Traditional Security Is Blind to the Agentic Endpoint

Modern endpoints are no longer defined only by executables. Increasingly, endpoint behavior is shaped by non-binary software, such as code packages, browser extensions, IDE plugins, scripts, local servers (including MCP), containers and model artifacts. They are installed directly by employees and developers without centralized oversight. Because these components are not classic binaries, they often fall outside the visibility and control of traditional endpoint security tooling.

AI agents compound this problem. They are legitimate tools that operate with the user’s credentials and permissions, enabling them to read, write, move data and take privileged actions across systems. When compromised or misused, agents become the “ultimate insider.” They can autonomously discover, invoke and even install additional components at machine speed, accelerating risk across an already expanding, largely unmanaged software layer.

Weaponizing Trusted Automation

This is not a future concern. The recent viral emergence of OpenClaw serves as a cautionary tale for the agentic era. Developed by a single individual in just one week, it rapidly secured millions of downloads while gaining broad permissions across users' emails, filesystems and shells. Within days, researchers identified 135,000 exposed instances and more than 800 malicious skills in its marketplace, underscoring how a single unvetted agent can create an immediate, global attack surface.

OpenClaw is not an outlier. Recent research highlights how quickly this risk is materializing:

• Vibe Coding Threats: An AI extension in VS Code was found leaking code from 1.5 million developers. This tool could read any open file and send it back to the developer, collect mass files without user interaction, and track users with commercial analytics SDKs.
• Malicious MCP Server: Koi documented the first malicious Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in the wild. When developers added a specific skill to tools like Claude Code or Cursor, it silently forwarded every email to the plugin creator. What’s more, this capability was added later, after developers had already started using it.

Compounding this risk is the fact that autonomous agent actions are often difficult to trace or reconstruct, leaving Security Operations Centers (SOCs) without the visibility they need when an incident occurs.

A New Category of Protection

Complete endpoint security for the rapidly expanding risk of agentic AI calls for a new category of protection: Agentic Endpoint Security. That’s why we announced our intent to acquire Koi, a pioneer in this space. Koi is designed to eliminate blind spots across the AI-native ecosystem and help organizations govern agentic tools safely.

Its technology rests on three core pillars:

1. See All AI Software – Gain complete visibility into the AI tools, agents and non-binary software running in your environment.
2. Understand Risks – Continuously analyze and understand the intent and risk level of all software and AI agents.
3. Control the AI Ecosystem – Enforce policy in real-time to remediate issues and block risky behaviors.

Securing the Agentic Enterprise

We are convinced that Agentic Endpoint Security will soon become a standard requirement for enterprise security. Upon closing the proposed acquisition, we intend to integrate Koi’s capabilities across our platforms to help our customers secure the AI-native workspace.

The wave of AI agents approaching the enterprise cannot be held back. Instead, we must offer secure tools that enable companies to confidently embrace agentic innovation.

Forward-Looking Statements

This blog post contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated benefits and impact of the proposed acquisition of Koi on Palo Alto Networks, Koi and their customers. There are a significant number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this blog post, including, but not limited to: the effect of the announcement of the proposed acquisition on the parties’ commercial relationships and workforce; the ability to satisfy the conditions to the closing of the acquisition, including the receipt of required regulatory approvals; the ability to consummate the proposed acquisition on a timely basis or at all; significant and/or unanticipated difficulties, liabilities or expenditures relating to proposed transaction, risks related to disruption of management time from ongoing business operations due to the proposed acquisition and the ongoing integration of other recent acquisitions; our ability to effectively operate Koi’s operations and business following the closing, integrate Koi’s business and products into our products following the closing, and realize the anticipated synergies in the transaction in a timely manner or at all; changes in the fair value of our contingent consideration liability associated with acquisitions; developments and changes in general market, political, economic and business conditions; failure of our platformization product offerings; risks associated with managing our growth; risks associated with new product, subscription and support offerings; shifts in priorities or delays in the development or release of new product or subscription or other offerings or the failure to timely develop and achieve market acceptance of new products and subscriptions, as well as existing products, subscriptions and support offerings; failure of our product offerings or business strategies in general; defects, errors, or vulnerabilities in our products, subscriptions or support offerings; our customers’ purchasing decisions and the length of sales cycles; our ability to attract and retain new customers; developments and changes in general market, political, economic, and business conditions; our competition; our ability to acquire and integrate other companies, products, or technologies in a successful manner; our debt repayment obligations; and our share repurchase program, which may not be fully consummated or enhance shareholder value, and any share repurchases which could affect the price of our common stock.

Additional risks and uncertainties that could affect our financial results are included under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC on November 20, 2025, which is available on our website at investors.paloaltonetworks.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in other filings that we make with the SEC from time to time. All forward-looking statements in this blog post 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.

 

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24/7 Managed SOC Built for Tomorrow's Threats

The window for defense has collapsed, and most SOCs weren’t built for the speed of today’s attacks. According to the 2026 Unit 42^® Global Incident Response Report, some end-to-end attacks now unfold in under an hour. Attacks that used to take days or weeks now happen in minutes.

Most traditional SOC models are trapped in a cycle of alert overload, fragmented tools and limited engineering capacity that slow investigations and delay response. Traditional SIEM and MDR models were designed to react to alerts. They were not designed to continuously improve detections, correlations and response with threats that move at machine speed. Over time, that gap between attacker speed and defender capability keeps widening, and it’s exactly why we built Unit 42 Managed XSIAM 2.0 (MSIAM).

Today marks the availability of the next evolution of our managed SOC offering – one that reflects how modern security operations must run in today’s threat landscape. MSIAM 2.0 is built on Cortex XSIAM^®, Palo Alto Networks SOC transformation platform, and operated by Unit 42 analysts, threat hunters, responders and SOC engineers who handle the most complex incidents in the world. With this solution, Unit 42 provides organizations with a 24/7 managed SOC that delivers continuous detection, investigation and full-cycle remediation across the entire attack surface while improving operations over time.

We don’t just manage alerts. Unit 42 continuously engineers detections, correlations and response playbooks within XSIAM, refining them as attacker behavior evolves. This ongoing engineering ensures defenses improve over time, driven by real-world incidents and frontline threat intelligence, not static rules that quickly fall behind.

Why Managed XSIAM 2.0 Is Different

Elite SOC on Day One

We want SOC teams up and running as fast as possible. Experts lead onboarding, data mapping and configuration, and then your managed SOC team takes responsibility for operating and optimizing XSIAM on a day-to-day basis. The result is a SOC that improves over time without adding operational burden.

Every Threat Exposed

Unit 42 goes beyond reactive monitoring with continuous, proactive threat hunting across the entire attack surface. When a new threat is found in the wild, we produce threat impact reports that show how those techniques apply to each customer’s environment. We then translate those insights into custom detections and automated response actions, while also monitoring and investigating the correlation rules your team creates. Both the global threat intelligence and your unique use cases are backed by our 24/7 analysis, closing gaps quickly and strengthening defenses over time.

We also now support both native and third-party EDR telemetry, so organizations can benefit from Unit 42 expertise and Cortex^® AI-driven analytics, regardless of the security technologies they use today. This enables customers to receive the strongest possible managed defense now, while creating a natural, low-friction path toward deeper platform consolidation as their environment evolves.

Machine-Speed Response

When incidents escalate, we don’t just hand you a ticket; we take ownership. Collaborating with your team, we establish pre-authorized workflows to execute immediate responses across your entire environment, from endpoints and firewalls to identity and cloud. We pair the platform’s native speed with expert oversight. By validating threat context and business impact, every response action is precise and safe, giving you the confidence to unleash full-cycle remediation. This allows MSIAM 2.0 to move seamlessly from detection to resolution with both velocity and precision.

And we stand behind our solution with a Breach Response Guarantee. If a complex incident strikes, you have the world’s best responders in your corner with up to 250 hours of Unit 42 Incident Response included. This built-in coverage removes the administrative hurdles of crisis response, enabling our experts to immediately transition from monitoring to deep forensic investigation and complete eradication, so you can focus on recovery. 

Proven in the Real World with the Green Bay Packers

Working with Unit 42 and the Cortex XSIAM platform, the Green Bay Packers modernized their security across a complex hybrid environment, demonstrating what Unit 42's managed services deliver in real-world operations. By consolidating telemetry and accelerating investigation and response, they reduced response times from hours to minutes, investigated 54% more alerts and saved over 120 hours of analyst time without adding headcount.

These outcomes reflect the key benefits of MSIAM: Unit 42 experts working to apply frontline intelligence as new attacker behavior emerges, translating it into reporting and tailored detections that improve response where it matters most. When a machine-speed platform is operated by experts handling real incidents every day, defenses continuously strengthen as threats evolve.

The Future of the SOC

Unit 42 MSIAM 2.0 helps your SOC operate as it should by combining AI-driven analytics and automation with expert-led operations and engineering. This combination provides teams with the confidence that their defenses are always on, always improving and ready when it matters most. That’s the SOC that security leaders need today, and the one we’re building for tomorrow.

MSIAM is now delivered through two service tiers, Pro and Premium. Organizations can start where they are and grow at their own pace. Pro provides AI-driven managed SOC operations with continuous detection, investigation and response. Premium extends into full-lifecycle SOC engineering, with designated experts and customized detections, automation and tailored response playbooks as your security maturity grows.

To learn more about Managed XSIAM 2.0, join us at Symphony 2026, a Palo Alto Networks premier virtual SOC event, where Unit 42 and Cortex^® experts will share frontline threat intelligence from the new 2026 Unit 42 Incident Response Report alongside real-world SOC transformation insights from organizations operating at machine speed.

The post Introducing Unit 42 Managed XSIAM 2.0 appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

AI-Accelerated Attacks, Identity-Enabled Breaches and Expanding Software Supply Chain Exposure Define the 2026 Cyberthreat Landscape

Each year, thousands of organizations experience a cyber incident. An incident can begin with a SOC alert, zero-day vulnerability, ransom demand or widespread business disruption. When the call comes, our global incident responders quickly mobilize to investigate, contain and eradicate the threat.

This year’s Unit 42^® 2026 Global Incident Response Report analyzed over 750 major cyber incidents across every major industry in over 50 countries to reveal emerging patterns and lessons for defenders.

The data shows a clear shift in how attacks unfold. Threat actors are moving faster, increasingly leveraging identity and trusted connections, and expanding attacks across multiple attack surfaces. The accelerating speed, scale and complexity of these intrusions mean the window between initial access and business impact is shrinking. Most breaches, however, still succeed due to preventable gaps in visibility and security controls.

