets locked inside specialized consoles. Gaps go unseen until they are exploited, and shadow AI leaves teams flying blind.

To solve this visibility challenge, Palo Alto Networks is introducing CLARA Agent.

By connecting Palo Alto Networks Strata Cloud Manager (SCM) directly to Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise, CLARA Agent turns complex cloud security data into clear, conversational insights. SCM powers this integration by consolidating security across environments, automating AI-driven operations to prevent misconfigurations, and continuously enforcing zero-trust policies with real-time threat prevention. Instead of digging through endless dashboards or running manual queries, teams can simply ask plain-language questions directly inside Gemini Enterprise to get immediate, evidence-backed answers.

CLARA Agent, which will be available on Google Cloud Marketplace, provides instant infrastructure discovery, automatically surfaces production AI/ML models alongside unsanctioned shadow AI, and ranks critical vulnerabilities so teams know exactly what is exposed. By bringing security intelligence directly into everyday workplace tools, it democratizes visibility for cloud, platform, and AI teams alike.

Bringing Palo Alto Networks CLARA Agent to Google Cloud Marketplace will help customers quickly deploy, manage, and grow the AI agent on Google Cloud’s trusted, global infrastructure. Palo Alto Networks can now securely scale and support organizations using its CLARA Agent to enable their security teams to turn cloud security data into conversational insights.

Vineet Bhan, Director, Security and Identity Partnerships, Google Cloud

Built for Immediate Value and Enterprise Security

CLARA Agent supercharges your existing investment in Strata Cloud Manager by bringing its rich security telemetry directly into everyday workflows. Greenfield deployments will benefit from additional visibility into their AI and non-AI workloads.

Designed to complement SCM’s robust security architecture, CLARA Agent leverages the open Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to deliver fast, secure, and context-aware responses without requiring additional infrastructure setup. This integration creates a more seamless experience for security teams, empowering them to audit cloud posture, prioritize zero-day vulnerabilities, and secure rapid AI adoption faster and more intuitively than ever before. 

See CLARA Agent Live at the Security Innovations Forum 2026

Palo Alto Networks is proud to be a sponsor of the Security Innovations Forum 2026 on September 29 at the Google Event Center MP7 in Sunnyvale, CA. Join Rich Campagna, Senior VP of Products at Palo Alto Networks, and Joshua Haslett, Strategic Technology Partner  Manager at Google, on the executive panel, "Co-Innovating the Future of Cybersecurity: A C-Suite Perspective" (10:50 AM – 11:35 AM). They will discuss how agentic platforms are revolutionizing threat response and how organizations can deploy advanced AI agents at scale.

You can also visit the Palo Alto Networks kiosk during the forum to see a live demonstration of CLARA Agent, connect with our experts, and discover how we are co-innovating with Google Cloud to help safeguard agentic AI environments.

Get Started

Visit our booth at Google Cloud’s  Security Innovations Forum 2026, or contact your Palo Alto Networks representative to schedule a demo.

 

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Forward-Looking Statements (unreleased feature only)

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation, statements regarding the benefits, impact, or performance or potential benefits, impact or performance of our products and technologies or future products and technologies. Any unreleased services or features (and any services or features not generally available to customers) referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available (or are not yet generally available to customers) and may not be delivered when expected or at all. Customers who purchase Palo Alto Networks applications should make their purchase decisions based on services and features currently generally available.

The post Introducing CLARA Agent: Instant Cloud & AI Risk Insights Available on Google Cloud Gemini Enterprise appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

AI agents are crossing an important threshold.

They are moving from assistants that respond to us to autonomous systems that reason, plan, and act on our behalf. They can write and execute code, access enterprise data, call tools and APIs, and keep working toward a goal with limited human intervention.

That changes the security model.

An autonomous agent is designed to find a way to accomplish its objective. If one path is blocked, it reasons about another. That is what makes agents powerful, and it is why models’ built-in prompt guardrails alone are not enough.

The harness can guide what an agent should do. Security must control what an agent can do. That requires security authority outside the agent itself.

Palo Alto Networks and NVIDIA Team Up to Secure Agentic AI

NVIDIA provides the accelerated computing platform, secure runtime foundation, and reference system design for agentic AI. Palo Alto Networks brings the AI security capabilities enterprises need to govern interactions, protect workloads, and control identity and access.

Together, we are extending security across three areas: AI governance with Prisma AIRS AI Gateway, runtime protection with Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security, and Agent Identity Security powered by IDIRA.

This is the focus of our expanded collaboration with NVIDIA on the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform reference design.

a) Prisma AIRS AI Gateway on NVIDIA Vera CPU

Our forward-looking architecture includes Prisma AIRS AI Gateway software running on NVIDIA Vera CPU systems, bringing AI governance and enforcement closer to infrastructure designed for agentic workloads.

The AI Gateway is the real-time enforcement point for AI Governance, Runtime, and Identity security. It continuously verifies agent identities, enforces strict least-privilege access, redacts sensitive data before it is exposed, and deeply inspects every interaction—stopping unauthorized actions before they ever reach critical host systems or cloud endpoints.

• Operationalize AI agents: Connect applications and agents to thousands of models and tools through one control point, with the reliability and flexibility to scale AI across the enterprise.
• Track usage and control costs: Monitor every AI interaction across your company to see exactly what teams are doing, track your spending, and restrict access to approved tools only.
• Enforce agent security across the enterprise: Block sensitive data exposure and malicious commands in real time, and verify agent identity before actions are taken.

b) Announcing Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security on NVIDIA BlueField

The Palo Alto Networks AI Runtime firewall running natively on NVIDIA BlueField DPUs extends Zero Trust protection to the front-end network traffic of the AI factory and to the AI Edge, creating a tamper-proof boundary immune to application-layer attacks. Drawing on the NVIDIA Sentry reference design, Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security accelerated on NVIDIA BlueField delivers: 

• Hardware-Isolated Boundaries: Tamper-proof boundary, ensuring a compromised model or a rogue agent can never bypass runtime controls.
• Agentless Behavioral Introspection: Monitor agent execution paths, memory structures, and tool calls with NVIDIA DOCA Argus with zero CPU overhead, and feed real-time telemetry directly into Cortex XSIAM for automated observation, analysis, and remediation.
• Zero Trust Governance: Strict least-privilege access is enforced across the network and external APIs by default, delivering a verifiable audit trail for every allow and block action.

c) IDIRA Agent Identity Security

As agents gain greater autonomy, identity becomes fundamental to controlling what they can access and what actions they can take.

Looking ahead, we plan to integrate NVIDIA OpenShell with upcoming Agent Identity Security capabilities from Idira, including identity and secrets management for the OpenShell sandbox and agent identity broker service on NVIDIA BlueField. This will help organizations apply identity-based controls and least-privilege access to agents without relying on persistent human credentials.

The Path Ahead: Security at Scale for Enterprise Agents

As agents become more autonomous, governance must extend to identity. Prisma AIRS AI Gateway will also serve as an enforcement point for Agent Identity Security powered by IDIRA. We are also expanding to include Agent Identity Broker support directly on NVIDIA BlueField, providing identity verification and access governance independently of the host environment.

Together, these capabilities are designed to prevent unauthorized execution, reduce standing access, and stop privilege escalation as agents interact with enterprise systems.

As agents gain more autonomy, enterprises need consistent control over how they connect and what they can access.

Our work with NVIDIA brings those controls closer to where agentic workloads run, while Palo Alto Networks provides the security policy, governance, and enforcement enterprises need to manage them. 

To learn more about our GA of AI Runtime Security on the BlueField DPU, read our blog — Palo Alto Networks Announces Support for NVIDIA Enterprise AI Factory.

The next phase of AI will be defined not only by what agents can do, but by whether enterprises can trust them to operate safely at scale.

Palo Alto Networks was named a Market Shaper in AI application security. Read the report: Gartner® Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security – Established Vendors, September 2026.

The post Securing AI Agents at Scale with NVIDIA appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Securing Every Environment at the Speed of Frontier AI

Recognized as a Leader for the second consecutive time and positioned furthest for Completeness of Vision. Palo Alto Networks is advancing hybrid mesh firewall with one integrated platform for preemptive protection, agentic operations, AI runtime security and quantum-safe security across the enterprise.

 

We are proud to share that Palo Alto Networks has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall for the second consecutive time, and positioned furthest for Completeness of Vision.

We believe this recognition reflects the strength of our approach to network security: one natively integrated platform that delivers consistent protection, policy and operations across every environment.

It also comes at a pivotal moment for cybersecurity. Frontier AI is collapsing the time between vulnerability discovery and exploitation. AI applications and agents are creating new infrastructure and data risks. At the same time, the cryptographic reset is forcing enterprises to rethink how they establish and maintain digital trust.

Fragmented firewall architectures and manual security operations were never designed for this speed, scale or complexity, and can no longer keep pace.

One Platform Across Every Environment

Hybrid environments have traditionally required organizations to deploy and manage different security products across data centers, clouds, branches, campuses and remote users. The result is often fragmented policy, inconsistent protection and operational complexity.

Palo Alto Networks transforms hybrid mesh firewall from a collection of enforcement products into a unified, intelligent security platform, powered by Precision AI.

The  Strata Network Security Platform is our Hybrid Mesh Firewall, spanning hardware  (PA-Series), virtual (VM-Series), cloud-native (Cloud NGFW) and firewall-as-a-service (SASE) deployments with consistent policy, shared intelligence and threat prevention across environments. 

Strata Cloud Manager provides unified policy, visibility and AI-driven operations across these enforcement points. Beyond traditional firewall environments, the platform extends protection to the browser with Prisma Browser and to AI applications, models and agents with Prisma AIRS®.

Cloud-delivered security services, including Advanced Threat Prevention, Advanced WildFire, Advanced URL Filtering, and Advanced DNS Security deliver consistent, inline prevention across environments. Intelligence discovered in one part of the platform can strengthen protection everywhere, turning every enforcement point into a real-time prevention layer.

If you’re new to the concept of HMF, explore our primer on What Is a Hybrid Mesh Firewall and Why It Matters.

The Hybrid Mesh Firewall Market Is Evolving

Gartner’s 2026 Hybrid Mesh Firewall research describes a market moving toward more automated, intelligence-driven security platforms as organizations manage increasingly complex hybrid environments. 

The report identifies several trends shaping the evolution of hybrid mesh firewall, including the growing adoption of cloud-based management, AI-driven threat prevention, automation through LLM-based assistants, post-quantum cryptography and security capabilities for AI applications and workloads.

As these requirements evolve, organizations need a network security architecture that can deliver consistent protection and operations across hybrid environments while preparing for emerging AI and quantum-era risks.

Advancing Hybrid Mesh Firewall for the Frontier AI Era

Against this backdrop, Palo Alto Networks continues to advance the Strata Network Security Platform for the Frontier AI era.

Preempt attacks earlier: Advanced Threat Prevention Plus uses Frontier AI-powered vulnerability discovery and Frontier Virtual Patching to deliver preemptive protections, including before vulnerabilities are publicly disclosed or official patches are available.

Disrupt attacker infrastructure: Advanced IP Defense continuously identifies, validates and blocks attacker-controlled infrastructure in real time - even when adversaries use direct-to-IP communications, proprietary encryption, residential proxies or trusted cloud infrastructure to evade traditional security signals.

Operate at machine speed: Six purpose-built Network Security Agents in Strata Cloud Manager assist teams with deployment, troubleshooting, configuration management, posture optimization, threat investigation and data protection, with built-in guardrails and human oversight.

Secure AI and modernize digital trust: Prisma AIRS helps secure AI applications, models and agents across the AI lifecycle, while Quantum-Safe Security and Next-Generation Trust Security help organizations identify cryptographic risk and modernize digital trust. Read more about Palo Alto Networks’ approach to securing AI.

Together, these capabilities help organizations reduce exposure before attacks succeed, operate at machine speed, secure AI infrastructure and modernize digital trust for the post-quantum era.

Proven Security, Performance and Scale

A unified platform must deliver not only breadth, but also effective protection and reliable performance under demanding conditions.

Independent SecureIQLab testing demonstrated 99% security efficacy, with Palo Alto Networks scoring approximately 20 points higher than the next-best tested vendor. Miercom validation demonstrated up to 2–8 times higher AI traffic throughput, along with strong TLS inspection and stable performance under sustained load.

More than 75,000 organizations around the world rely on Palo Alto Networks to consolidate security, improve visibility and reduce risk across their hybrid environments.

This global scale provides intelligence that continuously strengthens the platform. Every attempted attack expands what the platform can learn, and every new detection can become protection for all customers.

Defining the Future of Hybrid Mesh Firewall

We believe being named a Leader for the second consecutive time reinforces our conviction in an integrated platform that delivers consistent prevention and operations everywhere an enterprise operates.

But we believe industry leadership is also about preparing customers for what comes next.

As Frontier AI accelerates attacks, autonomous systems reshape security operations and quantum risk changes the foundations of digital trust, enterprises need more than a collection of firewalls. They need an intelligent security platform that can transform shared intelligence into prevention across every environment.

Palo Alto Networks is building that future, helping organizations reduce exposure before attacks succeed, operate at machine speed, secure AI infrastructure and modernize digital trust for the post-quantum era.

Download the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall to learn more about why Palo Alto Networks was named a Leader.

 

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Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Hybrid Mesh Firewall, 7 September 2026

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Garner document is available upon request from Palo Alto Networks.

Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are a trademark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates.

The post Palo Alto Networks Named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Hybrid Mesh Firewall appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Enterprises are seeing an unprecedented surge in AI coding adoption with spend on AI coding tools projected to top $13 billion in this calendar year¹, compounding at more than 60% annually. For engineering teams, the benefits are unmistakable: accelerated output, supercharged productivity, and operational overheads dramatically reduced.

But these AI solutions are no longer just offering helpful coding suggestions. Today’s coding agents are able to assume a user’s identity, modify file systems, execute arbitrary terminal commands, and connect directly into core business systems.

Traditional cybersecurity architectures were engineered around three foundational assumptions: known software, human users, and human-speed actions. AI coding fundamentally dismantles all three.

The Breakdown of Traditional Controls for Secure Software Development.

As AI-assisted coding accelerates, traditional security controls are quickly falling behind, creating four volatile vectors of risk: 

• Shadow AI at Enterprise Scale: Coding agents, IDE (Integrated Developer Environment) extensions, skills, and MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers permeate the enterprise before security teams even know they exist. In 2026, 68% of organizations reported lacking visibility into the AI tools their developers were actually using, and 57% of employees reported using AI coding tools without formal IT approval². 
• Risky Behavior by Agents: AI coding agents have the capability to  change files, access company resources, and execute system commands in milliseconds. In one documented³ AI-enabled intrusion chain, an agent executed 17,600 actions in 4.5 days creating a timeline no human-enabled SOC can manually govern. 
• Blurred Identity and Attribution: Machines now outnumber human identities 109 to 1⁴. And, because agents frequently operate using human credentials, distinguishing developer action from autonomous agent action becomes nearly impossible. When anomalies occur, this obscured attribution further complicates root causing the issue. 
• Uncontrolled Connections, Data, and Cost: Agents connecting to external models, MCP servers, and third-party tools outside the company, presents another distinct but related issue. All these connections also quietly increase consumption of AI resources, and separately exacerbate the risk of sensitive IP leaks. A recent survey found⁵ that 93% of enterprises exceeded their AI budgets with 20-30% of AI spend being entirely unaccounted for.  

Resetting the Controls for AI-Native Development.

Securing AI coding inside an enterprise requires a proactive, platform-centric approach:

• Discover shadow AI and what it’s using: Gain complete visibility across every model, agents, plugin, skill, and MCP to neutralize risky or unsanctioned components before they perform harmful actions.
• Assess supply chain risks: Scan skills, models, and MCP to make sure they are trusted.
• Protect identity and prompt: Inspect prompts, model outputs, and autonomous interactions in real time. Provision verified, task-scoped identities for agents and eliminate standing privileges.
• Govern data, actions, and cost: Enforce zero-trust boundaries over external model connections, governing access to file systems, sensitive corporate data, and establishing hard policies over AI resource consumption and spend.

The Platformization Advantage for Superior Governance.

Today, endpoint visibility, LLM traffic, token consumption, agent identity and actions are fragmented across disparate solutions introducing visibility gaps and creating new risks for enterprises. Palo Alto Networks delivers AI coding security natively with an integrated platform to secure what gets installed, what runs, what data leaves the enterprise, and which identity is used.

AI coding tools will continue to evolve, as they should. But your builders don’t have to choose between speed and security. The goal is not to slow down developer momentum, but to provide the security controls that serve as scaffolding for your teams to innovate faster and with complete confidence.

Secure your AI. We’ve got next.

Visit our Secure AI Coding page or download our solution brief to learn more.

 

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1 - IdeaPlan
2 - The AI Velocity Gap
3 - Hugging Face
4 - Idira 2026 Identity Security Landscape - Chapter One
5 - McKinsey; Oabo

The post Secure AI Coding: Governing every agent, artifact, and identity appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Unit 42 is putting the latest frontier cyber models to work across customer environments to find, validate and help remediate the attack paths that matter most.

In May, we introduced Frontier AI Defense with a warning: the window to get ahead of AI-enabled attacks was shorter than most people realized. Since then, we have briefed more than 1,000 security teams around the world and introduced our Frontier AI Defense service to hundreds of customers.

Today, through our partnership with OpenAI, we are expanding Unit 42 Frontier AI Exposure Analysis to put advanced frontier cyber models directly to work in customer environments. Under Unit 42 direction, these models can find exposures, test whether they are exploitable, validate attack paths and help customers prioritize what to fix first.

Our early work shows why this approach matters: 36% of the exposures we identified map to no known CVE, often because they involve multiple gaps that have to be discovered, chained and tested together.

Bringing the Latest Frontier Cyber Capabilities to Defenders

Palo Alto Networks has been among a limited group of organizations with early access to advanced cyber capabilities from the leading frontier AI labs. Through our partnership with OpenAI, Unit 42 can now bring its latest advanced cyber capabilities, including GPT-5.6 Daybreak, to security testing and validation for our customers. Until now, GPT-5.6 Daybreak has not been available for commercial use.

Frontier models have helped inform the work of our experts. Now they can increasingly perform complex offensive security tasks directly, at machine speed and under Unit 42 direction. That allows us to go deeper than traditional vulnerability discovery by testing exploitability, reasoning across multiple weaknesses and determining how an attacker could use them to achieve an objective.

There is no single best model for every cyber task. Our research has shown that different models have different strengths and find vulnerabilities others miss. A multi-model harness routes work to the model best suited for the task, improving efficacy and coverage while managing the cost of frontier AI at scale. As stronger models emerge, we can incorporate them without rebuilding the offering around a single model or provider.

Unit 42 experts remain central to the process. We combine frontier models with our offensive security expertise, Palo Alto Networks telemetry and Unit 42 Threat Intelligence to validate findings, connect exposures into attack paths and understand what an attacker could ultimately achieve.

Built to Find What Attackers Can Exploit

The expanded service brings five capabilities together:

• Leading cyber models: Apply the latest advanced cyber models to improve exposure discovery, testing and validation.
• Multi-model harness: Use the right model for the right task to improve efficacy, expand coverage and optimize cost.
• Exposure discovery: Find vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, leaked credentials, unmanaged attack surface and other posture gaps across applications and network assets.
• Advanced adversary simulation: Actively test exploitability and validate end-to-end attack paths to understand how an attacker could compromise the environment.
• Custom remediation plan: Prioritize the fixes that break the most important attack paths and feed those findings into existing IT, development and security workflows.

Most security teams already have more findings than they can act on. The harder problem is knowing which ones create a real path to compromise. Attackers look across applications, infrastructure, identity and cloud for weaknesses they can combine to achieve an objective. Frontier AI Exposure Analysis applies that same adversarial perspective, helping defenders understand which paths matter and what to fix first.

The Asymmetry Runs Both Ways Now

For the past several months, frontier AI has been a story about what is coming for defenders: vulnerability discovery at scale, exploit chaining that sees full-stack logic no scanner catches, and attack cycles compressed to seconds from initial access to exfiltration.

All of that is still true. Our answer has been to put everything we learn testing these frontier models into the hands of defenders. Today, that gets more direct: not just what frontier models have taught us, but the models themselves, working in your environment for your defenders before those same capabilities are working for the attacker.

The window is still closing. We intend to spend it building on the side of the defenders.

Visit Palo Alto Networks Frontier AI Defense to learn more.

The post Putting OpenAI Cyber Models to Work for Defenders appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

As organizations race to deploy agentic AI, legacy network security solutions are ill-equipped to keep up, forcing productivity tradeoffs while exposing coverage gaps. At the same time, Frontier AI is proving capable of discovering vulnerabilities and creating exploits in real-time. Navigating this shift requires more than incremental feature enhancements; it requires a bold, market-defining vision backed by relentless customer focused execution. 

Today, we’re proud to announce that Gartner® has once again recognized Palo Alto Networks as a Leader in the 2026 Magic Quadrant™ reports for both Security Service Edge and SASE Platforms. This marks the fourth consecutive year that Palo Alto Networks has been recognized, making us the only security vendor to be recognized as a Leader in both reports for four years in a row.

In this year’s Magic Quadrant for SSE, Palo Alto Networks was placed highest in ability to execute and furthest in completeness of vision for Prisma Access.

Every day we focus relentlessly on understanding the needs of our customers and channeling that back into products and services that create real value for them. Our product strategy centers on where our customers' environments and security needs are heading, not just where it sits today.

Vision Matters More than Ever in the AI Era

The AI landscape is changing daily - in this new reality, we strive to be the visionary leaders to serve our customers. GenAI and Agentic AI are exposing enterprises to novel categories of risks like prompt injection, over-privileged agents, and poisoned models. At the same time, Frontier AI is accelerating vulnerability discovery and attack speed resulting in attack timelines being compressed by over 95%.

Gartner projects that by the end of this year, 40% of enterprise applications will feature embedded agents, up from less than 5% today. And by 2028, 60% of brands will use agentic AI to facilitate streamlined one-to-one interactions. Operating a business in this new reality requires security architecture engineered to anticipate threats that haven't yet emerged. Success cannot be achieved by retrofitting legacy products with support for AI infrastructure. It demands a unified future-ready foundation that natively secures users, applications, sensitive data, and non-human identities across every touchpoint. The platform enterprises use today determines whether they'll be prepared for tomorrow's threats.

As the cybersecurity landscape undergoes its biggest shift in decades, to us, the Gartner recognition as a Leader on vision and execution across both reports means more than ever before. In our opinion, it not only validates Palo Alto Network’s ability to serve the world’s largest enterprises but also celebrates our strategic product capabilities as shaping the future of cybersecurity through industry leading innovation such as securing AI traffic flows and agents that simplify manageability of SASE operations.