Key Findings Show Attacks Are Faster, Broader and Harder to Contain

As adversaries adapt their playbooks, the report highlights several defining trends shaping the 2026 threat landscape:

• AI Is Compressing the Attack Timeline: In the fastest cases we investigated, attackers needed just 72 minutes to move from initial access to data exfiltration, 4X faster than last year. We’re seeing AI used in reconnaissance, phishing, scripting and operational execution, which enables machine-like speed at scale.
• Identity Is Now a Primary Attack Vehicle: Identity weaknesses played a material role in nearly 90% of our investigations. More often than not, attackers aren’t breaking in; they’re logging in with stolen credentials and tokens, and then exploiting fragmented identity estates to escalate privileges and move laterally without triggering traditional defenses.
• Supply Chain Risk Now Drives Operational Disruption: In 23% of incidents, attackers leveraged third-party SaaS applications. By abusing trusted integrations, vendor tools and application dependencies, they bypassed traditional perimeters and expanded the impact well beyond a single system.
• Attack Complexity Is Growing: We found that 87% of intrusions involved activity across multiple attack surfaces. Rarely does an attack stay in one environment. Instead, we see coordinated activity across endpoints, networks, cloud, SaaS and identity, forcing defenders to monitor across all of them at once.
• The Browser Is a Primary Battleground: Nearly 48% of incidents included browser-based activity. This reflects how often modern attacks intersect with routine workflows, like email, web access and day-to-day SaaS use, turning normal user behavior into an attack vector.
• Extortion Is Moving Beyond Encryption: Encryption-based extortion declined 15% from the year before, as more attackers skip encryption and move straight to data theft and disruption. From the attacker’s perspective, it’s faster, quieter and creates immediate pressure without the signals that defenders once relied on to detect ransomware attacks.

Attacks Succeed Because Exposure Still Beats Sophistication

Despite the speed and automation we’re seeing, most of the incidents we respond to don’t start with something radically new. They start with gaps that show up again and again. In many cases, attackers didn’t rely on a sophisticated exploit, but on an overlooked exposure.

• Environmental Complexity Undermining Defenses: In over 90% of the incidents we investigated, misconfigurations or gaps in security coverage materially enabled the attack. A big driver of that is tool sprawl. Many organizations are running 50 or more security products, making it extremely difficult to deploy controls consistently or clearly understand what their data is telling them.
• Visibility Gaps Delay Detection: In many engagements, the signals were there. When we look back forensically, the evidence is in the logs. But during the attack, teams had to stitch together data from multiple disconnected sources, slowing detection during the most critical early minutes.
• Excessive Trust Expands Impact: Once attackers gain a foothold, overly permissive access and unmanaged tokens frequently let them move farther than they should. We repeatedly see identity trust relationships turn a single compromised account into broad lateral movement and privilege escalation.

Attackers are evolving their tools and tactics, but they still win most often from exploited complexity, limited visibility and excessive trust inside modern enterprise environments.

Recommendations for Security Leaders and Defenders

Across more than 750 frontline investigations, three priorities come up again and again in conversations with CISOs and security teams.

• Reduce Exposure: Many of the attacks we see begin in places teams didn’t realize were exposed – third-party integrations, unmanaged SaaS connections or everyday browser activity. Reducing exposure means securing the full application ecosystem and treating trusted connections with the same scrutiny as core infrastructure.
• Reduce Area of Impact: Once attackers get in, the difference between a contained incident and a major disruption often comes down to identity. Tightening identity and access management while removing unnecessary trust limits how far an attacker can move and how much damage they can cause.
• Increase Response Speed: What happens in the first minutes after initial access can determine whether an incident becomes a breach. Security teams need the visibility to see what’s happening across environments and the ability to use AI to detect, identify and prioritize what matters, so the SOC can contain threats at machine speed, faster than the adversary can move.

Conclusion

Every investigation tells a story. How the attacker got in. How quickly they moved. What made the impact worse. Across hundreds of these cases, patterns emerge. Unit 42 operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on the frontlines of these incidents, and each year we distill what we learn into practical guidance. The goal of this report is to turn those frontline lessons into decisions that help you close the gaps that attackers still rely on and stop incidents before they become breaches.

Stay informed. Read the 2026 Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report and download the Executive Resource Kit.

The post 2026 Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report — Attacks Now 4x Faster appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

The enterprise security landscape has reached an inflection point. As organizations accelerate adoption of cloud, automation and artificial intelligence, identity has become the primary attack surface of the modern enterprise. Not because defenses have weakened, but because identities have multiplied and now operate continuously at machine speed, often with elevated access.

When attackers succeed today, it almost always starts with identity. Identity is now the number one attack vector. Eighty-seven percent of organizations experienced at least two successful, identity-centric breaches in the past 12 months. These breaches can lead to outages, regulatory exposure, financial loss and reputational damage.

This reality is why today marks such a pivotal moment. CyberArk is officially joining Palo Alto Networks. This step reflects a shared conviction that identity security is no longer a supporting function. To stay ahead of modern attackers, organizations need best-in-class identity security that is deeply integrated into their broader security strategy.

The Reality of the Modern Identity Attack Surface

For years, identity security focused on a relatively small population of human users, administrators and periodic access reviews. That model no longer matches reality.

Today’s enterprises depend on vast numbers of machine identities, including workloads, services, APIs and increasingly, autonomous AI agents. Machine identities now outnumber human identities by more than 80 to 1, while 75 percent of organizations acknowledge that their human identities are governed by outdated, overly permissive privileged models.

Attackers have adapted. Rather than breaking in through vulnerabilities, they increasingly log in using stolen credentials or by exploiting excessive, poorly governed access. Identity-based attacks have become the dominant breach vector because identity sprawl and standing privilege create opportunities that are difficult to detect with traditional tools.

Yet many identity programs remain fragmented. Access management, privileged access and governance often operate in silos, with delayed visibility and manual processes. Risk accumulates silently between reviews, leaving security teams reacting after the fact.

This is the problem CyberArk was built to solve.

Why Identity Security Must Be Continuous

Securing identities in this environment requires a fundamentally different approach. Identity risk changes constantly as new identities are created, permissions shift and systems scale dynamically. Controls must operate continuously, not episodically.

This means three things:

First, organizations need real-time visibility into who or what has access to critical systems across human, machine and AI identities.

Second, privilege must be applied dynamically. Access should be granted only when needed and removed automatically when it is no longer required. Standing privilege should be the exception, not the norm.

Third, governance must evolve from periodic compliance exercises to continuous enforcement that adapts as environments change.

This is the identity security vision that has guided CyberArk for decades and why joining Palo Alto Networks is such a natural next step.

Elevating Identity to a Core Platform

As part of Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk elevates identity security to a core platform pillar.

CyberArk’s Identity Security Platform is proven at enterprise scale and trusted to protect some of the world’s most critical environments. Our approach extends privileged access principles beyond a narrow set of administrators to every identity that matters.

By treating every identity as potentially privileged, organizations can dramatically reduce their attack surface. Excessive access is identified. Unnecessary privilege is removed. Attackers lose the ability to move laterally by using stolen credentials.

Elevating identity security to a platform level also enables tighter alignment with network security, cloud security and security operations. Identity becomes a powerful control plane that informs policy enforcement, detection and response across the enterprise, delivering a more complete and actionable view of risk.

Securing the AI-Driven Enterprise

This shift is especially critical as organizations deploy AI-driven systems and autonomous agents.

These systems often require persistent access to sensitive data and infrastructure, making them attractive targets for attackers and difficult to govern with legacy identity models. Most enterprises today lack effective identity security controls for machine and AI-driven systems, leaving these identities overprivileged and undergoverned.

Applying privileged access principles universally enables organizations to secure AI-driven environments without slowing innovation. Identity security becomes the trust layer that allows enterprises to scale AI responsibly, ensuring access is controlled, monitored and adjusted dynamically as systems evolve.

What This Means for Customers

For customers, elevating identity security to a core platform delivers tangible outcomes.

Organizations gain clearer insight into identity access and risk across human, machine and agentic identities. They gain stronger protection against credential-based attacks by limiting excessive privilege and reducing the paths that attackers rely on to move undetected. They also gain operational simplicity by replacing fragmented tools and manual governance with consistent, scalable controls.

Most importantly, customers gain confidence. Confidence to adopt cloud, automation and AI, knowing that identity risk is governed continuously. Confidence that security can keep pace with change rather than reacting after the fact.

Moving Forward

CyberArk’s Identity Security solutions will continue to be available as a standalone platform. Customers can rely on the solutions they trust today while benefiting from an accelerated roadmap focused on resilience, simplicity and improved security outcomes.

At the same time, integration is underway to bring CyberArk’s best-in-class identity security capabilities more deeply into the Palo Alto Networks security ecosystem. Our priority is to listen closely to customers, meet their immediate needs, and build the path forward together.

The AI era is redefining how enterprises operate and how attackers operate alongside them. Securing every identity, human, machine and AI agent is no longer optional. It is foundational.

By bringing CyberArk into Palo Alto Networks, we are taking a decisive step toward redefining identity security for the modern enterprise and helping our customers stay secure as they innovate at speed.

The post Securing Every Identity in the Age of AI appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Accelerating Secure AI Adoption

The rapid adoption of AI is transforming the enterprise, unlocking unprecedented productivity and accelerating workflows at a record pace. However, this velocity creates a new productivity paradox: The faster AI moves, the more it can expose the organization to entirely new categories of risk. Without specialized guardrails, unchecked AI can inadvertently bypass company policies, violate legal standards, or ignore ethical norms.

To bridge this gap, Glean, the Work AI platform, and Palo Alto Networks Prisma^® AIRS™ have integrated to provide an essential security layer that empowers organizations to adopt generative AI with confidence, helping ensure that massive productivity gains never come at the cost of trust, security or compliance.

Real-Time Defense Against the Modern AI Threat Surface

Generic filters often fail to catch the sophisticated nuances of AI-driven attacks. The integration of Glean and Prisma AIRS provides a purpose-built defense that acts in real time across three critical areas:

1. Neutralizing Prompt Injection

Prompt injections are malicious instructions designed to trick AI models into ignoring their safety protocols, potentially leading to the exposure of sensitive data or the execution of unauthorized actions.