Vision Backed by Relentless Execution

We believe being placed highest in execution and furthest in vision is only as valuable as the ability to execute on it, and Palo Alto Networks has a proven record of creating value for our customers. Our recent milestone of crossing the $1.6 billion ARR mark while growing 40% year over year for Prisma SASE reflects the trust customers have placed in us. Over 6,800 organizations, including over one third of the fortune 500, trust us because we consistently turn market-defining innovation into enterprise-grade reality. Our execution leadership is built on a strong foundation:

• Security powered by Precision AI: Our platform delivers universal zero trust through distributed and flexible enforcement points. We inspect traffic as close to the user as possible to ensure that whether your teams are at the corporate HQ, a remote branch, a coffee shop or working from home, they receive the same protection at their precise point of interaction.
• Unmatched performance and resilience: By leveraging global hyperscalers, we provide the massive scale and reach that modern organizations require. For specialized, high-performance and sensitive needs, SASE Private Location brings that same cloud-delivered resilience directly to private campuses.
• Unified platform: With a truly unified policy engine, data platform and operations, we ensure that as enterprises adapt to the future, our architecture remains an accelerator for secure productivity rather than a bottleneck. We accelerate vendor consolidation for enterprise customers, replacing fragmented legacy point products with a single platform that slashes operational overhead and reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 50%.

Building for the Future 

As the rules of cybersecurity are rewritten in real time, leading the market requires more than following past trends, it requires setting the trajectory. Our aim is to continuously be at the forefront of defining the future of cybersecurity to power the agentic enterprise of tomorrow.

Protecting with AI

Palo Alto Networks continues to innovate to keep enterprises safe at the speed of AI. Our Precision AI security service blocks over 30B threats every single day defeating sophisticated and highly evasive tactics. When combined with our virtual patching and IP defense security services, organizations receive proactive defense that secures at the speed of Frontier AI with flexible enforcement that provides consistent protection everywhere. We are delivering comprehensive security across network, edge, and cloud infrastructure to stop hidden threats that are invisible to traditional networks security solutions. 

This AI-powered defense in depth strategy operates across the entire attack lifecycle to enable proactive protection that shifts enterprise security postures from reactive incident response to preemptive defense. 

Securing AI 

Safely enabling employee adoption of AI tools and agents requires special considerations to mitigate risks around data leaks, intellectual property exposure, and compliance. Prisma SASE and Prisma Access solve these challenges by discovering all AI usage and agentic actions, enforcing granular least privilege access for human and non-human identities, and preventing exposure of risky data to AI and agents. Through AI Access Security™, Prisma SASE provides unified data security across the AI lifecycle by integrating GenAI app visibility and control, real-time prompt analysis, shadow data discovery, and  protection on endpoint. Prisma Browser provides a secure AI workspace that safeguards both human and autonomous agent workflows across any LLM by defending against data leaks, prompt injections, and agent hijacking. 

To secure the rapid adoption of AI agents by enterprises, Prisma Access will natively integrate with Prisma AIRS AI Gateway to provide a unified LLM, MCP, and A2A gateway giving security teams a single pane of glass for AI observability, cost governance, and runtime inspection.

This innovative approach represents an evolution away from traditional device and user centric fabrics towards an agent-aware platform capable of securing AI for the enterprise of tomorrow, today. 

Operating with AI

We continue to invest in capabilities that make our platforms proactive, efficient and easier to use. Our new deployment agents enable customers to onboard their SSE or SASE environment more efficiently, reducing their time to value while increasing productivity. Once onboarded, autonomous AI agents within Strata Cloud Manager continuously evaluate network and security posture to proactively identify configuration drift, performance degradation, and security policy gaps. By uncovering potential disruptions before they impact users or expose the organization to risk we’ve created automated systems capable of finding issues and automatically remediating them, with human-in-the-loop oversight calibrated to the administrator's comfort level, from guided recommendations to full autonomy.

The practical outcome is a dramatic reduction in mean time to resolution (MTTR) and a measurable reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) while significantly reducing administrative burdens and making Palo Alto Networks products easier to maintain and operate.

Learn More

Download your complimentary copies of the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ reports to learn why Palo Alto Networks has been recognized as a Leader in both SASE and SSE for the fourth consecutive year.

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Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge, 29 July 2026, John Watts Et Al.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for SASE Platforms, 28 July 2026, By Jonathan Forest Et Al.
Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are a trademark of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates.
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Palo Alto Networks.

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Palo Alto Networks works closely with OpenAI across our product platform and Unit 42, leveraging advanced frontier model capabilities. Furthermore, we are a partner in the OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program, working with OpenAI to bring trusted, AI-powered cyber defense to more organizations. Today, we’re announcing native integration of Prisma AIRS Runtime API with OpenAI Codex. This milestone deepens our partnership and drives our shared mission forward: equipping defenders with the industry's most advanced tools.

AI coding assistants have transformed software development, accelerating shipping velocity and changing how engineers solve problems. But as integration of AI coding assistants deepens across development teams, security and compliance teams constantly struggle with enabling developer productivity while helping protect proprietary source code and credentials, and reducing the risk of runtime threats entering the codebase.

Streamlined Security in Minutes

We designed this integration to eliminate complex traffic steering and heavy client-side hooks. Securing your entire developer organization takes just a few clicks inside Codex Enterprise Management UI. Here is how you can enable it:

1. Retrieve Credentials: Generate your API key and endpoint from the Prisma AIRS management console.
2. Configure Codex: Paste the Prisma AIRS API key and endpoint directly into your Global Admin Console.
3. Activate Org-Wide Scanning: Once saved, all user prompts across your entire organization in Codex are automatically routed through the Prisma AIRS Runtime API for real-time inspection.

What Prisma AIRS Brings to OpenAI Codex

By connecting the Codex in ChatGPT for Enterprise workspace to the Prisma AIRS Runtime API, security teams gain comprehensive, automated security controls across two critical vectors:

1. Enterprise Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

Developers frequently paste context – logs, config snippets, or functions – into AI coding assistants. Prisma AIRS scans inputs to help identify sensitive data before it is submitted.

• Secrets & Credentials: Intercept API keys, hardcoded passwords, tokens, and private keys.
• PII & Financial Data: Automatically detect personally identifiable information and regulated data patterns.
• Proprietary Code & IP: Enforce custom pattern rules to help prevent sensitive internal code, architecture details, or trade secrets from being submitted.

2. Advanced Threat & Malicious Code Detection

AI prompts and contextual inputs can contain content that introduces security risks into development workflows. Prisma AIRS Runtime API inspects incoming developer inputs for:

• Malicious Code Patterns: Detect obfuscated scripts, dangerous command executions, or known exploit patterns within developer prompts.
• Malicious URLs & Links: Flag unverified, phishing, or malicious domain references before they influence generated code or enter internal repos.
• Prompt Manipulation Attacks: Detect adversarial inputs that may attempt to bypass system controls or alter model behavior.

Built for DevSecOps Alignment

Security controls only work if developers actually use them. Because the inspection happens at the platform administrative level via API, developers continue working natively in Codex without changing their IDE setup or downloading local hooks. SecOps gain centralized visibility, consistent policy enforcement, and audit-ready logging capabilities across the entire engineering organization, while developers keep the speed and experience they expect.

Key Takeaways

• Security as Invisible Infrastructure: Prisma AIRS integrates at the Codex administrative layer, applying security and DLP controls without requiring additional developer workflow changes. Developers can continue working in Codex while security teams maintain centralized policy controls.

• Unified Governance for Frontier Models: Prisma AIRS acts as an inline security layer that scans AI traffic in real-time before prompts ever reach the destination model. This architecture can help organizations identify sensitive information moving outward while detecting prompt manipulation and potentially malicious content moving into development workflows. If Prisma AIRS API detects a threat, a block verdict is sent to OpenAI Codex, and the prompt does not reach the destination model or MCP server.

• Organization-Wide Compliance: Deployment speed is a strategic advantage, not just an IT convenience. By configuring the Prisma AIRS API within the Global Admin Console, organizations can achieve org-wide governance without complex traffic steering. This can help development teams shift from unmanaged AI use toward more consistent, auditable security practices.

Getting Started

The Prisma AIRS integration helps organizations maintain consistent security controls while preserving the speed and productivity gains of Codex. Organizations can combine Palo Alto Networks’ security capabilities with OpenAI Codex to maintain centralized security and governance controls.

Choose your path forward:

• Attending Black Hat 2026: Stop by the Palo Alto Networks booth to check out the Prisma AIRS live demo.
• Ready to secure your rollout: Contact Prisma AIRS AI Security Experts to discuss your specific governance and deployment needs.
• Ready to build: Visit the Prisma AIRS Documentation to connect your endpoints in minutes.

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Forward-Looking Statements

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation, statements regarding the benefits, impact, or performance or potential benefits, impact or performance of our products and technologies or future products and technologies. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and there are a significant number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this blog. We identify certain important risks and uncertainties that could affect our results and performance in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and our other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from time-to-time, each of which are available on our website at investors.paloaltonetworks.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. All forward-looking statements in this blog are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

The post Strengthening Security of AI Coding: Prisma AIRS API Integration with OpenAI Codex appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

As AI adoption shifts from experimental tools to the business core, enterprises are deploying AI agents and assistants across every department. Developers are accelerating software delivery with Claude Code and business functions are collaborating in Claude.ai, Claude Cowork, and Claude Design, using Anthropic's Claude to fundamentally rewire how they operate and drive complex, autonomous workflows across their most critical tasks.

Broad AI adoption has forced enterprise security into a difficult paradox: secure the business without stalling innovation. Today, security teams must answer three critical questions: How do we prevent sensitive data from leaking into AI models? How do we intercept runtime attacks, like prompt injection, before they execute? And how do we enforce these guardrails consistently across every AI interaction, in real-time?

We are thrilled to announce that Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS API now directly integrates with Claude Enterprise via inference hooks.

Key Takeaways:

• Synchronous Governance at the Speed of AI: Enforce critical runtime policy guardrails instantly before model inference occurs. By evaluating every Claude interaction in real-time, security teams can confidently enable high-speed AI innovation without introducing unacceptable risk or operational bottlenecks.
• Extending Proven DLP to AI Workflows: Safeguard PII, intellectual property, and proprietary code across all Claude environments (Claude Code, Claude.ai, Claude Cowork) seamlessly. By directly leveraging your organization’s existing enterprise DLP policies, you get consistent, unified data protection without the friction of managing disparate rule sets.
• Neutralizing AI-Specific Threats Proactively: Deploy enterprise AI with confidence by intercepting malicious activity before it executes. Proactively block sophisticated runtime threats, including prompt injections, jailbreaks, and toxic inputs, enabling your AI workflows to remain secure and your business operations uninterrupted.

How It Works

Setting up zero-trust governance for your Claude Enterprise environment takes just a few clicks:

• Configure Claude Enterprise: In your Claude Enterprise organization settings, navigate to inference hooks, set the hook endpoint URL to your designated Prisma AIRS webhook URL, and include your custom Prisma AIRS API key in the custom headers (x-pan-token).
• Activate Cryptographic Verification in Prisma AIRS: Claude generates a unique, one-time signing secret. You simply drop this signing secret into the Prisma AIRS UI.

Prisma AIRS securely stores the signing secret in an encrypted edge Key-Value Map (KVM) to cryptographically verify the authenticity of every incoming request before processing.

Unified Governance Across All Claude Surfaces

Before Claude reads a prompt, Claude POSTs the payload to Prisma AIRS, which evaluates the input against the configured security profile and returns a synchronous allow or deny verdict back to Claude.

Removing the Data Inspection Blind Spot

This Prisma AIRS integration natively leverages the Palo Alto Networks Enterprise DLP engine your organization already runs. Your current policies, custom definitions of "confidential," and compliance dashboards now instantly govern Claude. No redundant rule creation, and no new management overhead. Every prompt is classified in real-time, before anything reaches the model. Data Policy updates reach Claude the moment they reach everything else, and Claude events land in the same dashboards and audit reporting as every other channel. AI stops being the exception to your data protection strategy and becomes just another channel that is covered.