For instance, an attacker could craft a prompt that causes the AI to leak its own system instructions leading to data loss. Glean and Prisma AIRS instantly detect these sophisticated manipulation attempts, blocking the request and notifying the user before the organization's integrity is compromised.

2. Safeguarding Against Harmful and Toxic Content

AI interactions must remain professional, ethical and safe.

By scanning both user prompts and AI-generated responses against organizational policy, Glean and Prisma AIRS automatically block requests that contain toxic, biased, or otherwise harmful content. This enables AI to remain a positive and productive asset for the entire workforce.

3. Preventing Malicious Code and Unsafe URLs

AI models can sometimes generate unsafe code snippets, get data from a poisoned source, or provide harmful links that lead to phishing sites or malware downloads.

For example, a developer might ask an AI assistant for a code library to process data, and the model could inadvertently suggest a malicious package that compromises the application. The Glean and Palo Alto Networks integration provides a crucial safety net, inspecting all generated content for malicious patterns and preventing employees from interacting with risky URLs, keeping the entire AI-driven development and research lifecycle secure.

Secure AI in Minutes with Out of the Box Integration

The true power of the Glean and Palo Alto Networks partnership lies in its simplicity. We’ve removed the friction of complex security configurations, enabling organizations to realize value immediately through a seamless, out of the box integration.

Onboarding is completed in three simple steps within the Glean admin console:

1. Navigate to AI Security and select Palo Alto Networks AI Runtime Security™.
2. Paste your Prisma AIRS Runtime Security API Key.
3. Click Save.

With these three clicks, the integration is live, providing an invisible but invincible layer of defense across your AI chats and agent interactions.

Partnering for a Secure AI Future

As enterprises scale their AI initiatives, specialized security becomes non-negotiable. Prisma AIRS provides the advanced, granular protection needed to catch threats that standard vendors can often miss, and its integration with Glean delivers that protection exactly where work happens.

Drive productivity, foster innovation, and secure your future with Glean and Palo Alto Networks.

Key Takeaways

• Real-Time Threat Mitigation: Instantly block prompt injections, toxic content, and malicious code, transforming AI from a risk factor into a secure asset.
• Frictionless Deployment: Achieve comprehensive AI security in minutes with a simple, three-click API integration within the Glean console.
• Time to value: Scale AI adoption across the enterprise by ensuring every interaction complies with internal policies and global safety standards.

Ready to Deploy Secure AI? To explore how this integration can protect your organization, sign up for the Glean and Palo Alto Networks upcoming webinar.

The post The Power of Glean and Prisma AIRS Integration appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Our Reimagined Partner Program Is Here

The cybersecurity landscape continues to evolve at an extraordinary pace. AI-driven threats are expanding the attack surface, demanding faster, more precise responses and greater resilience. At the same time, customers want fewer vendors, deeper integrations and trusted advisers who can help them achieve positive, measurable outcomes and reduce unnecessary complexity.

Meeting these challenges and expectations requires a potent combination of world-class technology and world-class partnership. That’s why, in 2026, Palo Alto Networks is evolving our partner program and unifying it with our value exchange framework.

We are excited to share that we have rolled out new program features. The changes we’re introducing are designed to strengthen how we work with our ecosystem across every partner motion – from resale and cosell to delivery, support and managed services. The goal of this evolution is simple: Create clearer, more scalable paths for growth and mutual success.

Why We’re Evolving to Meet the Demands of a Changing Market

The same forces transforming the cybersecurity landscape are also changing what it means to be a successful partner. As customers reduce their reliance on disparate point solutions, choose to consolidate platforms and lean harder on AI-driven automation, they’re turning to partners for much more than technology procurement. They want design guidance, integration expertise and ongoing, outcome-focused support.

Our partners are also clear about what they need from us. They’ve asked Palo Alto Networks for a partner program that is simpler to engage with, more predictable in how it rewards impact, and more closely aligned with how they build and deliver value across resale, services and managed offerings. Our partners also seek less complexity and more room to differentiate through their own investments and innovation.

The evolution of our partner program is our response not only to feedback from our partners but also to extensive market research. It will bring greater structure where our partners seek consistency, greater flexibility in how and where they innovate, as well as greater transparency in how the value they deliver is recognized. These strategic changes will help ensure our mutual customers benefit the most when they work with our vast and diverse ecosystem in today’s platform-first, outcome-driven marketplace.

A Unified Growth Model = Partner Program + Value Exchange

Palo Alto Networks NextWave Partner Program and value exchange framework were designed to work together, not as separate tracks, but as one powerful engine for driving growth. This unified framework makes it easier for partners to engage with us and get the most from the partner program. It rewards impact, expertise and customer success rather than focusing narrowly on transactions.

This evolved model is built on the foundation of three guiding principles:

• Predictability – Consistent expectations and program structures that support long-term planning.
• Repeatability – Enablement and tools that help partners scale practices with confidence.
• Profitability – Incentives, rebates and routes to growth tied directly to customer value.

The new framework can help partners build sustainable businesses while accelerating the adoption of platformized AI-powered security. Let’s take a look at the many benefits our partner ecosystem may experience through this reimagined program.

What Our Partners Can Expect

Our redesigned partner program enables greater alignment between the investments you make and the outcomes you achieve. Across Palo Alto Networks NextWave Partner Program, we’re strengthening how partners can scale, differentiate and grow their business with improvements in three key areas.

1. Access That Accelerates Scale

We’re expanding access to the tools and resources that can help partners reach customers faster and deliver solutions with confidence:

• Broader on-demand learning and persona-based enablement.
• Labs and demos that make it easier to showcase platform value.
• Improved quoting tools and API-driven automation that can ease operational friction.
• Enhanced support resources that improve quality delivery and the customer experience.

These and other capabilities can help reduce complexity and accelerate your ability to propose, design and deploy high-quality, platform-based solutions for customers.

2. Commitment That Reflects Intentional Investment

As the cybersecurity market evolves, so does the definition of partnership. Our newly evolved program introduces clearer expectations and meaningful rewards for partners who invest in specialization and growth. We’re raising the bar on the program’s standards:

• Higher bookings and growth targets.
• Increased specialization depth across key areas.
• New targeted rebates aligned to value creation.
• A strengthened global distribution strategy to support scale.

These enhancements will recognize partners who lean into the platform approach and drive meaningful impact for customers.

3. Profitability That Helps Fuel Long-Term Growth

A top priority for our updated program is helping partners build predictable, repeatable and profitable business practices in 2026 and beyond. Here are some of the measures we’re introducing:

• Default service quoting (Authorized Support Center and Authorized Professional Services) to help strengthen delivery economics.
• Incentive model that drives higher partner profitability on AI-enabled security solutions.
• Programmatic discounts and improved quoting tools to speed sales cycles.
• A new Partner Development Fund (PDF) to help partners build capabilities and pipeline.

Our aim is to create a more consistent, performance-driven model that supports partner strategy today and creates room for expansion tomorrow.

What These Changes Mean for Customers

A more connected and enabled partner ecosystem doesn’t just benefit our partners. It elevates the entire customer experience.

Customers can expect smoother, simplified engagement with trusted cybersecurity advisers who speak the same language and share the same goals. And with greater consistency across sales, delivery and ongoing support, organizations won’t be saddled by complexity that slows transformation and makes it harder to adopt, build and deploy AI boldly yet safely.

Customers can also move forward with greater confidence in expanding their use of our Palo Alto Networks integrated, AI-driven cybersecurity platform, knowing their partners are equipped with the training, tools and know-how to help guide them every step of the way.

Driving Shared Success Through the Value Exchange

The value exchange in cybersecurity reinforces a principle that has long guided the approach of Palo Alto Networks to partnering: Growth follows value creation. It’s the foundation for how we work with our ecosystem, strengthening connections among partners, customers and our platform.

This is the power of a global ecosystem moving with purpose. When platform innovation, partner expertise and customer needs are aligned, everything moves faster and desired outcomes are more readily achieved. Deployments accelerate, architectures are simplified, and enterprises gain the resilient security postures needed to withstand the pressures of an AI-driven threat landscape.

What’s Next

We encourage you to review a set of short videos in The Learning Center for Partners, which provide more details about the planned changes to Palo Alto Networks NextWave Partner Program.

We believe the year ahead offers one of the most significant opportunities for innovation and growth our ecosystem has ever seen. By reimagining our partner program and value exchange framework, Palo Alto Networks is doubling down on the promise of our shared success, mutual growth and long-term value.

To our partners, thank you, as always, for your commitment, collaboration and belief in what we’re creating together. What’s ahead is more than an evolution of a long-standing and successful partner program. It’s a new era of partnering with precision to build the future of cybersecurity.

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Key Takeaways

• A reimagined partner program accelerates sustainable growth. Beginning in early February, a single, scalable framework will guide every partner motion and reward meaningful impact.
• Partners have more ways to scale and differentiate. Expanded enablement, automation and incentives can help build stronger, more profitable practices.
• Customers will benefit from more consistent experiences. A more aligned ecosystem enables simpler engagement, smoother delivery and increased confidence in the platform.

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 New Year, New Program, New Opportunities appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Palo Alto Networks is proud to enter a strategic partnership with the RAF Association.

For over 90 years, the Royal Air Forces Association (RAFA) has championed a simple yet profound belief: No member of the RAF community should ever be left without the help they need. Serving personnel, veterans and their families, the RAF Association provides crucial welfare support, responding to increasingly complex needs in an era of operational changes and challenges, including persistent global deployment.

Delivering on their mission today requires not only compassion and expertise but also resilient digital foundations. To strengthen and future-proof its operations, RAFA has entered into a strategic partnership with Palo Alto Networks. Together, we are modernising the Association's cyber security posture through a secure-by-design, zero trust architecture to enhance organisational resilience, secure sensitive beneficiary data, and improve operational agility. This helps ensure they can focus on their mission of support, not security management.

As Nick Bunting OBE, Secretary General at the RAF Association, puts it:

Cybersecurity is essential to safeguarding the trust people place in our organisation. This transformation will give us greater protection for our data and systems, ensuring that our services remain dependable and that our organisation is secure, resilient and ready for the future. Strong digital security is not just a technical requirement, it is a fundamental part of how we uphold our duty of care to every individual who relies on us.

Securing the Mission

The RAF Association operates in a distributed environment comprising headquarters’ functions, remote caseworkers, and more than 20 RAFAKidz nursery sites, supported by a growing portfolio of cloud-based services. In this context, cybersecurity is not simply an IT concern. It is a safeguarding imperative.

Disruption to systems or a compromise of sensitive beneficiary data could directly impact RAFA’s ability to deliver services and maintain the trust of the communities it supports. By consolidating fragmented legacy tools into a unified platform, this partnership ensures the Association’s digital evolution aligns security controls with GDPR obligations and safeguarding requirements.

Digital Resilience with a Unified Platform for Visibility and Control

To support RAFA's lean IT operational model, this transformation will move them away from fragmented legacy tools toward a unified platform approach. The deployment of Prisma^® SASE (secure access service edge) and Cortex XDR^® will provide RAFA with consistent visibility and control across users, devices, applications and data, regardless of location. This consolidation replaces complexity with clarity, allowing the organisation to inspect traffic for threats in real-time. Security policies are now enforced continuously, threats are detected and contained faster, and access to critical systems is governed by zero trust principles without compromising the user experience.

As Phil Sherwin, Chief Information Officer, at the RAF Association states:

Our data is one of our most valuable assets and the protection of that data, as we continue to provide life-changing support to members of the RAF community, is our most important priority. This partnership will move us into the next generation of security tools that adopt zero trust principles and is a crucial step on our journey to providing a layered approach to data protection.

One of the most critical aspects of this modernisation is supporting RAFA’s diverse workforce, particularly within the RAFAKidz nursery sites. These environments rely on nondesk-based staff using iPads and mobile devices to get their critical work done.

Using zero touch provisioning and the Prisma Browser™, we are enabling secure, seamless connectivity for unmanaged devices. This ensures that nursery staff can access necessary SaaS applications safely without complex login hurdles or manual configuration, improving their agility and allowing them to focus on caring for children rather than troubleshooting technology.

Creating Operational Advantage by Scaling Operations with AI and Automation

As a charity, RAFA has a responsibility to ensure resources are used efficiently. A critical goal of this partnership is to improve productivity and allow the organisation to scale its services without increasing the IT burden.

By adopting Strata™ Cloud Manager with AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations), RAFA is shifting from reactive security operations to proactive, automated management. Machine learning helps identify configuration risks and performance issues before they affect users, while standardized policies enable the secure, consistent onboarding of new sites. This shift is projected to significantly reduce operational overhead, enabling RAFA to scale its support network cost-effectively. This shift is projected to reduce operational overhead by 40–50%.

A Resilient Future

This partnership is about more than deploying technology. It is about ensuring RAFA remains resilient, trusted and capable of supporting the RAF community for decades to come.

As Darren Bisbey, Head of Group Information Security for the RAF Association, puts it:

We live in an era where digital threats are accelerating in both scale and sophistication, creating unprecedented challenges for organisations. Our partnership with Palo Alto is a statement of intent, reflecting our unwavering commitment to building the most secure environments possible for our data.

At Palo Alto Networks, we are honored to support RAFA in this journey, providing the digital armour and operational advantage necessary to protect those who serve and have served.

As Alistair Wildman, Palo Alto Networks CEO for Northern Europe states:

For over 90 years, RAFA has been a lifeline for the RAF community; it is our privilege to ensure that legacy endures in a digital-first world. By embracing a unified, AI-driven platform, RAFA is moving beyond complex, fragmented security to a posture that is Secure by Design. This partnership allows them to navigate today’s threat landscape with confidence, ensuring their resources remain focused where they belong: on the families who need them.

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Key Takeaways

1. Digital Resilience – Strategic Shift to Zero Trust Architecture: RAFA is modernizing its cybersecurity posture by implementing a comprehensive zero trust architecture. This transition involves moving from fragmented legacy tools to a unified platform approach, deploying Prisma^® SASE and Cortex XDR for 360-degree visibility and complete control over access and traffic.
2. Interoperability – Secure, Seamless Access for Diverse Workforce: The partnership ensures operational agility by simplifying security for nondesk-based staff, particularly at the RAFAKidz nursery sites. Solutions like Zero-Touch Provisioning and the Prisma Access Browser enable secure, seamless connectivity for unmanaged devices, allowing nursery staff to focus on their critical work without complex login or configuration issues.
3. Creating Operational Advantage – Efficiency and Scalability through AI and Automation: RAFA is leveraging technology to scale services efficiently and reduce operational overhead. By using Strata Cloud Manager with AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations), the organization can shift to proactive management and automating remediation, which is projected to reduce operational overhead by 40–50%.

The post Empowering the RAF Association with Next-Generation Cyber Resilience appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Here is an overview of content I published in January: Blog posts:

• Update: hash.py Version 0.0.14
• Update: zipdump.py Version 0.0.33

SANS ISC Diary entries:

• YARA-X 1.11.0 Release: Hash Function Warnings
• Wireshark 4.6.3 Released
• “How many states are there in the United States?”

The early weeks of 2026 have already made one thing clear: Government cybersecurity is in a new phase, shaped not by incremental change, but by the rapid integration of AI into core public-sector missions. AI systems are now embedded in critical infrastructure, federal service delivery, research environments, as well as state and local operations. At the same time, nation-state adversaries are leveraging AI to accelerate intrusion, scale deception and manipulate trusted systems in ways not possible even a year ago.

As Senior Vice President of Public Sector at Palo Alto Networks, I see a decisive shift underway. Defending the public sector in 2026 means navigating a world where security depends on verifying identity, securing data and governing AI-driven systems that act without human intervention. Success now hinges on architectures that assume automation, operations that prioritize coordination, and governance frameworks capable of managing AI at mission scale.

Here are the developments that will define the year ahead.

Federal Government

1. AI-Native Security Must Become Integral to Federal Operations

AI in federal environments is no longer an experiment. Agencies are now designing workflows, SOC missions and cloud architectures around AI-driven detection and response. The emphasis is shifting from supplementing human analysts to building systems that maintain visibility, correlate threats, and respond autonomously when human capacity is limited. This builds on what we forecasted last year, when federal cybersecurity teams began using AI to replace manual workflows and drive down detection and response times.

The shift will be practical. Federal teams must plan to deploy AI systems that correlate logs, identify behavioral anomalies, prioritize threats, and suppress noise before analysts ever see an alert. Manual, ticket-based workflows will no longer meet federal timelines for investigation or reporting, particularly as adversaries automate more phases of attack.

2. Identity Emerges as the Central Federal Security Challenge

The biggest shift in 2026 will be the collapse between “identity” and “attack surface.” Deepfake technologies now operate in real time. AI-generated voices and video can impersonate senior leaders at a level undetectable by traditional controls. Machine identities continue to proliferate; they will outnumber human identities this year. And autonomous agents can initiate high-impact actions without human oversight. This reflects a broader crisis of authenticity now reshaping how enterprises defend identity itself.

Identity abuse will no longer be limited to credential theft. This turns identity into a systemic risk. One compromised identity (human, machine or agent) can cascade through automated systems with little friction. Federal programs will need to prioritize continuous identity verification, stronger proofing and governance frameworks that validate the legitimacy of both human and AI-driven activity.

3. AI Systems Must Be Secure-by-Design

Stemming from the clear mandate in the AI Action Plan (and subsequent work by NIST to develop an AI/Cyber Profile on top of the existing Cybersecurity Framework) agencies will steadily integrate AI security into their deployment of AI technologies.

This imperative is critical as AI systems are susceptible to novel threats. Data poisoning of training sets, manipulated inputs and hidden instructions in untrusted datasets compromise the intelligence that agencies rely on for analysis, planning and mission support. To support the security of this AI-first moment, Palo Alto Networks was proud to make its AI security platform, Prisma^® AIRS™, available through the GSA OneGov initiative.

4. Nation-State Operations Expand Through AI Automation

Adversaries will use AI to compress the time between reconnaissance, exploitation and lateral movement. We expect rapidly increasing the use of AI to chain vulnerabilities, tailor social engineering campaigns, and generated malware variants that adapt in real time.

The focus will broaden beyond IT networks. AI will be used to disrupt OT systems and target sensitive research environments. Foreign intelligence services will weaponize AI to blur the line between intrusion and information operations, producing hybrid campaigns that attack both systems and the legitimacy of institutions.

5. Autonomous SOC Capabilities Become Essential

Federal SOCs will evolve from human-centered command centers to hybrid operations where autonomous agents run major components of the detection and response mission. These agents will triage alerts, enforce containment, and initiate predefined responses.

This evolution comes with risk. AI agents with broad authority can be misused or manipulated if not properly governed. Agencies will need safeguards to track agent behavior, enforce least privilege on agents, and prevent misuse through runtime monitoring and “AI firewall” controls designed to stop malicious prompts and unauthorized actions. The same pressures are shaping enterprise security, where controls like AI firewalls and circuit breaker mechanisms are becoming standard practice. Automation will only strengthen federal security if paired with rigorous oversight and continuous validation of agent activity.

6. Shared and Federated SOC Structures Gain Momentum

As threats scale, agencies will increasingly operate through shared or federated security structures. Instead of isolated SOCs, agencies will adopt analytics layers capable of correlating activity across departments and exchanging findings in real time.

This shift will reduce redundancy and provide faster insight into nation-state campaigns that cross federal boundaries. Early adopters will establish shared analytic and response frameworks that allow agencies to coordinate without sacrificing mission-specific control. Civilian agencies will lead early adoption with broader participation across defense and national security stakeholders expected later in the year.

7. The Post-Quantum Deadline Becomes Immediate

In 2026, post-quantum cryptography planning will move to implementation. Accelerated advances in quantum computing and AI-based cryptanalysis will push agencies to transition from pilot efforts to mandated modernization.

Agencies will focus on discovering where vulnerable algorithms are used, replacing outdated libraries, and implementing crypto-agility so systems can evolve without major redesigns. Systems with unpatchable cryptographic components will be flagged for full replacement, forcing agencies to reconcile years of accumulated “crypto debt.”

8. Data Trust and Cloud Workload Protection Become Priority Missions

The rise of AI workloads will force agencies to rethink how they protect data. Infrastructure controls alone cannot detect when training data has been manipulated or when model outputs no longer reflect real-world conditions.

Agencies will unify developer and security workflows and use tools like Data Security Posture Management and AI security posture management (AI-SPM) to track data lineage and enforce protections at runtime. Enterprises are addressing the same issue by bringing development and security teams together under shared data governance models. Ensuring model trustworthiness will become a mission-support requirement, not just a security objective.