In practice, this helps prevent:

• Accidental exposure of PII and regulated data: a Social Security number, card number, or patient record pasted into a prompt is detected  on the spot by advanced RegEx patterns and ML classifiers,  with Exact Data Matching (EDM) recognizing your actual customer records.   When policy requires, Prisma AIRS enforces a deny policy to help keep Claude usage stays aligned with GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS requirements.
• Misuse of credentials in code: Developers working in Claude Code can't inadvertently submit hardcoded API keys, private tokens, or environment credentials into prompt context.
• Disclosure of confidential business matters. Document classifiers flag prompts touching M&A, legal, or HR material — even when they contain no identifier a pattern could match.

AI Safety & Runtime Threat Protection

Simultaneously, Prisma AIRS inspects payloads for operational risks specific to large language models:

• Prompt Injection & Jailbreak Attacks: Intercepts malicious attempts to manipulate model context or bypass system instructions.
• Malicious Code & Malicious URLs: Prevents execution or processing of untrusted scripts and risky links embedded within prompts.
• Toxic Content & Topic Guardrails: Enforces compliance with corporate policies and custom business topics.

If a prompt violates your security policy, Prisma AIRS issues a deny verdict. Claude immediately blocks the prompt, optionally presenting a user-facing explanation while returning a unique audit correlation code to your security telemetry dashboards.

Deploy Claude Without the Risk

The Prisma AIRS integration with Claude transforms security from a deployment bottleneck into a business enabler. You no longer have to choose between the operational control of Palo Alto Networks and the cognitive velocity of Claude.

Choose Your Path Forward:

• Attending Black Hat 2026? Stop by the Palo Alto Networks booth to check out the Prisma AIRS live demo.
• Ready to secure your Anthropic rollout? Contact Prisma AIRS AI Security Experts to discuss your specific governance and deployment needs.
• Ready to build? Visit the Prisma AIRS Documentation to connect your Claude inference hooks in minutes.

 

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Forward-Looking Statements

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation, statements regarding the benefits, impact, or performance or potential benefits, impact or performance of our products and technologies or future products and technologies. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and there are a significant number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this blog. We identify certain important risks and uncertainties that could affect our results and performance in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and our other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from time-to-time, each of which are available on our website at investors.paloaltonetworks.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.  All forward-looking statements in this blog are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

The post Prisma AIRS - Unified Data Protection for Claude appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Modern enterprise security is at a pivotal moment where CIOs and CISOs have a clear opportunity to build a cybersecurity architecture for both today’s environment, and for the future. Doing so requires redefining enterprise resilience across three critical dimensions. 

First, Frontier AI driven threat velocity and novelty. Frontier AI models have automated the entire attack lifecycle. Adversaries aren’t just compressing exploit windows to near-zero timelines, they are also generating novel, highly evasive threats at machine speed, bypassing traditional signatures and often before patches are generated. 

Second, surging network traffic is overwhelming traditional defenses. Driven by AI workloads, inter-datacenter traffic will nearly triple¹ over the next decade dramatically expanding the volume of data teams must inspect and secure. 

Finally, major shifts are forcing a “cryptographic reset.” Shrinking certificate lifecycles, internet-scale distrust events, and quantum computers powerful enough to crack public key cryptography are combining to shake the foundation of all digital communications. 

Meeting these challenges requires more than incremental fixes. Today, we are proud to introduce PAN-OS 12.2 Ceres, a landmark release representing a major leap forward in network security. 

Ceres brings to market 55+ innovations, including three flagship, core capabilities, designed to shift the balance of power back to defenders.

Introducing Frontier Virtual Patching: Preemptive Defense Against Frontier AI Exploits

Today, Palo Alto Networks is giving defenders the ultimate advantage with the launch of Frontier Virtual Patching. By harnessing Frontier AI to discover unknown vulnerabilities, and deploying protections in hours, we are collapsing the exposure window from the industry-average 55 days² it takes to deploy a traditional patch down into a near-zero window of exposure. This isn’t just about faster patching; it’s about eliminating the attacker’s chance by neutralizing exploits before they ever reach your network.

The new reality: Exploitation far outpaces patch deployment

We’ve built this capability as a collaborative, force-multiplying ecosystem, with our industry partnerships across the enterprise software and OT vendor landscape to accelerate vulnerability disclosure, remediation and customer protection. This includes our collaboration with Project Lightwell, which combines our rapid network-level protection with software remediation to help organizations reduce exposure to emerging threats. We’re also partnering with vulnerability clearinghouses, software maintainers, and industry initiatives to continuously expand a real-time pool of protected vulnerabilities.

This approach builds on recent Unit 42 research, where the autonomous AI system NOVA identified more than 14,000 previously unknown vulnerabilities in just two months – a clear signal that defenders must pair AI-powered discovery with equally fast, coordinated protection. We have built an all-new detection engine, “vaulted protection," that enables us to deliver these rapid protections in a safe and responsible manner. When one participant identifies a threat, the entire ecosystem is protected instantly. Individual discovery becomes global protection. 

This is especially valuable for operational technology (OT), critical infrastructure, healthcare, and IoT: environments where systems can’t be taken offline to patch, where patch cycles can stretch for months, and where a single unpatched device can expose an entire network. Frontier Virtual Patching closes that gap in the network, blocking the exploit without applying a patch, rebooting a system, or causing any downtime to critical operations.

Bad actors will lean into Frontier AI to reduce the attack lifecycle from months to minutes. To keep pace, organizations require security partners to match that machine speed. To this end, Palo Alto Networks is raising the bar with its Frontier Virtual Patching, moving beyond compensating controls. By safely and efficiently discovering undisclosed vulnerabilities and deploying protection long before traditional patches can be rolled out, Palo Alto Networks deep security capabilities are flipping network defense from a reactive to proactive operational model.

Will Townsend
Chief Analyst, LoneStar Advisory & Research

And for existing Palo Alto Networks network security customers, getting started is effortless.  Frontier Virtual Patching is available as a PAN-OS software upgrade with persistent, automatic content updates, so protections keep arriving as new threats emerge, with no new hardware and no manual intervention. 

Clearly, Network Security is evolving quickly. Frontier Virtual Patching is part of a huge set of innovations that the team at Palo Alto Networks is delivering in PAN-OS Ceres 12.2 to enable you to stay protected.

Advanced IP Defense: Blocking attacker infrastructure before they can strike

Modern threat actors continuously work to hide their attacks and evade existing controls. Adversaries are increasingly evading traditional perimeter detection of their command-and-control traffic by leveraging direct-to-IP connection techniques that bypass DNS and URL inspection entirely. Attackers are also weaponizing massive proxy networks and hundreds of thousands of residential IP addresses to conduct stealthy, large-scale scanning, brute-force attacks, and exploitation that bypass traditional defenses such as IP reputation and blocklists.

To counter this, Palo Alto Networks is introducing a new preventative solution, Advanced IP Defense, with three powerful new capabilities:

• Real-time IP-layer intelligence. We leverage global telemetry from over 70,000 customers to track and block attacker infrastructure inline across the entire attack lifecycle. Our researchers track these threats 24/7, so your team doesn’t have to.
• Zero-Trust IP enforcement. We don’t just look at an IP’s past reputation. We verify the intent of the connection itself. By validating that every network connection maps to a legitimate DNS resolution, we provide a critical guardrail against attackers attempting to evade detection.
• Powerful IP-layer context. We continuously monitor every connection across more than 40 distinct security attributes, letting you proactively shrink your attack surface and block high-risk traffic from the internet’s “bad neighborhoods” with confidence.

The transition to the Frontier AI era isn't a distant future. It’s happening right now. The organizations that thrive won't be those trying to run old, reactive playbooks faster; they have to scale their defenses to match a whole new velocity of risk. When threats occur at machine speed, relying on human-scale operations is no longer an option. That is why AI and automation are becoming essential tools to meet these challenges head-on.

Varinder Singh
CIO, NXP Semiconductors

Network Security Agents: Making admins superhuman

When threats execute in minutes, human-only operations become a bottleneck. To reduce fatigue and accelerate response, we’re launching an elite suite of AI agents for every major role a network administrator performs.

These six specialized AI-powered Network Security Agents, available through Strata Cloud Manager, are trained on your enterprise context and operational workflows. From onboarding and configuration to threat assessment and troubleshooting, they automate the hundreds of routine, repetitive tasks that consume an admin’s day. And you stay in control: for each workflow, you choose the level of oversight that matches your risk tolerance — human-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop, or human-out-of-the-loop.

Expanding platform protection across every edge

Securing the modern enterprise means extending these AI-powered capabilities across every surface, from data center cores to remote industrial sites, and from custom AI applications to the web browser.

Today we’re introducing PAN-OS Ceres 12.2, which, in addition to the innovations above, expands our platform across five more areas:

• Quantum-safe & next-generation trust security. Automates digital certificate lifecycle management and accelerates post-quantum cryptographic readiness, including a cryptographic inventory spanning network security, endpoint, SIEM, and vulnerability management integrations for a complete view of enterprise readiness.
• 5th-generation ML-optimized hardware. New high-performance PA-Series firewalls equipped with 400G interfaces, and 300 Gbps of threat inspection, and active clustering, these platforms eliminate capacity limits for AI-era data centers. These firewalls also  scale to 1.4Tbps of throughput while delivering 5-microsecond latency ensuring peak performance. 
• Modernized OT & critical infrastructure defense. Purpose-built PA-50R ruggedized 5G firewalls that extend real-time, AI-powered threat prevention to remote, extreme-environment OT networks and critical infrastructure.
• AI and agent security. Prisma AIRS is now delivered as a scalable, cloud-native service explicitly engineered to secure AI models, applications, and autonomous agent workflows. The same platform on which we built CloudNGFW has now been extended to provide security for AI with the addition of Prisma AIRS.
• Browser-to-firewall integration. Imagine the browser as a secure fast-lane that doesn’t just protect users, it empowers them. By integrating Prisma Browser with our NGFWs, we’ve eliminated the need to decrypt on the endpoint while delivering full Layer 7 protection. This is proactive security that neutralizes threats before they can even touch your network. For security admins, policy is fully unified from device to network, delivering a streamlined, automated experience.

The path forward

We are investing heavily in the innovations you need to defeat today’s threats while future-proofing your enterprise for tomorrow.

The transition to the Frontier AI era demands a bold strategy. The winners will be the organizations that adopt a prevention-first architecture capable of stopping threats long before weaponization occurs. With PAN-OS Ceres 12.2, Palo Alto Networks is giving defenders the speed, scale, and platform foundation to turn the tables on modern adversaries.

 

Forward-Looking Statements 

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation, statements regarding the benefits, impact, or performance or potential benefits, impact or performance of our products and technologies or future products and technologies. Any unreleased services or features (and any services or features not generally available to customers) referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available (or are not yet generally available to customers) and may not be delivered when expected or at all. Customers who purchase Palo Alto Networks applications should make their purchase decisions based on services and features currently generally available.

 

​​Sources: 
1 https://www.nokia.com/artificial-intelligence/explainer-network-traffic-is-fundamentally-changing-in-the-ai-supercycle/
2 According to the Verizon 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report

 

The post Redefining Network Security for the Frontier AI Era appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Today, we’re releasing the HIPAA Security Rule on AWS: Technical Safeguards Implementation and Readiness Guidance. This helps covered entities and business associates configure, implement, and evidence compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule Technical Safeguard requirements (45 CFR §164.312) when building healthcare workloads on AWS.

The HIPAA Security Rule’s Technical Safeguards (§164.312) define five standards and nine implementation specifications covering access control, audit controls, integrity, authentication, and transmission security.