9. Platform Consolidation Becomes Necessary

Fragmented tools cannot support the visibility and oversight required for AI governance. Executives will push for platform consolidation to unify network, identity, cloud, endpoint and AI security. Integrated platforms will gain favor because they enable consistent policy enforcement and a single operational picture across increasingly automated environments.

State, Local and Educational Institutions

1. AI Adoption Splits SLED into Distinct Tiers

In 2026, disparities in funding and technical capacity will widen. Some states will deploy AI across security operations, citizen services and identity verification. Others will struggle to maintain legacy systems.

Well-resourced jurisdictions will reduce response times and improve resilience. Underfunded ones will remain exposed to ransomware and disruption. Without targeted modernization efforts, a national divide in SLED cybersecurity maturity will deepen.

2. Regional Models Become the Practical Path Forward

Silos are no longer sustainable. SLED organizations will rely on shared SOCs, regional threat intelligence hubs and coordinated incident response agreements. States will formalize partnerships to share expertise, reduce costs and defend interconnected systems. This evolution represents the maturation of the “team sport” mentality we predicted in 2025. These models reflect operational reality: Compromised data or infrastructure in one jurisdiction often creates immediate risk for its neighbors.

3. Higher Education Redesigns Its Security Baseline

Universities will classify cybersecurity alongside energy, research infrastructure and physical security as essential institutional functions. Secure browser adoption, stronger vendor oversight and centralized identity governance will become the norm.

AI research environments will receive increased scrutiny, and universities participating in federally funded research will face stricter compliance requirements to prevent data poisoning and model manipulation. Institutions with large research portfolios will prioritize securing lab environments where AI models are trained and evaluated.

4. K–12 Systems Enter a New Phase of Security Oversight

States will introduce new security mandates for K–12 environments, covering MFA, network segmentation, secure browsers, identity verification and foundational zero trust principles. AI-enabled ransomware will remain a threat. Smaller districts will adopt managed services or regional support structures as they confront growing operational and compliance demands. Districts that modernize identity controls and browser security will significantly reduce their exposure compared to those reliant on legacy tools. Building on the regulatory momentum we predicted in 2025, K–12 institutions will continue moving from defensive posture to proactive security adoption.

5. Local Governments Face Escalating AI-Driven Ransomware

Municipal governments remain high-value targets due to limited staffing and aging infrastructure. AI gives threat actors the ability to automate reconnaissance, craft targeted phishing messages, and identify vulnerabilities with little effort.

Attacks timed to public safety incidents or weather emergencies will increase, meaning local governments will need stronger identity controls, automated endpoint protection and access to managed detection and response. Operational continuity will depend on reducing time-to-detect and time-to-contain, capabilities that smaller municipalities cannot achieve without external support.

6. Managed Services and Platform Consolidation Become Standard

As technical demands grow, SLED organizations will move toward managed SOC models and consolidated vendor ecosystems. Platforms that integrate data protection, threat detection, identity governance and AI oversight will gain traction. Point tools without interoperability will decline. Budget-constrained environments will favor comprehensive platforms that reduce operational burden and simplify compliance.

7. Identity and Data Trust Become Central SLED Priorities

SLED organizations manage sensitive student records, election data and social services information. These environments are increasingly strained by the rapid growth of machine identities and AI-driven applications.

Synthetic identities and AI-generated credentials will be used to infiltrate systems with limited oversight. Continuous identity verification, data lineage tracking and posture management will become essential to prevent fraud, service disruption and data manipulation. Identity assurance and data integrity will become the foundation of public trust at the state and local level.

The post 2026 Public Sector Cyber Outlook: Identity, AI and the Fight for Trust appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Why the GSA OneGov Agreement Is a Game-Changer for Federal Cybersecurity

The mission to modernize government IT is accelerating at lightning speed, largely thanks to the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI). Federal agencies are strategically leveraging AI to boost efficiency, enhance citizen services, and strengthen national security – a vision fully supported by the administration’s AI Action Plan.

At Palo Alto Networks, we are all-in on helping agencies deploy AI bravely and securely. Because the challenge isn't just about using AI for cyberdefense, but also about defending AI itself. We appreciate the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) recognizing the critical need for scalable, efficient solutions.

That is precisely why the GSA OneGov Initiative is a massive, game-changing step forward. We are proud to be the first pure-play cybersecurity vendor to secure a OneGov agreement with the GSA. This strategic alliance simplifies and standardizes the process for agencies to access our world-class, AI-powered security platform, ensuring security is foundational to this crucial modernization mission.

The Wake-Up Call: The Silent Threat of AI Agent Corruption

If you needed a clear sign that AI has fundamentally shifted the cybersecurity landscape, our own Unit 42 research provides it. The new reality isn't just about hackers using AI in their attacks; it’s also about how internal AI provides another attack surface for threat actors.

The most insidious new threat we've observed is AI Agent Smuggling, where malicious attackers use AI agents to exploit other agents. Our Unit 42 research highlights two major vectors:

• Indirect Prompt Injection: A security risk in LLMs where a user crafts input containing deceptive instructions to manipulate the model’s behavior, which can lead to unauthorized data access or unintended actions.
• Agent Session Smuggling: Exploit vulnerabilities in agent-to-agent communication, injecting malicious instructions into a conversation, hiding them among otherwise benign client requests and server responses.

This confirms our core belief as stated in a recent secure AI by Design blog: The AI ecosystem (the models, data and infrastructure) is now a complex, expanding attack surface that traditional perimeter defenses were simply not designed to protect.

As I’ve said before, “If you’re deploying AI, you must deploy AI security.”

Secure AI by Design: A Strategic Alliance with GSA

The GSA’s OneGov Initiative aims to streamline procurement and drive down costs by leveraging the purchasing power of the entire federal government. This is more than an agreement; it’s a direct response to the call for a "secure-by-design" approach to federal AI adoption. This agreement simplifies and standardizes the process for agencies to access our world-class, AI-powered security platform, ensuring that security is foundational, not an afterthought. It provides industry leading AI security tools into the hands of our cyber defenders today.

Under the Hood: Technical Capabilities for the AI Ecosystem

To counter the autonomous threats we’re seeing, we provide a platform that protects the entire AI lifecycle, from the developer's keyboard to the data center.

1. Runtime Protection for AI Workloads

Securing the AI supply chain requires visibility across every stage, especially during runtime when models are processing sensitive data.

• Prisma^® AIRS delivers comprehensive security for the entire AI lifecycle, in one unified platform. It allows organizations to deploy traditional apps as well as AI applications, models and agents with confidence by reducing risk from misuse, data loss and sophisticated AI-driven threats. Prisma AIRS provides a clear, connected view of assets in multicloud environments, so teams can eliminate silos, accelerate responses, as well as scale cloud and AI apps securely.
• Our Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) has achieved the FedRAMP High designation, making it the preferred Code to Cloud solution to secure the entire application lifecycle from development to runtime. Our industry-leading CNAPP eliminates silos to deliver comprehensive visibility and best-in-class protection across multicloud environments.

2. Protecting Users and Data at the Edge

Even the most advanced AI defenses are undermined if users accessing applications and data are left vulnerable outside corporate security boundaries. The explosive growth of generative AI tools and the unseen behavior of AI agents are amplifying data exposure risks.

• Prisma SASE (secure access service edge) secures all users, apps, devices and data, no matter where they are and no matter where applications reside.
  • Prisma Access (FedRAMP High Authorized) and Prisma Browser (FedRAMP-Moderate Authorized) integrate security capabilities, like zero trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG) and cloud access security broker (CASB), to provide a unified policy framework and a consistent user experience.
• This approach helps agencies outpace the speed of AI-driven threats, safeguarding critical data and simplifying operations for a frictionless user experience. It ensures that the human element interacting with the AI is protected by the most stringent security controls available.

Deploy AI Bravely

The GSA OneGov agreement is a pivotal moment that provides federal agencies with the cost-effective, streamlined access they need to deploy AI with confidence. By leveraging our unified, AI-powered platform, government organizations can stop reacting to threats and start building secure-by-design AI environments. We are committed to remaining a key partner in this strategic initiative and helping the government achieve its mission outcomes safely.

For more information and access to promotional offers for new contracts signed on or before January 31, 2028, federal agencies can visit the GSA OneGov website.

The post Securing the AI Frontier appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Modernizing Vulnerability Sharing for a New Class of Threats

In cybersecurity, vulnerability information sharing frameworks have long assumed that conventional threats exploit flaws in software or systems, and they can be resolved with patches or configuration updates. AI and machine learning (ML) models upend that premise as adversarial attacks, like poisoning and evasion, target the unique way AI models process information. Consequently, the risks for AI systems include tactics like model poisoning (from evasion attacks) in datasets and training, which are not conventional software vulnerabilities. These new vulnerabilities fall outside the scope of traditional cybersecurity taxonomies like the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program.

There is a need to bridge the gap between the existing cybersecurity vulnerability sharing structure and burgeoning efforts to catalog security risks to AI systems. Provisions in the White House AI Action Plan, which Palo Alto Networks supports, call for the creation of an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center (AI-ISAC), reinforcing the importance of addressing that disconnect. This integration is essential, as leveraging the existing, widely adopted cybersecurity infrastructure will be the fastest path to ensuring these new standards are accepted and operationalized.

Established Construct for Vulnerability Management and Disclosure

The global cybersecurity community relies on a mature infrastructure for sharing standardized vulnerability intelligence. Central to this ecosystem is the CVE List, established in 1999 as the authoritative catalog of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Through CVE IDs and a network of CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs), this framework enables consistent vulnerability documentation and disclosure.

Similarly, the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) provides standardized severity assessments, allowing security teams to prioritize responses. Together with resources like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and CISA’s KEV Catalog catalog, these tools form the backbone of global vulnerability management, information sharing and coordinated disclosure.

Why AI Breaks the Traditional Model

While this infrastructure has served the cybersecurity community effectively for over two decades, it was designed around traditional threat models that AI systems substantially upend. Attacks on AI systems represent a critical departure from traditional cybersecurity threats as they operate insidiously, subtly corrupting core reasoning processes, causing persistent, systemic failures, some of which only become evident over time. Most traditional cybersecurity tools are not equipped to recognize those breakdowns because they assume deterministic behavior and rules-based logic. AI systems defy those assumptions because AI is probabilistic, not deterministic. Consequently, attacks on AI models may remain hidden for extended periods.