The guidance also covers the 2025 NPRM proposed changes, including encryption at rest and in transit becoming required, multi-factor authentication (MFA) becoming mandatory for all electronic Personal Health Information (ePHI) access, and new specifications for network segmentation, configuration management, anti-malware protection, patch management, software removal, incident response and breach notification.

Key topics included

• Shared responsibility for HIPAA on AWS – A responsibility matrix mapping each §164.312 specification to what AWS manages nd what the customer must configure and operate.
• ePHI boundary architecture – Guidance on establishing a defined ePHI boundary
• ePHI data flow and encryption – A reference architecture tracing ePHI with the applicable §164.312 specification
• Foundation checklist – Prerequisite recommendation before configuring individual Technical Safeguard controls.

This guidance is written for cloud architects, security engineers, CISOs, and compliance teams at covered entities and business associates building or operating AWS healthcare workloads. It assumes familiarity with AWS services and is intended as a practical implementation reference, not a legal or regulatory interpretation. This guidance focuses exclusively on Technical Safeguards.

HHS published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in January 2025, proposing significant updates to the HIPAA Security Rule—including eliminating the Addressable designation, making encryption, MFA, and asset inventory mandatory, and introducing new technical requirements not present in the current rule. As of June 2026, the final rule has not been published. This guidance covers both the current rule and the proposed changes and recommends treating all specifications as Required for new workloads.

Download HIPAA Security Rule on AWS: Technical Safeguards Implementation and Readiness Guidance.

For questions about HIPAA readiness on AWS, including Administrative Safeguards, Physical Safeguards, risk analysis, and assessment preparation, contact the AWS Security Assurance Services team or your AWS account representative.

This guidance is provided by AWS Security Assurance Services, LLC, a HITRUST External Assessor Firm and PCI-QSAC along with contribution from AWS HCLS, AWS Compliance teams. It is for informational and guidance purposes only and does not constitute legal, regulatory, or compliance advice. Recipients are solely responsible for determining applicability to their specific environments and legal obligations.

If you have feedback about this post, submit comments in the Comments section below.

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Every modern enterprise is moving from an organization run by software to one orchestrated by AI, creating a tension between velocity and control. To resolve this tension, organizations require a unified architecture. Today, we are announcing the general availability of the Prisma AIRS AI Gateway, the AI control plane for the enterprise. 

Driven by the absolute conviction that an AI Gateway is foundational to the modern AI infrastructure stack, we are bringing AI innovations from the Portkey acquisition to Prisma AIRS just six weeks after closing. You can now scale AI at machine speed without compromising on enterprise-grade security and control.

Your AI Footprint is Outpacing Controls

Our next-generation firewall telemetry reveals that MCP activity climbed from 11% late last year to 41.4% by mid-2026. Monthly AI transaction volume grew twelve-fold over the same six months; some individual sessions moved hundreds of megabytes of enterprise data outbound. The AI footprint you can govern today is the smallest it will ever be.

Some of the most rapid AI adoption is happening with – coding assistants, enterprise agents and copilots.

• Coding agents access code repositories, file systems, configurations, and credentials. When this context, including source code and secrets, is sent to a frontier model, it risks exposing sensitive data, and a runaway loop could burn a fortune in tokens overnight.
• Enterprise agents run with broad access and standing privileges sharing context with each other. A single agent stretched beyond its scope can massively increase the risk of data breach, impact business reputation and customer trust.
• Copilots now sit inside the SaaS and productivity tools employees already use. Copilots with broad access can surface data an employee was never meant to see.

As this enterprise data leaves when an AI request goes out, it creates a security and governance challenge at an unprecedented scale and speed.

What breaks when every team adopts AI 

AI adoption rapidly outpaces the security and governance infrastructure meant to secure it:

• Shadow AI (Cost and usage are both hidden): You can't see the AI your teams already use or what it costs. 
• Data Exposure (Sensitive data leaves without a trace): AI interactions can expose sensitive data, bypass policy and trigger unsafe outputs.
• Agents Overstep (Actions run without accountability): Agents act across systems without clear identity, permission, or accountability. Keys get shared and agents run with broad, standing privileges, so no one can say which identity authorized a specific action or reverse it when an agent takes a wrong turn at machine speed.

Faced with this, most leaders either block traffic entirely or stay permissive and promise to govern later. Both approaches fail because they skip the critical step: seeing what agents do at runtime and controlling their actions while they happen.

Accelerate AI Adoption with Control

To scale AI adoption safely, you need a single control plane sitting between every AI interaction and the backend models. Prisma AIRS AI Gateway brings AI governance, identity and runtime controls together in one place. With the AI Gateway, you can:

• Discover AI usage: Know exactly which apps, models, users, teams and agents are active, what they are accessing, and what they cost in a single unified view.
• Govern AI interactions: Enforce central rules for model access, tool use and budgets while inspecting prompts and responses inline to prevent data leaks.
• Secure every agent: Verify agent identities and enforce just-in-time, least-privilege access so autonomous systems only touch what they need, when they need it.

How the AI Gateway works 

Prisma AIRS AI Gateway sits inline between every AI interaction, model provider, and agentic interaction (Agent/AI App to LLMs, MCP Tool Calls, and A2A). It acts as a unified LLM, MCP, and A2A Gateway with a single enforcement point for all operational and security controls. Your teams keep using their existing coding assistants, enterprise agents, and copilots, while enforcement moves to the infrastructure layer where the platform team can own it.

Capabilities delivered through this unified control plane are:

Observability

Every request maps to a single unified view: tracking usage, users, projects, token counts, latency and cost so you can retire shadow AI infrastructure immediately.

Governance

Centrally define approved models, tools, and access without touching developer configurations. To drive FinOps and usage management, track every request's cost, tokens, and latency by team or project. Answer cost questions instantly, shut down unsanctioned AI usage, and proactively enforce budgets and rate limits before access is granted.

Coding Assistant Security

Protect credentials, proprietary code and development systems from risky AI actions. The gateway replaces raw provider keys with scoped credentials per user and team.

Operational Controls

Apply data protection, usage limits and policy checks as AI interactions happen. Traffic distributes via a Universal API across providers ensuring quotas are enforced and outages never stall your pipeline.

Agent Identity Security

Establish trusted identities by binding a verifiable, ephemeral identity to agents at execution. The AI Gateway acts as an enforcement point to enable only authenticated agents to make approved calls.

Runtime Security 

Powered by Prisma AIRS AI Runtime Security, the gateway inspects every prompt and response inline, stopping source code, secrets and customer data from leaving the network while neutralizing prompt injection attempts aligned with the OWASP LLM Top 10 and OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications.

Watch Anand Oswal break down why an AI gateway is foundational to this architecture.

The AI Control Plane for the Enterprise

Prisma AIRS AI Gateway brings AI governance, identity and runtime controls together in one place. Point products filter text strings or route a single API call and they buckle under real enterprise volume.
Most products fail at scale. Prisma AIRS AI Gateway is built on an architecture tested in the most demanding enterprises for their ever evolving AI workloads: 

• 68 Trillion+ tokens processed in the last month alone.
• Sub-millisecond routing latency and inline inspection secures AI interactions without degrading user experience.
• 99.999% availability helps ensure your AI operational pipeline does not experience a single point of failure.

Learn about Prisma AIRS AI Gateway and register for our webinar to see the AI Gateway in action. 

Your developers have already adopted their agents. The agentic enterprise is a reality. As the recently named "company to beat" in AI Security Platforms by Gartner, Palo Alto Networks is uniquely positioned to help you. Let’s build it securely, together.

The post Announcing the General Availability of Prisma AIRS AI Gateway appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

By Yogesh Ranade from Palo Alto Networks, and Senthil Ramakrishnan from AT&T

The digital world is currently navigating a dual-speed revolution. Acceleration of AI and hyperconnectivity is unlocking unprecedented economic value. The silent but rapid progress of quantum computing is fundamentally threatening the cryptographic foundation upon which that value is built.

As leaders in global networking and cybersecurity, Palo Alto Networks and AT&T Business launched Secure Connectivity solutions for Business Customers. We recognize that quantum-readiness is no longer a distant milestone; it is now a strategic imperative. With threatening data longevity and Trust Now, Forge Later targeting digital identities, the risks are already looming. 

By integrating Prisma SD-WAN’s cryptographic innovation with AT&T’s global network, Palo Alto Networks and AT&T Business are proud to deliver the Quantum-Resilient SASE Fabric.

The Quantum Shift Towards Building Resilience for Tomorrow’s Reality

For over 30 years, the difficulty of mathematics has been our primary defense. Classical algorithms, like RSA and Diffie-Hellman, provided the shield for our global economy because they were computationally impossible for classical machines to solve. However, quantum computing fundamentally changes this landscape by providing an exponential speed-up. By leveraging Shor’s Algorithm, quantum computers can break these classical cryptographic foundations, turning a decryption process that would take a classic supercomputer millennia into a task of mere hours.

Neutralizing the Quantum Crisis

Palo Alto Networks is embedding Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) as a native pillar of the Prisma SASE fabric. We are moving beyond the forklift-upgrade model to a software-defined, standards-based foundation, which is built on strict separation of management and data plane components:

• Universal Control Plane Hardening (TLS 1.3): We have transitioned all control plane traffic to TLS 1.3 (Transport Layer Security 1.3), the global gold standard for Internet encryption. This secures the "brain" of the network (where routing configurations and security policies are managed), making it immune to quantum-enabled impersonation and credential theft.
• PQC-Hardened Data Plane (IETF Standards): We are operationalizing PQC across the entire fabric by adopting official standards published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), specifically RFC 9370, 9242, and 8784. In plain terms, these standards allow us to use "hybrid key exchanges." This means we wrap your data in two layers of protection at once: a classical mathematical shield for immediate compatibility, and a quantum-resistant shield to protect against future decryption threats, all without causing packet fragmentation or network slowdowns.
• Logs and Telemetry Plane: All network telemetry and metadata (the automated operational logs and traffic pattern data generated by the network, rather than the actual content of your business files) are encrypted in transit via TLS 1.3. This architecture guarantees that even this secondary network metadata is geofenced to your chosen region with no cross-region aggregation, satisfying the most stringent data residency mandates.
• Crypto-Agility as a Standard: "Crypto-agility" is natively built into our systems, which means the software is designed to adopt new mathematical algorithms. As the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) refines its guidelines, our systems can be upgraded seamlessly via simple, automated cloud updates without requiring expensive hardware replacements to ensure our customers’ security posture.
• Secure Boot Support: Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN ION hardware supports Secure Boot to ensure that only cryptographically signed bootloaders, kernels, and trusted applications are executed during the boot process. This establishes a chain of trust from the BIOS firmware to the operating system, preventing the execution of unauthorized or tampered software. ION hardware appliances ship with an integrated, dedicated Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which provides hardware-level root-of-trust by securely storing cryptographic keys, certificates, and sensitive data to prevent unauthorized physical tampering and ensure secure device authentication. The OS/software layers use PQC algorithms to negotiate and secure the management, control plane and data plane tunnels. This ensures quantum readiness without requiring an immediate, widespread rip-and-replace of physical branch hardware.

The AT&T Perspective Views Security at Global Scale

From the perspective of a global leader like AT&T, PQC is an operational mandate. Providing connectivity to the world’s most regulated industries means that security cannot be bolted on. Security must be an inherent property of the transport layer and the connectivity infrastructure itself.

Turning Complexity into a Strategic Advantage

Managing a global footprint that spans across 5G, fiber, and legacy underlays requires an institutional expertise that few can match. For AT&T, the move to a more secure quantum-ready fabric with Dynamic Defense is about providing security where it matters most: the network. Our customers shouldn't have to worry about whether their data is traveling over an MPLS circuit or the public internet.

Through this collaboration, AT&T expands the delivery of Dynamic Defense:

• Cross-Underlay Consistency: We enable PQC protection to be applied uniformly across all transport mediums, eliminating the "weak links" that often exist in hybrid environments where data moves between private and public circuits.
• Automated PQC Policy Orchestration: New branch locations are seamlessly integrated into the quantum-ready fabric through automated policy distribution. The moment a device is activated via zero touch provisioning, the branch is enabled to be protected against HNDL threats from the first packet without requiring manual site-by-site intervention.
• Compliance: With mandates like NIS2/DORA in Europe and NORA/CNSA 2.0 in the U.S., our clients face a closing window for compliance. AT&T provides the verifiable chain of trust required to prove "Quantum Readiness" across the entire circuit path, ensuring your fabric is audit-ready and compliant with global standards.

The Power of the Post-Quantum Secure Fabric

The true value of this relationship lies in the synergy between the network and the security stack. By combining our strengths, we have built a solution that is significantly more resilient than the sum of its parts.

The SPI Advantage Is Performance Without Compromise

Through Service Provider Interconnect (SPI), Palo Alto Networks' security platforms natively integrate with AT&T’s private network core to deliver a seamless quantum-safe on-ramp. This means business traffic can connect directly to a secure AT&T network without having to build slow, complex software tunnels over the public internet, preserving high performance while delivering next-generation encryption. Historically, high-level encryption meant a "performance tax" on latency and throughput. Our combined architecture allows quantum-safe traffic to flow over AT&T’s network backbone, enabling organizations to modernize their security without sacrificing the user experience.

Securing the Decentralized Perimeter (The Branch as the Edge)

In today’s highly distributed business landscape, the traditional corporate "headquarters" is no longer the center of gravity. The network perimeter has shifted to the branch (decentralized edge locations like retail storefronts, remote clinics, regional bank offices, and warehouse hubs) and the individual 5G-connected devices employees use. Securing these remote, local edge points is critical because they represent the primary gateway where sensitive company data first enters the network. 

By utilizing AT&T’s leadership in WAN, 5G and cellular technologies, we leverage Hybrid Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to secure these edge locations. Hybrid PKI is a digital identity framework that issues dual security credentials to every device: one "classical" identity to ensure compatibility with existing networks today, and one "quantum-resistant" identity. This double-verification guarantees that a cellular-connected remote branch or a mobile site is just as immune to quantum decryption or identity spoofing as a fortified corporate data center.

The Path Forward Is a Vision for Long-Term Trust

The transition to a quantum-ready future is a marathon, not a sprint, and the first steps must be taken now. Palo Alto Networks and AT&T Business are offering a clear, practical path to quantum resilience.

We are delivering more than a simple software update as we prepare customers for the next generation of digital commerce. Together, we are designing our network to help ensure the data of today remains protected against the threats of tomorrow, securing the digital integrity of every enterprise we serve.

As we redefine the boundaries of security in connectivity, we invite you to join us in helping secure your organization’s digital future. Contact your or Palo Alto Networks account representative today to begin a strategic Quantum-Readiness Assessment and experience the power of the Quantum-Resilient SASE Fabric.

The post Palo Alto Networks and AT&T - Delivering Quantum-Resilient SASE Fabric appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Microsoft Corp. today released software updates to plug at least 570 security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, almost triple the number of vulnerabilities the software giant fixed in its record-smashing Patch Tuesday release last month. Microsoft attributed the burgeoning patch counts to vulnerability discoveries aided by artificial intelligence.

Nearly 60 of the bugs quashed in July’s Patch Tuesday earned a “critical” severity rating, meaning miscreants or malware could use them to seize remote control over a Windows device with little or no help from the user. Microsoft also addressed three zero-day flaws, including two that are already being exploited in the wild.

Two of the zero-day weaknesses allow an attacker to elevate their user rights on a Windows system, as do approximately 250 other elevation of privilege flaws fixed this month; they include CVE-2026-56155 — an Active Directory Federation Services bug — and CVE-2026-56164, a Microsoft Sharepoint vulnerability.

CVE-2026-50661 is a security feature bypass in Windows BitLocker that could allow attackers to gain access to encrypted data if they have physical access to the device. Microsoft said this bug has been detailed publicly, but that it is not aware of any active exploitation.

In a blog post on July 9, Microsoft Executive Vice President Pavan Davuluri wrote that Windows users will notice “a higher volume of security updates included in each security release” as a result of AI aiding in the discovery of vulnerabilities.

“The pace of vulnerability discovery is changing with advances in AI making it possible to find more issues, faster, across more code, with new mechanisms that can accelerate both discovery and analysis,” Davuluri wrote.

Jack Bicer, director of vulnerability research at Action1, called attention to CVE-2026-48561, a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Copilot (with a 9.6 CVSS threat score) that allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over the network. Microsoft says an attacker could exploit this bug by hosting a malicious website that causes Microsoft Edge for Android to automatically send crafted prompts to Copilot when a user visits the site.

As AI advances the state of vulnerability discovery and remediation, it is also making it easier for attackers to quickly devise working exploits for known software flaws. Microsoft has long labeled security bugs using its “exploitability index,” which is Redmond’s best guess as to how likely it is that attackers will be able to figure out a reliable way to exploit a given vulnerability.

But Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, argues that Microsoft’s exploitability index needs to do a better job of shifting with the machine speed of discovery. For example, Microsoft originally gave this month’s SharePoint zero-day an exploitability rating of “less likely,” although the flaw was added to CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list on July 1.

“Anthropic’s Red Team’s own findings for known vulnerabilities (n-days) revealed how fragile this system has become, with its Mythos Preview model being able to produce proof-of-concept exploits for 13 of 14 vulnerabilities that were rated ‘Exploitation Less Likely’ or ‘Exploitation Unlikely,'” Narang said. “What this means is that our way of looking at Patch Tuesday has changed, because the exploitability index is centered around humans, not AI tools, and as these tools continue to improve, defense needs to improve alongside it.”

Chris Goettl at Ivanti observed that the record patch numbers from Microsoft come as a number of other major software makers are increasing their patch cadence, including Adobe which announced today it is moving to twice-monthly security bulletins published on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month (Adobe also cited AI for accelerating their patch cycles). Cisco, Mozilla and Oracle also are shipping updates more frequently, while Google’s patch batches in June 2026 totaled more than 900 security fixes, Goettl noted.

Backing up your Windows system and/or data is always a good idea before applying operating system updates. Given the volume of patches addressed this month it may be wise for end users to wait a few days before applying these fixes. It’s not uncommon for security patches to introduce system stability issues, and those chances probably increase quite a bit with the gigantic patch count released today.

Further reading:

Action1’s Patch Tuesday blog

Automox’s rundown

Palo Alto Networks is pleased to announce the successful completion of a new Cloud Medium security assessment conducted by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (Cyber Centre), significantly expanding the number of Palo Alto Networks cloud services assessed for Protected B / Medium Integrity / Medium Availability (PBMM) environments. This assessment includes a broad range of capabilities across our Cortex®, Cortex Cloud and Strata™ platforms. By achieving this milestone, Palo Alto Networks enables  organizations handling Canada’s most sensitive data to leverage a unified, AI-driven security architecture without compromising on compliance or operational resilience.

For years, many organizations viewed PBMM as something that only mattered to the Canadian federal government. It was often seen as a procurement requirement—a framework tied to public sector cloud adoption, relevant for departments handling Protected B information, but not necessarily for the private sector.

That assumption is changing.

The reality is that the challenges driving PBMM are no longer unique to government environments. Banks, energy providers, transportation networks, healthcare organizations, crown corporations, and other critical infrastructure operators are now facing many of the same pressures:

• Expanding attack surfaces across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Increased regulatory scrutiny and privacy obligations.
• Greater operational dependence on cloud and AI technologies.
• Increased reliance on third-party providers and software supply chains.
• The need to maintain operational resilience during cyber incidents and disruptions.
• A growing expectation that organizations can demonstrate—not just claim—security maturity.

That is why PBMM matters far beyond Ottawa. At its core, PBMM represents a rigorous approach to validating whether enterprise-grade security platforms can operate securely in environments where trust, resilience, and operational continuity are critical.

Increasingly, that level of assurance matters to everyone.

What PBMM Really Represents

PBMM, a rigorous cybersecurity and data classification standard used by the  Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, stands for Protected B / Medium Integrity / Medium Availability. While often associated with federal cloud security requirements, PBMM is not simply a checkbox exercise. It is a comprehensive assessment framework aligned to Canadian cybersecurity guidance and operational security expectations.

What makes PBMM important is that it evaluates whether platforms and services can securely support sensitive and mission-critical workloads in real-world environments.

Palo Alto Networks meeting these rigorous PBMM requirements through three core pillars:

• Strata (Network Security): Secures data resiliency and zero trust connectivity, driving robust perimeter and cloud edge protection.
• Cortex Cloud (Cloud Security): Provides complete visibility, security governance, and data protection across complex cloud-native architectures.
• Cortex (Security Operations): Powers the agentic SOC, combining unified data, AI, and automation to detect and respond to threats in real time.

These are not theoretical requirements. They are practical operational expectations designed for environments where downtime, visibility gaps, or security failures can have significant consequences.

Organizations today are no longer evaluating cybersecurity solely based on features. They are evaluating whether platforms can be trusted to support critical operations at scale.

Why Security Expectations Are Changing

The cybersecurity landscape has evolved dramatically. Infrastructure is distributed across cloud providers, SaaS applications, remote users, third-party integrations, operational technology (OT), AI platforms, and interconnected supply chains. At the same time, attacks have become faster, more automated, and more disruptive.

In this environment, security can no longer be treated as a compliance exercise. Organizations need confidence that their platforms, operational processes, and security controls can function effectively under pressure.

This is why Palo Alto Networks has undertaken independent PBMM assessments across its portfolio, providing customers with greater assurance and trust. By meeting these rigorous standards into Strata and Cortex, we enable non-government entities—like financial institutions and utility providers—to deploy the same defensive rigor used to protect national security systems.

Transforming Critical Infrastructure with a Unified Platform

To effectively manage risk, critical infrastructure operators require a platform approach that helps eliminate security silos, reduce manual intervention, and accelerate threat mitigation.

Key Portfolio Advantages for Critical Infrastructure & Enterprise:

• AI-Driven Threat Detection & Response: Cortex XSIAM® and Cortex XDR® unify telemetry across endpoints, network, and cloud to deliver unparalleled visibility and automated threat stitching, neutralizing advanced cyberthreats before they disrupt operations.
• Comprehensive Cloud Native Protection: Cortex Cloud secures applications from code to cloud to SOC, offering posture security, data protection, and continuous compliance monitoring tailored to stringent Canadian data standards.
• Zero Trust Network Security: Strata enables secure access and consistent policy enforcement across campus, branch, and data center environments, protecting critical OT and IT systems from lateral threat movement.
• Elite Incident Response: Backed by Unit 42®, organizations gain access to threat intelligence and rapid incident response services to augment their teams and build long-term cyber resilience.

Operational Resilience Is Becoming a Strategic Requirement

One of the most significant shifts occurring across industries today is the growing focus on operational resilience. Organizations are increasingly asking questions that extend beyond traditional cybersecurity controls:

• Can we maintain critical services during a cyber attack?
• Do we have visibility across our cloud environments and supply chain dependencies?
• Can we rapidly detect, respond to, and recover from disruptions?
• Are our governance processes keeping pace with cloud adoption and AI innovation?

As organizations adopt cloud-native architectures, AI-driven technologies, and interconnected digital ecosystems, resilience has become a board-level concern. The ability to prevent incidents remains important, but organizations are equally focused on their ability to withstand, respond to, and recover from them.