Unlike traditional cybersecurity threats that target code, adversarial AI attacks target the underlying data and algorithms that govern how AI systems learn, reason and make decisions. Consider the following predominant adversarial attack methodologies on machine learning:

• Poisoning attacks inject malicious data into training datasets, corrupting the model's learning process and creating deliberate vulnerabilities or degraded performance.
• Inference-related attacks exploit model outputs to extract sensitive information or learn about its training data. This includes model inversion, which reconstructs sensitive data from the model's outputs, as well as membership inference, which identifies whether specific data points were used in training.

The expansion of existing security frameworks and programs is necessary to cover the enumeration, disclosure and downstream management of security risks to AI systems.

Advancing AI Security Through the AI Action Plan

In July, the Administration unveiled the AI Action Plan, an innovation-first framework balancing AI advancement with security imperatives. The Plan prioritizes Secure-by-Design AI technologies and applications, strengthened critical infrastructure cybersecurity and protection of commercial and government AI innovations.

Notably, it recommends establishing an AI Information Sharing and Analysis Center (AI-ISAC) to facilitate threat intelligence sharing across U.S. critical infrastructure sectors and encourages sharing known AI vulnerabilities, “tak[ing] advantage of existing cyber vulnerability sharing mechanisms.” These provisions affirm that AI security underpins American leadership in the field and, where possible, should be built upon existing frameworks.

Redefining Boundaries for AI Threats

To position the CVE Program for the AI-driven future, Palo Alto Networks is engaging directly with industry and program stakeholders to chart the path forward. Traditionally, the CVE Program serves as an ecosystem-wide central warning system. It provides a unified source of truths for security risks. A security risk catalog and identification system are needed for AI systems, as they currently fall outside the traditional scope of the CVE Program that has focused exclusively on vulnerabilities rather than on malicious components. The historical aperture of the current CVE Program excludes harmful artifacts, such as backdoored AI models or poisoned datasets, which represent fundamentally different attack vectors, in turn creating security blind spots.

Securing AI’s Promise

The United States leads in AI innovation and must equally lead in securing it. As momentum builds behind the AI Action Plan and the establishment of the AI-ISAC, we have a critical window to shape information sharing frameworks of the future. The goal is to ensure that cybersecurity and AI security infrastructure advance in unison with the technology itself. Integrating new AI vulnerability standards into trusted frameworks like the CVE Program aligns with industry focus and needs. Through proactive, coordinated action, we can unlock AI’s full promise while safeguarding the models that are embedded in the critical systems on which our nation depends.

The post Bridging Cybersecurity and AI appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deploy AI Bravely with a Future-Proof Foundation

The Future of Secure AI Factories

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is an overview of content I published in 2025:

Blog posts:

• Update: strings.py Version 0.0.11
• Quickpost: Electrical Power & Mining
• Update: Python Templates Version 0.0.12
• Update: cs-decrypt-metadata.py Version?0.0.5
• Update: zoneidentifier.exe Version 0.0.2
• Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.79
• Update: 1768.py Version 0.0.23
• Update: pdfid.py Version 0.2.10
• Update: pdf-parser.py Version 0.7.11
• Update: xmldump.py Version 0.0.10
• Update: zipdump.py Version 0.0.31
• Quickpost: Electrical Power & Mining: Dissipated Heat
• Update: xorsearch.py Version 0.0.2
• Update: xorsearch.py Version 0.0.3
• Quickpost: Testing The Capacity Of My New Power Bank
• Update: xorsearch.py Version 0.0.4
• Update: basedump64.py Version 0.0.28
• Update: emldump.py Version 0.0.15
• Update: pecheck.py Version 0.7.17
• Update: rtfdump.py Version 0.0.13
• Update: zipdump.py Version 0.0.32
• Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.80
• Update: pdf-parser.py Version 0.7.2
• Update: re-search.py Version 0.0.23
• Update: xorsearch.py Version 0.0.5
• Update: myjson-filter.py Version 0.0.7
• Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.81
• Update: process-binary-file.py Version 0.0.11
• Quickpost: Airplanes & Radiation
• Update: oledump.py Version 0.0.82
• Update: myjson-filter.py Version 0.0.8
• Update: myjson-transform.py Version 0.0.2
• Update: search-for-compression.py Version 0.0.4
• Quickpost: Firefox Profiles and Multiple Instances
• Quickpost: emldump Bulk Extraction
• DSS_DEFAULT_HASH_ALGORITHMS
• Python Requirements for Didier Stevens Suite
• Quickpost: USB-C Couplers
• Update: pngdump.py Version 0.0.7
• My Fridge & My Portable Power Station
• Update: pecheck.py Version 0.7.18
• Update: search-for-compression.py 0.0.5
• Update: myjson-filter.py Version 0.0.9
• Update: virustotal-search.py Version 0.1.9
• New Tool: myipaddress.py
• Update: teeplus.py Version 0.0.2
• Quickpost: Doorbell & Condensation
• Quickpost: 12V Portable Power Station
• Update: pdf-parser.py Version 0.7.13
• Quickpost: PEP 515 ? Underscores in Numeric Literals
• Update: dnsresolver.py Version 0.0.4
• Bytes over DNS Tools
• Update: cs-parse-traffic.py Version 0.0.6
• Update: numbers-to-hex.py Version 0.0.4
• Quickpost: Power Requirements Of A Keylogger
• Quickpost: CR1225 vs CR1220
• Copy/Paste Delays In Excel Because Of Default Printer
• Quickpost: USB Electric Razor
• Quickpost: USB-C Rechargeable Batteries
• USB Trigger Boards
• Update: pecheck.py Version 0.7.19
• Using a USB-C Trigger Cable To Power An FM Radio

SANS ISC Diary entries:

• Wireshark 4.4.3 Released
• Multi-OLE
• Partial ZIP File Downloads
• Crypto Wallet Scam
• Crypto Wallet Scam: Not For Free
• Reminder: 7-Zip & MoW
• Wireshark 4.4.4 Released
• Wireshark 4.4.5 Released
• Mark of the Web: Some Technical Details
• Static Analysis of GUID Encoded Shellcode
• XORsearch: Searching With Regexes
• xorsearch.py: Searching With Regexes
• Wireshark 4.4.6 Released
• xorsearch.py: “Ad Hoc YARA Rules”
• Steganography Analysis With pngdump.py
• Steganography Analysis With pngdump.py: Bitstreams
• Steganography Challenge
• Steganography Challenge: My Solution
• xorsearch.py: Python Functions
• YARA 4.5.3 Release
• Wireshark 4.4.7 Released
• Extracting With pngdump.py
• A JPEG With A Payload
• ADS & Python Tools
• Wireshark 4.4.8 Released
• WinRAR MoTW Propagation Privacy
• Wireshark 4.4.9 Released
• pdf-parser: All Streams
• BASE64 Over DNS
• Web Searches For Archives
• Wireshark 4.4.10 and 4.6.0 Released
• Kaitai Struct WebIDE
• Bytes over DNS
• Honeypot: Requests for (Code) Repositories
• Honeypot: FortiWeb CVE-2025-64446 Exploits
• SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2025
• Finger.exe & ClickFix
• Decoding Binary Numeric Expressions
• Wireshark 4.4.1 Released
• YARA-X 1.10.0 Release: Fix Warnings
• Wireshark 4.6.2 Released
• DLLs & TLS Callbacks

Here is an overview of content I published in December: Blog posts:

• Quickpost: USB Electric Razor
• Quickpost: USB-C Rechargeable Batteries
• USB Trigger Boards
• Update: pecheck.py Version 0.7.19
• Using a USB-C Trigger Cable To Power An FM Radio

SANS ISC Diary entries:

• Wireshark 4.6.2 Released
• DLLs & TLS Callbacks

Every year, the cloud is becoming more distributed, automated and tightly wired into the business. Every day, adversaries compress the timeline between compromise and data exfiltration. What once took them 44 days now takes minutes. For the fifth year in a row, Palo Alto Networks State of Cloud Security Report 2025 captures the changes both big and small that security leaders are navigating in the market today. Our report reveals that the rapid adoption of enterprise AI is fueling an unprecedented surge in cloud security risks, driving a massive expansion of the attack surface. We found that 99% of organizations experienced at least one attack on their AI systems within the past year, and the acceleration of GenAI-assisted coding is outstripping security teams' capacity to keep pace. What’s missing isn't just visibility, it’s alignment.

Our research, drawing on insights from more than 2,800 security leaders, surfaces the critical cost of misalignment across teams, tools and workflows. This report provides key benchmarks to help inform the decisions that shape your cloud strategy as we track where teams gain ground, where they struggle, and how the threat landscape, now accelerated by AI, is evolving.

The Cloud Attack Surface Is Expanding with AI

The biggest shift in the cloud landscape is the acceleration of risk driven by AI adoption. As cloud infrastructure expands to host the growing number of AI workloads, it has become a critical target. The introduction of GenAI into development pipelines is also compounding the problem by increasing the volume of insecure code going into production.

Of those surveyed in the 2025 report, 75% of organizations stated that they are running AI in their production environments today. That level is significant, as it points to the growing adoption and use of AI as businesses are locked in what looks like a modern arms race to bring the latest capabilities and benefits to their organizations and customers. In addition, as stated earlier, our findings confirm that 99% of organizations reported at least one attack on their AI systems within the past year. This number proves that AI needs human guardrails, as well as to be secured to contain the risk of critical data exposure by adversaries.

The AppSec Pipeline Is Not Secure Enough Yet

As AI expands the cloud attack surface and has been proven to be a significant target, we can see that code development pipelines are also being stressed by the same forces. An important trend from the 2025 report is the rise of GenAI-assisted coding (vibe coding), used by 99% of respondents. The use of vibe coding is generating insecure code faster than security teams can review it. The acceleration creates a massive risk gap: 52% of teams are shipping code weekly, but only 18% are able to fix vulnerabilities at that same pace. This confirms that traditional, human-led approaches to application security are inadequate, leaving security teams to fight threats with fragmented tools and slow, manual fix cycles.

As the pace of development increases, the disconnect between security assessment and remediation is becoming more apparent too. While teams are making progress by shifting away from outdated vulnerability prioritization methods, they still struggle to integrate security effectively into the development workflow. This introduces a large number of vulnerabilities into production, where 20% of organizations report that an average of 37% of their high or critical issues reach their production environments. Once in production those vulnerabilities linger, as 82% of organizations report it taking longer than a week to deploy code fixes. What is slowing teams down?