This is where frameworks like PBMM provide value. Beyond evaluating security controls, PBMM assesses the governance, operational processes, monitoring capabilities, and risk management practices that help organizations operate securely.

For critical infrastructure operators, resilience is no longer simply an IT objective—it is a business imperative. Increasingly, the organizations that earn trust are those that can demonstrate they are prepared to operate effectively when disruption occurs.

Final Thoughts: PBMM Reflects the Future of Trust

PBMM may have started solely as a government assessment framework, but its relevance now extends far beyond federal environments. It represents something universal: the ability to operate securely, reliably, and transparently in environments where trust matters most.

By expanding our PBMM-assessed offerings across Cortex and Strata, Palo Alto Networks underscores its commitment to securing Canada's digital future. We provide the validated foundation organizations need to innovate with confidence, protect sensitive data, and maintain operational continuity under any circumstance.

Read the Assessment Summary Report

To learn more about the Palo Alto Networks Cloud Medium security assessment, review the publicly available assessment summary report issued by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.

Ready to modernize your defenses with PBMM-assessed solutions? Schedule a demo with our team or contact Unit 42 to learn how we can help elevate your organization's resilience against emerging cyber threats.

The post Securing Canada’s Digital Future: Why PBMM Matters Beyond Government appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

The release of OMB Memo M-26-14 ("Ensuring Effective and Efficient Agency Logging and Network Visibility to Defend Against Evolving Cyber Threats") marks a historic turning point in federal cybersecurity. By officially rescinding the M-21-31 directive, the White House has delivered a clear message to federal IT leaders: the era of compliance-driven data hoarding is officially over.

While the previous framework was a well-intentioned response to the SolarWinds breach, its mandate to collect and retain vast oceans of unstructured logging data created unintended, unsustainable operational burdens. For the past several years, federal agencies have faced skyrocketing cloud storage bills and overwhelmed Security Operations Centers (SOCs). Crucially, they have been left with vast quantities of cold data that lacked clear operational utility.

As OMB noted, retaining endless data without operational focus is neither cost-effective nor operationally feasible. With M-26-14, the federal government is pivoting to a smarter, sleeker, and far more decisive strategy: a risk-based, prioritized logging framework driven by AI and machine-speed defense.

The Core Shifts: What Federal Leaders Must Understand

M-26-14 strips away administrative "red tape" to focus on how modern cybersecurity risks have evolved. Nation-state threat actors are actively leveraging advanced automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to orchestrate attacks at unprecedented speeds. They move laterally across agencies in minutes, hiding behind legitimate corporate credentials.

To beat machine-speed threats, your data layer must operate at machine-scale. The new memo reorganizes federal visibility around two foundational pillars:

1. Continuous Event Monitoring — Owning the Present

Continuous Event Monitoring demands that logging infrastructure shift from a passive archiving tool to a live-streaming asset. Agencies are now required to monitor network and asset activity in real time, rapidly flag anomalous behavior via behavioral analytics, and initiate immediate mitigation actions directly through their SOCs.

2. Threat Hunting, Investigation, Response, and Forensics — Dominating the Post-Compromise

When a compromise is suspected, agencies can no longer spend days running slow database queries or pulling disconnected csv files. M-26-14 mandates that agencies keep 6 months of logs "hot and searchable" and 1 year fully "retrievable." This allows defenders to immediately stitch together cross-domain attack patterns, perform rapid root-cause forensics, and share threat intelligence seamlessly with CISA and the FBI.

3. Expanding the Blast Radius: Entering IoT and OT

Perhaps the most significant structural change is the explicit inclusion of Internet of Things (IoT) and Operational Technology (OT) systems. Adversaries do not respect the boundary between your corporate IT network and your physical infrastructure. Under M-26-14, your logging and threat-hunting capabilities must aggressively cover the entire enterprise—from public cloud workloads to the physical facility controls and critical infrastructure grids running on an agency's behalf.

The Clock is Ticking: The Aggressive Maturity Deadlines

Agencies cannot afford a passive approach. The timeline established by OMB M-26-14 moves quickly:

• T+90 Days: CISA will publish the new Logging Reference Architecture (LRA) codifying hybrid/centralized deployments, Zero Trust Maturity Model (ZTMM) integration, and AI-driven monitoring guidelines.
• LRA +90 Days: Agencies must submit their comprehensive Agency Logging Plans.
• LRA +120 Days: Achieve Basic Level 1 Maturity.
• LRA +180 Days: Achieve Intermediate Level 2 Maturity.
• LRA +320 Days: Achieve Advanced Level 3 Maturity (Advanced/Optimal Effectiveness).

Activating OMB M-26-14 with Palo Alto Networks Cortex

Trying to retrofit a legacy SIEM architecture to meet the advanced or optimal effectiveness tiers of M-26-14 is an engineering and budgetary dead end. Legacy SIEMs scale costs linearly with ingestion and rely on static, human-written correlation rules that fail against AI-fueled threats.

The FedRAMP Certified Palo Alto Networks Cortex platform—anchored by Cortex XSIAM (Extended Security Intelligence and Automation Management)—was engineered from the ground up to solve the exact problems this new memo addresses.

From Disconnected Columns to Cross-Domain "Stitching"

Legacy logging stores data in isolated silos. An analyst trying to track an adversary has to manually look at an identity log, cross-reference it with a network firewall alert, and match it to an endpoint execution.

Cortex XSIAM features a revolutionary Analytics Engine that automatically stitches multi-vendor logs across cloud, network, endpoint, and identity at the moment of ingestion. It transforms raw text into a single, cohesive, context-rich story, instantly aligning incidents with the MITRE ATT&CK framework.  Cortex XSIAM doesn’t just ingest data, it understands the data which enables stitching of multiple data elements into a single, multi-context construct which accelerates analysis via AI and machine learning.

Replacing Static Rules with Cloud-Scale AI

Adversaries use AI to evade signature detection. Cortex XSIAM fights fire with fire, applying out-of-the-box, unsupervised machine learning models to baseline normal behavioral patterns across your entire federal enterprise. When an anomalous lateral movement, data exfiltration attempt, or credential abuse event occurs, XSIAM flags the threat instantly—without requiring your team to spend weeks writing custom correlation code.

Accelerating Continuous Event Monitoring (CEM) and Threat Hunting, Investigation, Response and Forensics (THIRF)

There is more to CEM than just monitoring network activity.  Activity on endpoints, within your identity management solution(s) and in the cloud are just as important.  Understanding the data, knowing which log records are related to each other across multiple log sources, which events are relevant and the context they provide is required.  

Understanding these events and their contextual relationships is fundamental to providing THIRF in an efficient manner.  Cortex XSIAM provides over 2,900 machine learning models out of the box, models that are trained on the data in your environment so they detect anomalous activity based on what is “normal” in your environment, not trained on generic data from other customers or a lab.  These models can identify threats based on data stitched together from multiple sources to provide a more complete context yielding more accurate and consistent results while decreasing time to value.

Securing the Unmanageable: Agentless IoT/OT Defense

You cannot install an EDR logging agent on a smart building HVAC system or an industrial programmable logic controller (PLC). Palo Alto Networks utilizes non-disruptive, passive network analysis to continuously discover, profile, and generate high-fidelity security logs for IoT and OT infrastructure. These logs stream directly into XSIAM, eliminating critical federal blind spots and protecting your High Value Assets (HVAs) from cross-boundary pivot attacks.

Solving the Storage Conundrum Safely

Keeping six months of high-velocity event logs fully "hot and searchable" under a traditional database indexing model creates a crushing financial burden. Cortex XSIAM fundamentally resets the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) equation by leveraging an index-free, cloud-native data lake architecture that decouples storage costs from analytical performance. By eliminating legacy ingestion taxes and infrastructure overhead, federal defenders can search petabytes of data in seconds—effortlessly meeting the 6-month searchable and 1-year retrievable thresholds. Furthermore, integrated data masking rules strip away sensitive PII or low-value data noise before it hits the SOC, ensuring agencies only pay for operationally vital intelligence.

 

The Bottom Line for Federal Leaders

OMB M-26-14 is a massive step forward for federal cybersecurity. It frees CISOs from the operational gridlock of untargeted data archiving and empowers them to build faster, modern, and highly responsive security operations.

Meeting the strict 120-to-320-day maturity milestones requires moving past the tools of the last decade. By partnering with Palo Alto Networks and deploying the Cortex suite, federal agencies can seamlessly transition into a risk-aligned, AI-driven SOC. They can confidently check the box on OMB compliance while achieving what the directive actually intends: protecting the resilience and integrity of the federal mission at machine speed.

Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XSIAM is FedRAMP certified at both the moderate and high levels.

Want to learn more about how to structure your upcoming Agency Logging Plan to meet CISA's upcoming Logging Reference Architecture? 

Contact the Palo Alto Networks Federal Team today to schedule an architectural deep-dive.

The post Shifting from Data Hoarding to Active Defense: Navigating the New Era of OMB M-26-14 appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Microsoft today released software updates to plug nearly 200 security holes across its Windows operating systems and supported software, a record number of fixes for the company’s monthly Patch Tuesday cycle. Nearly three dozen of those bugs earned Microsoft’s most dire “critical” rating, and exploit code for at least three of the weaknesses is now publicly available.

The software giant said in a blog post last month that both its engineers and the security community are increasing using artificial intelligence tools to find bugs, meaning this month’s heavy Patch Tuesday may start to become the norm, said Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable.

“Some surveys put AI usage among security professionals generally at 90%, so it’s unsurprising that this volume of patches may be the norm,” Narang said. “Pandora’s proverbial box has been opened, and as more advanced AI models become available, we expect the norm to continue upward across the board, not just for Patch Tuesday.”

June’s zero-day bugs include CVE-2026-49160, a denial of service vulnerability affecting a range of web servers, including Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). Microsoft says the flaw was reported by OpenAI’s Codex.

Two of the zero-days addressed this month appear to stem from recent vulnerability disclosures by Nightmare Eclipse, the nickname chosen by a security researcher who has been dropping exploits for various Windows flaws. One of those, dubbed “GreenPlasma,” leverages an elevation of privilege weakness in the Windows Collaborative Translation Framework, the same framework patched today in CVE-2026-45586.

Nightmare Eclipse also last month released “YellowKey,” an exploit for a Windows BitLocker vulnerability that allows an attacker with physical access to view encrypted data, and CVE-2026-50507 is a patch for an elevation of privilege bug in BitLocker.

Microsoft received heavy blowback on social media last month after it said in a blog post that it was considering taking legal action against the security researcher. The company later clarified on Twitter/X that while it has no intention of pursuing legal actions against researchers, it would report them to authorities if they break the law. The advisories for CVE-2026-49160 and CVE-2026-50507 do not credit any researchers in the acknowledgement section, saying only that “Microsoft recognizes the efforts of those in the security community who help us protect customers through coordinated vulnerability disclosure.”

Nightmare Eclipse claims to be a former employee of Microsoft, although Microsoft has not responded to questions about this claim. Rapid7 notes that a recent blog post by Nightmare Eclipse included an image of Albert Wesker, a character from the Resident Evil video game series who formerly worked as a researcher for a technology company before going rogue.

Nightmare Eclipse has pledged to release even more zero-day exploits for Windows in what they called a “bone shattering” drop planned for July 14 (the same day as next month’s Patch Tuesday). Immediately following the release of Microsoft patches today, the researcher published an exploit for what they claimed was a zero-day bug in Windows Defender.

While 200 vulnerabilities may be a record for Patch Tuesday, the actual number of security flaws Microsoft addressed this month is far higher, said Rapid7’s Adam Barnett.