The traditional refrain toward implementing prevention that blocks risks from reaching production during rapid code development is still true today. The barriers are clear: 31% cite poor CI/CD integration and another 31% worry about slowing down development. On the positive note, only 17% rely on CVSS scores to prioritize their fixes as teams are now moving more toward context-rich decisions based on exploitability-based triage (32%) and business impact (33%).

The New Frontiers of Cloud Risk

Attackers are rapidly pivoting to exploit the foundational layers of the cloud, with a clear focus on ungoverned interfaces and overprivileged access. The volume and autonomy introduced by AI agents further accelerates this exploitation, turning minor gaps into major incidents.

Attacks on APIs Jump for 41%

APIs are the new primary entry point. Attacks on APIs increased for 41% of organizations in the last year, marking the sharpest rise of any threat category measured. As agentic AI relies heavily on APIs to operate, this explosion in usage has greatly expanded the attack surface. Furthermore, nearly every AI-related threat, including model supply chain tampering, token theft and prompt injection, involves an API boundary. This reinforces the role of ungoverned interfaces in scalable AI compromise, with 47% of AI system breaches involving data exfiltration through assistants or plugins.

Identity Still Remains the Weakest Link

Insufficient access controls remain a leading vector for credential theft and data exfiltration. 53% of organizations cite lenient identity and access management (IAM) practices as a top data security challenge. This problem is compounded by complexity. The number climbs to 57% among organizations running more than six AppSec tools, proving that the discipline required to maintain least privilege is failing to scale with tool sprawl. Data leaves through both legitimate business systems and breach events, making it fundamentally an identity problem.

The top three exfiltration vectors confirm this focus:

• SaaS sync or export misuse: 63%
• Overpermissive external sharing: 59%
• Compromised credentials or tokens: 58%

Lateral Movement Risks Persist

Once an attacker gains a foothold, they can move freely. Twenty-eight percent point to unrestricted network access between cloud workloads as a growing threat, allowing attackers to pivot across environments and turn minor compromises into major incidents.

The Growing Imperative of Cloud & SOC Must Merge

The gap between detection and resolution is where breaches succeed. Today the cloud and SOC divide is proving too slow in the face of machine-speed threats. Structural fragmentation is clearly visible in response times, while 74% of organizations detect threats within 24 hours, 30% take more than a full day to resolve them. A delay like this is caused by disjointed workflows and isolated data sources between cloud and SOC teams, which stall incident response (IR) for 50% of organizations.

The demand for consolidation shows up across the board:

• 89% of organizations believe cloud security and security operations must fully merge, not just integrate.
• Organizations currently manage an average of 17 tools from five vendors, creating fragmented data and context gaps.
• Consequently, 97% of respondents prioritized consolidating their security footprint to address the chaos of tool sprawl.

The model that worked for lift-and-shift can't contain threats that move at machine speed. Organizations are ready to collapse the distance between teams and tools.

About the Report

The State of Cloud Security Report 2025 draws from over 2,800 security leaders and practitioners across 10 countries and includes breakouts by region, industry and cloud maturity, along with the full incident data and strategic insights we’ve touched on here.

Learn More and Transform to an Agentic-First Platform

To stay ahead of adversaries who use AI to launch attacks at machine speed, human-led defense is no longer sufficient. The report emphasizes that organizations must counter with an equivalent evolution: Agentic security, leveraging autonomous agents to deliver cloud security from code to cloud to SOC.

Download the full State of Cloud Security report to see how today’s leaders are closing the gap and what we recommend.

The post Where Cloud Security Stands Today and Where AI Breaks It appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

From Fragmented Fences to Cohesive Control

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

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

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

Elevate Perimeter Protection to Defense-in-Depth

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

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

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

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

Freedom of Choice Without Fragmentation

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

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

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

A Unified Security Layer Across Every Environment

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are proud to announce that Frost & Sullivan has recognized Palo Alto Networks Prisma^® Browser as the best-positioned market leader in the Frost Radar: Zero Trust Browser Security (ZTBS), 2025 report, securing the premier position for innovation and a leadership position on growth.

This recognition comes at a pivotal moment. For the modern enterprise, the browser is no longer just an application; it is your new OS. With 85% of the work happening in browsers, it has become the focal point where revenue is generated and sensitive data is accessed. However, this shift has transformed your primary workspace into the primary attack vector, with 95% of organizations having reported a security incident originating in the browser, placing it on the frontline against sophisticated AI^® threats and critical vulnerabilities. The risk of evasive, AI-driven phishing attempts is compounded by the widespread use of managed and unmanaged devices, creating blind spots that allow sensitive data to be exfiltrated faster than ever.

To combat this, enterprises need a browser that doesn't just display the web but actively defends it with its users, apps, data and devices. This is a necessity that drives our latest industry recognition.

Proven Leadership Validated by the Market

Prisma Browser’s recognition as the best-positioned leader, securing the premier position for innovation and a leadership position on growth, is a testament to our commitment to deliver best-in-class security that is both easy to deploy and that IT and users love to use. By integrating Palo Alto Networks Precision AI^® technology, Cloud-Delivered Security Services (CDSS) and Enterprise DLP, we ensure our customers benefit from the power of our security engines. And because they are natively integrated in the browser, we are mitigating threats hiding in encrypted traffic, blind spot web channels, AI-powered spear phishing and other evasive web threats that legacy security tools simply cannot identify.

Prisma Browser’s Innovation Advantage

Our leadership is driven by continuous strategic innovation in the secure browser space. Prisma Browser delivers critical "last-mile" protection through the native integration of CDSS, including Advanced WildFire^® for zero-day malware analysis and Advanced URL Filtering instantly at the point of user interaction. Building on this foundation, our latest innovations extend secure work to all applications, including those beyond SSO, providing full visibility and last-mile protection for unmanaged applications, such as GenAI apps, closing gaps left by incomplete identity coverage. We further solidify this best-in-class security through additional cutting-edge innovations: Advanced Web Protection for real-time evasive threat protection, Advanced Browser Protection for zero-day browser exploitation defense, and Advanced Extension Security for runtime extension security.

At the core of this defense is Precision AI, our proprietary engine that combines machine learning, deep learning and generative AI to automate detection, prevention and remediation with industry-leading accuracy. Unlike standard security tools that rely on static signatures, Prisma Browser, powered by Precision AI, inspects live, fully rendered content. It detects evasive phishing attempts (such as AI-generated cloaking) and malicious reassembly attacks that legacy tools miss, effectively fighting AI with AI. Fueled by intelligence from over 70 thousand customers, Prisma Browser delivers unmatched threat detection, identifying and blocking up to 8.95 million new and unique attacks every single day.

The Frost Report says this about Palo Alto Networks Innovation:

Key differentiating capabilities include last-mile data leakage protection with browser-level visibility; AI-powered web attack detection and prevention with full page runtime visibility; detection and disabling of malicious extensions using behavioral monitoring; an advanced AI-powered DLP engine; in-browser anti-exploit protection; and a rich library of AI applications and agents.

Crucially, Enterprise DLP capabilities are embedded directly into the rendering engine, granting granular control over sensitive data that traditional network-level tools effectively miss. This helps ensure that data on both managed and unmanaged devices remains secure against exfiltration via clipboard restrictions, screenshot blocking, real-time redaction and more, without disrupting the user experience.

Prisma Browser’s Growth Advantage

Central to the widespread adoption of Prisma Browser is our proven ability to secure the managed workforce at scale without disrupting daily workflows. One of our key differentiators is our 100% license portability, which allows organizations to deploy Prisma Browser across their entire fleet of devices, whether as full browsers, extensions, mobile solutions and firewall connectors with complete flexibility. This frictionless deployment model enables IT teams to instantly layer enterprise-grade security and unified policies onto the same native browser UX employees already know and use.

For CISOs and CIOs focused on streamlining operations, Prisma Browser is also offered as a fully integrated solution within the Prisma^® SASE platform, enabling unified policies across all Palo Alto Networks solutions.

Looking Ahead

While we are proud of our position on the Frost Radar: Zero Trust Browser Security (ZTBS) report, we are just getting started. By accelerating initiatives in GenAI security, complete web protection, modern data protection and VDI reduction, we are redefining the browser. We don't just want the browser to be where you work; we are transforming it from the primary attack vector into one of the organization's most robust lines of defense and the single point where they can identify AI driven attacks and fight AI with AI.

Read the full Frost Radar: Zero Trust Browser Security (ZTBS), 2025 report to explore the details behind our market leadership. Then, schedule a demo to witness how Prisma Browser transforms your primary workspace into your strongest line of defense.

The post Redefining Workspace: Prisma Browser Secures Leadership in Frost Radar appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Every CIO and CISO we speak with describes the same paradox: AI is now central to their transformation agenda, yet the fastest way to derail that agenda is to lose control of AI. As generative AI, agentic systems and embedded AI features spread across the enterprise, leaders are no longer asking if they need AI security; they’re asking what kind of AI security strategy will actually scale.

Gartner^® has published two recent reports that validate this reality and outline the strategic direction enterprises must take to secure their AI:

• GMs: Win the AI Security Battle With an AI Security Platform (available as a complimentary reprint from Palo Alto Networks).
• AI Vendor Race: Palo Alto Networks Is the Company to Beat in AI Security Platforms, published December 8, 2025.

Why AI Security Is a Platform Game

Point products can plug individual gaps, but they can’t keep up with the speed, complexity and interconnected nature of AI adoption. And more importantly, they struggle to deliver the trust, consistency or scale AI transformation requires.

Many organizations are already experiencing AI adoption outpacing traditional security tools. Security teams are under pressure on three fronts:

• Risk – Shadow AI, unmanaged agents and custom LLMs create new pathways for data loss, intellectual property exposure and model misuse.
• Cost – Each new AI use case brings yet another tool, driving up license, integration and operations costs.
• Complexity – Fragmented controls across network, data, identity and application stacks create blind spots exactly where AI is moving fastest.

From a CIO or CISO’s perspective, this isn’t just a technical concern but the fault line beneath their entire AI agenda. CIOs are under pressure to deliver productivity gains, cost efficiencies and new AI-powered capabilities faster than ever before.

CISOs, on the other hand, see a parallel reality: custom-built AI applications that may be insecure by default, agents that can act unpredictably, and a constant risk that company secrets or customer data could leak into third-party GenAI tools.

If AI moves forward without security, the enterprise is exposed. If AI slows down because security can’t keep up, the business misses its transformation goals. This is why AI security isn’t a feature; it’s the determining factor in whether AI becomes a competitive advantage or a strategic setback.

Gartner recommends the path forward as “an integrated modular AI security platform (AISP) with a common UI, data model, content inspection engine and consistent policy enforcement.”

Gartner further recommends prioritizing investments in two phases.

Phase 1

Start with AI usage control to secure the consumption of third-party AI services.

Phase 2

Expand into AI application protection to securely develop and run AI applications.

Phase 1: Securing Generative AI Usage Is the “Right Now” Challenge

Before enterprises can secure how AI is developed, they must first understand how it is already being used across the organization. The earliest risks often emerge not from the AI-enabled apps built in-house, but from the external generative AI tools and copilots employees adopt, and often without the IT teams’ knowledge.

That’s why we think the report identifies AI usage control as phase one and why we recommend IT leaders start with these immediate questions to assess their organization’s AI usage.

• Where is AI actually being used in my organization?
• Which tools, copilots and agents are in play, and on what data?
• How do I enable productivity without losing control?

Phase 2: Securing AI Development Early Into the AI Lifecycle

Once public generative AI use is understood, the harder challenge emerges: Securing the AI apps and tools that your organization creates for itself. As models, agents and pipelines move into production, the questions shift from visibility to integrity, safety and scale.

Key questions that organizations must answer in phase two include:

• What AI applications, models and agents are my teams building, and where do they live?
• How do I manage the integrity, safety and compliance of AI apps before they reach production?
• How do I protect models and AI applications from prompt injection, misuse or agentic threats?
• How do I scale AI innovation without creating security bottlenecks for developers?

Palo Alto Networks Delivers the AI Security Platform

Although organizations can separate the work around securing AI usage and AI development, they are not two separate problems. The same organization that needs visibility into employees using public GenAI apps also needs to protect the AI applications and agents they’ve built as they move into production. A platform approach is what allows shared policies, shared guardrails and shared context across both sides of the AI usage and development equation.

That is exactly the philosophy behind our Secure AI by Design approach:

• Secure how GenAI is used with Prisma^® Browser and Prisma SASE to discover AI tools in use, govern access and prevent sensitive data from flowing into public models, all while keeping users productive with GenAI and enterprise copilots.
• Secure how AI is built with capabilities of Prisma AIRS, such as model and agent security, AI security posture management, runtime protection, automated testing with AI Red Teaming, as well as coverage for agentic protocols, like MCP, securing custom AI applications, agents and pipelines.

Gartner identifies Palo Alto Networks as “the company to beat” in their newly released report as of December 8, 2025: “AI Vendor Race: Palo Alto Networks Is the Company to Beat in AI Security Platforms.”

We believe we are the AI Security Platform to beat because:

• Palo Alto Networks product portfolio across network, edge, cloud and data provides a strong foundation for AI usage visibility and control.
• The acquisition of Protect AI integrated industry-leading AI talent and products resulting in the recently announced Prisma AIRS 2.0, which delivers comprehensive end-to-end AI security, seamlessly connecting deep AI agent and model inspection in development with real-time agent defense at production runtime. The platform, continuously validated by autonomous AI red teaming, secures all interactions between AI models, agents, data and users. This gives enterprises the confidence to discover, assess and protect their entire AI ecosystem, accelerating secure innovation.
• Complementing the platform, Unit 42^®’s deep expertise and Huntr’s bug bounty program, provide security thought leadership that directly improves product effectiveness and threat intelligence. These programs help us continuously uncover new attack patterns, misconfigurations and supply chain risks unique to AI systems, as well as feed those insights directly back into the product roadmap.
• Our large installed base and distribution channels create a flywheel for AI security platform adoption and learning from our customers and partners.

We also believe that underneath the technical requirements is a deeper truth: CIOs and CISOs want to move fast on AI, but they only feel safe doing so with a partner who has the scale, signal and staying power. This is where our breadth, research depth and ecosystem matter.

Leading Responsibly Means Listening, Innovating and Evolving

Being early is an advantage, but staying ahead requires humility and continuous learning. Leading means seeing what comes next, and Gartner’s insights accelerate our own roadmap as we continue to evolve.

• Simplifying the Experience: We are integrating capabilities across Prisma AIRS, Prisma SASE and Prisma Browser to make AI security easier to adopt, operate and scale through Strata Cloud Manager as the single entry point.
• Going Deeper into the AI Engineering Pipeline: We recognize that securing AI must start early in the developing environment and ML pipeline, not just at runtime. Our integrations with AI development tools and code repositories will continue to expand.
• Keeping Pace with a Fast-Moving Market: We are investing in open standards, partnerships and research, so our customers don’t have to chase every point solution that appears. Palo Alto Networks is also a contributing member to OWASP Standards and Threat analysis to help create an industry standard on AI security.
• Working Along Native AI Controls: Cloud providers and AI platforms are adding their own security features. We aim to complement, not replace, those controls, providing unified visibility, advanced protection and consistent policies across a fragmented AI landscape.

For us, being “the company to beat” is not a finish line. It’s a responsibility to listen carefully to customers, adapt as AI evolves, and keep delivering practical, integrated outcomes rather than isolated features.

If you are a GM, CIO, CISO or AI leader trying to make sense of a rapidly crowding AI security landscape, we believe “GMs: Win the AI Security Battle With an AI Security Platform”​​ is essential reading.

In the end, the real race isn’t about features; it’s about who helps enterprises accelerate transformation safely, reduce risk and compete better with AI they can trust.

 

Disclaimer: 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, AI Vendor Race: Palo Alto Networks is the Company to Beat in AI Security Platforms, By Mark Wah, Neil MacDonald, Marissa Schmidt, Dennis Xu, Evan Zeng, 8 December 2025. 

Gartner, GMs: Win the AI Security Battle With an AI Security Platform, By Neil MacDonald, Tarun Rohilla, 6 October 2025.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The post Winning the AI Race Starts with the Right Security Platform appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe that the true measure of our technology isn’t just in how it performs in the lab, but how it empowers our partners to solve critical security challenges for their customers. That is why we are incredibly proud to announce that Palo Alto Networks has been recognized by CRN with the 2025 Products of the Year Award for Cortex XSIAM^® and 2025 Tech Innovator Award for Prisma^® SASE.

This recognition is particularly meaningful because it is not decided by a small panel of judges. The CRN Awards are determined solely by ratings from solution providers – the people who are out in the field every day, deploying these tools to secure the modern enterprise.

Here is a look at why partners are betting on our platform.

Cortex XSIAM Outperforms Legacy SIEM by Sweeping Award Subcategories

Solution providers validated the shift to AI-driven operations by voting Cortex XSIAM the definitive choice for the modern SOC. We secured the Overall Category Winner title in the CRN 2025 Products of the Year Awards for Security Operations Platform/SIEM. Ranking #1 in technology, revenue and customer need, this verdict comes directly from the experts who deploy security architectures every day.

The Clean Sweep

Cortex XSIAM swept the board. We secured the top ranking across all three evaluation criteria:

• Technology: Best-in-class innovation
• Revenue and Profit: Proven business value
• Customer Need: Solves critical operational challenges

This trifecta proves the platform excels in practice, not just theory. The legacy SIEM era is giving way to something fundamentally different.

For our partners, XSIAM represents a shift from "managing tools" to "delivering outcomes." By unifying SOC capabilities into a single, AI-driven platform, we are enabling solution providers to offer faster detection and remediation services without the operational overhead of legacy SIEMs.

As Dave Kennedy, Co-Founder & Chief Hacking Officer at Binary Defense, notes:

Effective security operations depend on actionable intelligence. Cortex XSIAM delivers the depth and precision our analysts need to connect the dots and act decisively. This award-winning platform, now recognized as CRN’s 2025 Product of the Year, strengthens our shared mission to protect organizations from evolving threats.

​​To dive deeper into how Cortex XSIAM continues to lead with AI-driven innovation, watch the on-demand webinar introducing the revolutionary Cortex AgentiX.

​​While XSIAM is transforming security operations, another Palo Alto Networks solution is reimagining network security entirely.

Prisma SASE Is Redefining Network Security

We believe being recognized as a Tech Innovator is a powerful validation of our commitment to delivering a best-in-class security that empowers our customers.

As per the CRN 2025 Tech Innovator Awards:

Prisma SASE from Palo Alto Networks is a comprehensive SASE solution converging networking and security for the entire hybrid workforce. Prisma SASE secures users, apps, data and devices everywhere. It delivers best-in-class security, exceptional user experiences and simplified operations through a unique multicloud architecture, single console, unified policies and AI copilot.

We secured this award primarily due to our deep understanding of customer needs. At Palo Alto Networks, understanding customer needs isn't just about listening to feedback on existing features; it's about anticipating where the future of work is heading. We don't just build security; we build solutions that adapt to our customer’s reality. Listening to over 70 thousand of our customers, we continue to push the boundaries of security, culminating in our latest Prisma SASE 4.0 launch.

The Power of the Platform

Winning 2025 Product of the Year and 2025 Tech Innovator in both SecOps and Network Security underscores the reality that today’s partners and customers are looking for unified, best-in-class solutions.

Whether it is revolutionizing the SOC with Cortex XSIAM or securing the hybrid workforce with SASE, these awards reflect the trust our solution providers place in us. We are committed to continuing this momentum, equipping our partner community with the innovation they need to stay ahead of tomorrow’s threats.

Thank you to all our partners who voted and continue to trust Palo Alto Networks as your cybersecurity platform of choice.

The post Partners Are Fueling Innovation with Cortex XSIAM and Prisma SASE appeared first on Palo Alto Networks Blog.

Here is an overview of content I published in November:

Blog posts:

• Update: cs-parse-traffic.py Version 0.0.6
• Update: numbers-to-hex.py Version 0.0.4
• Quickpost: Power Requirements Of A Keylogger
• Quickpost: CR1225 vs CR1220
• Copy/Paste Delays In Excel Because Of Default Printer

SANS ISC Diary entries:

• Honeypot: Requests for (Code) Repositories
• Honeypot: FortiWeb CVE-2025-64446 Exploits
• SANS Holiday Hack Challenge 2025
• Finger.exe & ClickFix
• Decoding Binary Numeric Expressions
• Wireshark 4.4.1 Released
• YARA-X 1.10.0 Release: Fix Warnings