“So far this month, Microsoft has provided patches to address 360 browser vulnerabilities, which is an order of magnitude more than has been typical in any given month over the past few years,” Barnett wrote. “As usual, browser [flaws] are not included in the Patch Tuesday count above. Indeed, the vast, and presumably sustained, uptick in the number of browser vulnerabilities has led to Microsoft no longer enumerating Chromium CVEs in the Security Update Guide.”

Microsoft also patched a zero-day vulnerability in Visual Studio Code that allows attackers to steal GitHub tokens with a single click. The company was forced to push a stopgap fix for the flaw on June 3, after a researcher published instructions showing how to exploit it. The researcher said they opted not to work with Microsoft because of a recent experience wherein Redmond silently patched a flaw they reported without offering credit or recognition.

Microsoft battled its own internal zero-day emergencies last week, after at least 72 of the company’s public code repositories were infected with a variant of the Shai-Hulud worm. Researchers found that all of the affected packages were connected to Microsoft official Azure Durable Task SDK, which got hit by the same Shai-Hulud worm in May.

Other major software makers are also shipping outsized update bundles this month. Adobe has released updates to fix a massive number of critical vulnerabilities across a range of products, including Adobe Experience Manager, Acrobat Reader and Cold Fusion. On June 3, Google resolved a whopping 429 vulnerabilities in its latest Chrome browser update (Chrome automatically downloads updates but installing them usually requires a complete restart of the browser).

As ever, please consider backing up your data before applying operating system updates, and drop a note in the comments if you run into any problems with this month’s patches.

Further reading:

Microsoft’s Security Update Guide

Action1’s Patch Tuesday breakdown

SANS Internet Storm Center notes on Patch Tuesday

Helping Partners Stay Competitive for the Future

Key Takeaways

• The evolved NextWave Partner Program raises expectations while strengthening enablement, incentives and the Partner Development Fund to support partner growth and reinvestment.
• Levels and specializations are more closely aligned to next-generation security priorities, helping partners deepen expertise and making partner distinctions more meaningful for customers.
• These changes help create a more capable partner ecosystem, with deeper capabilities, greater alignment with customer needs, and a stronger foundation to support the future of security.

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Cybersecurity partnerships are operating in a more demanding environment. As customers consolidate vendors, modernize security architectures and adopt artificial intelligence (AI) across the enterprise, they’re placing greater expectations on partners to help guide decisions across network, cloud and security operations. They also want clearer evidence that their selected partners have invested in growing the skills and expertise needed to support more integrated and fast-changing security priorities.

The Palo Alto Networks NextWave Partner Program has evolved to help partners meet these heightened expectations. As security delivery becomes broader and more strategic, customers are placing more weight on what a partner’s credentials actually represent. That’s why stronger performance and enablement requirements are part of our reimagined program. The new requirements help partners better understand what they need to build real capability and advance within our program. They also give more substance to the designations customers see when choosing a partner.

Our objective was never simply to raise the standards for engagement in our program. It was to inspire partners at all levels – Registered, Innovator, Platinum and Diamond – to invest deliberately and continuously in learning, so they can deepen their proficiency and earn specializations that will help them stay competitive and build and deliver the future of security.

Why Requirements and Incentives Had to Evolve Together

Raising performance expectations was only part of the work in evolving the NextWave program. We also wanted to give our partners compelling reasons to invest in the capabilities Palo Alto Networks wants to see scale. That meant looking more closely at how standards, specializations and incentives fit together, and how we can help accelerate mutual success.

We are providing our partners with better access, better visibility and better support for learning and enablement. In turn, we are recognizing and rewarding partners for their efforts to develop and maintain the competency, capability and capacity needed to go to market successfully with Palo Alto Networks.

This approach, shaped largely by partner feedback, is designed to make incentives easier to access while still directing partner investment toward deeper specialization and next-gen security capabilities. Program levels and product specializations help define what partners need to do to grow within our program and to excel at selling, supporting or delivering Palo Alto Networks products and services.

The program’s Partner Development Fund adds another dimension to this evolved model. It gives all partners a more deliberate way to reinvest a portion of their earned incentives into the capabilities they need to stay competitive and innovate, including training, certification, workshops, demos and other strategic activities that help strengthen their team’s overall readiness over time. In that sense, the program is both rewarding current performance and driving mutual growth.

Training and Enablement that Move with the Market

As we continue to strengthen our partner program, Palo Alto Networks is refreshing courses, updating certification paths and redesigning training to better reflect the customer needs that partners are helping to address today, including emerging areas like AI security.

Notable improvements:

• Introduced more online, on-demand learning experiences across all products and across all roles, including sales, technical presales and post-sales professionals.
• Expanded access to lab environments for hands-on experiences, as well as access to perform demos for customers.
• Injected AI roleplay into learning experiences to help sales and presales teams improve their ability to educate customers about our products and services while addressing questions or concerns.
• Instituted a continuous education component that encourages partners to stay current with certifications and other program requirements, so they don’t need to be tested annually.

Our aim with these changes is to keep learning options relevant, practical and easier to engage in and apply in practice. We believe product and services training should help partners deepen expertise, validate skills and stay current as technologies, customer expectations and threats shift. It should also recognize the experience many professionals already bring to the table, with learning paths that are rigorous without being repetitive or unnecessarily burdensome.

Ultimately, the impact of providing more effective enablement for our partners (and outlining clear requirements for advanced specializations and total certified staff for specific partner paths) positively impacts the customer experience through more informed conversations, stronger design guidance and more consistent support across the entire security lifecycle.

A More Focused Program to Help Accelerate Next-Generation Security

Part of what makes the current evolution of the NextWave program so significant is its focus on helping partners build the bench strength they will need to stay competitive as security becomes more platform-driven, AI-influenced and interconnected across domains. The program also encourages bookings tied to next-generation security priorities, helping direct partner investment toward the areas customers are prioritizing most. That focus is especially visible in areas such as Idira^®, Prisma^® SASE, Cortex^® Cloud and Cortex, where customer demand and program priorities are increasingly aligned.

The benefits of that alignment extend beyond the partner organization. Customers gain access to partners that are better prepared to support more connected security strategies without adding unnecessary complexity. They can work with partners that are building expertise around the technologies and use cases becoming more central to modern enterprise security programs.

This kind of alignment also strengthens the broader ecosystem. It creates a clearer connection between customer needs, partner capabilities and Palo Alto Networks platform strategy. It’s the value exchange in cybersecurity in action: Ongoing investment in knowledge, skills and services that helps partners grow while giving customers faster time-to-value realization.

What Stronger Program Requirements Mean for Customers

For customers, stronger requirements for our Nextwave program can make partner distinctions more meaningful. A specialization or program level should point to something real, such as training completed, certifications maintained and expertise developed. While those accomplishments don’t guarantee security outcomes, they do provide evidence that a partner has built the depth needed to support more complex environments.

Partner distinctions are also reinforced through an active compliance framework rather than treated as a one-time achievement. Partners have ongoing visibility into their progress and can be recognized immediately throughout the year as they meet requirements. Reviews take place on a defined cycle, and status changes are subject to oversight. Taken together, these elements add credibility to the designations customers see and give them more weight in the partner selection process.

This becomes increasingly important as customers look for security partners that can do more than support a single transaction or product decision. Many are seeking guidance at the architecture stage and during implementation, and expecting continuity as IT environments evolve and new risks emerge. It also raises the level of scrutiny that partner selection deserves:

• Is a partner specialized in the areas most relevant to the customer’s priorities?
• Do they have the certifications and technical expertise required to support the solutions being considered?
• Can they provide the level of guidance, implementation support and ongoing engagement the relationship will require over time?

In a fast-moving security market, questions like these can help customers make more informed decisions about which partners are best equipped to deliver long-term value.

What Partners Should Do Now

Now that we’ve introduced our new program requirements, partners should take stock of whether their certifications, specializations and go-to-market priorities are aligned to where customer demand and the future of security are headed. Steps partners can take:

• Evaluate your current book of business: Consider where you may be missing growth opportunities because the right specializations aren’t yet in place. Those gaps can affect both business momentum and the ability to earn incentives.
• Reflect on the current direction of your practice: Which customer conversations are signaling the need for deeper expertise? Which areas of next-generation security are becoming more central to your future? These questions can help guide your next investments by clarifying where your practice needs to build more depth sooner rather than later.
• Review certifications and specializations with growth in mind: Look at where new specializations could open the door to additional incentives and stronger alignment with customer demand, while ensuring your team’s existing certifications and specializations remain on track for the next compliance cycle.

Partners that take the time now to assess our new requirements and create a plan to meet them will be better positioned to advance within and benefit from our partner program, while developing the capabilities needed to help build the future of security.

Partners with a designated Palo Alto Networks Channel Business Manager can get detailed data and analysis now on their progress and performance in the Nextwave program, including the status of their certifications and which team members have engaged in training, demos and more. In the second half of 2026, we plan to make the same dashboard capabilities and insights directly available to all partners, so they can understand exactly what they need to do to excel in our program. These red-yellow-green dashboards are simple but powerful tools, and we are eager to put them in our partners’ hands soon.

Visit the NextWave Partner Portal to learn more.

The post The “Why” Behind NextWave’s New Requirements appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Over the past few weeks, we have reached a critical turning point in cybersecurity. Following the launch of our Frontier AI Defense initiative, we’ve continued testing the latest frontier models (including Anthropic’s Mythos and Claude Opus 4.7, as well as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber) as part of the Trusted Access for Cyber program.

The urgency to innovate continues to ramp up. As Lee Klarich recently detailed in his Defender's Guide to the Frontier AI Impact on Cybersecurity, our current landscape is defined by a brief three-to-five-month window to gain a strategic advantage over attackers. To outsmart AI-based exploits, enterprises must decisively address vulnerabilities across their code and stand up the right security stack to enable real-time, automated defenses.

With such a ticking clock in front of us, acting rapidly and at-scale to support our customers is paramount. Today, we exponentially grow our scale of delivery by expanding our Frontier AI Alliance.

Since introducing this initiative, our collaboration with initial partners – Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, NTT DATA, and PwC – has already begun changing the defensive math for our customers. This is a moment that calls for radical collaboration across the entire security ecosystem, so today we are proud to welcome a new cohort of strategic partners – Cognizant, HCLTech, Kyndryl, TCS, Infosys, McKinsey & Company, Orange Cyberdefense, and Wipro – who will join us in delivering AI readiness at scale.

While this expansion significantly increases our reach, this is only the beginning. We are committed to a continuous evolution of this alliance and will be adding more critical partners in the future across the globe to ensure our customers have the most robust defense network possible.

By combining our technology with these partners’ deep consulting expertise, we are delivering:

• Machine-Speed Security: Natively integrating Frontier AI to provide real-time, automated defense against autonomous threats.
• Intelligence-Led Resilience: Leveraging Unit 42^® experts to fast-track the discovery and remediation of exposures at machine speed.
• Hardened Defenses: Utilizing early access to frontier models from partners like OpenAI and Anthropic to simulate and block attack chains before they hit the mainstream.

The stakes are high. The attack cycle has compressed with the time from initial access to data exfiltration collapsing to just 39 seconds. Machine-speed MTTR (mean time to respond) is no longer an ambitious goal, it is a requirement.

This initiative underscores our commitment to providing every client with integrated, real-time protection.

Discover further details: Palo Alto Networks Frontier AI Defense.

Forward-Looking Statements

This blog contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation, statements regarding the benefits, impact, or performance or potential benefits, impact or performance of our products and technologies or future products and technologies. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and there are a significant number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this blog. We identify certain important risks and uncertainties that could affect our results and performance in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, and our other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from time-to-time, each of which are available on our website at investors.paloaltonetworks.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.  All forward-looking statements in this blog are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.

The post Beyond the Frontier — Expanding the Ecosystem for Autonomous Defense appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.