Insight Event: Palo Alto Networks - blueAPACHE

March 13, 2015

We recently hosted an exclusive lunch with Palo Alto Networks Security evangelist, Tim Treat. On loan from Palo Alto Networks’ head office, Tim started his career in the United States Air Force where he led global fixed and deployed organisations performing Engineering and Installation, Combat Communications, Network Operations and Security Operations. After transitioning from active duty, he delved into leading federal and commercial Network and Security Operations. Today, Tim uses his twenty year experience to help organisations incorporate enterprise resilience, prevention and protection into Network Operations and Defence convergence strategies. We integrate Palo Alto Networks directly in to our core. Adding this technology at the core network level, supporting this with firewalls deployed at the edge and the new endpoint security offers organisations a complete security platform, which Tim acknowledged.

“You need two fundamental requirements to operate and defend your enterprise. One; know and control all network traffic, applications and users at all times. Two, beat attackers before the kill chain ‘install’ stage” said Tim. “blueAPACHE is the first ITaaS organisation in Australia to integrate Palo Alto Networks directly into their core – and by doing so blueAPACHE is best placed to defend their clients with both fundamental requirements.”

Key learnings shared by Tim at the luncheon included:

• IT security is now the responsibility of the organisation, not the IT department. The Executive and Board need to better understand their responsibilities and the security profile being deployed, for they will be held accountable.
• Security traditionally has always been about detect and repair known problems. This has changed – today it is about prevention, prevention, prevention. With more targeted attacks (malware being distributed to a single organisation, directly or indirectly as we saw with Target), traditional security methods don’t see the problem until too late – if at all. Today, you need a security solution that tests and monitors everything – not just the known threats.
• You will receive malware, it is going to happen. Palo Alto Networks’ Wildfire sees around 400,000 malicious samples per day. Once you accept that you will be directly or indirectly targeted, you can plan for it.
• Palo Alto Network’s hardware is new – the first build was released in 2009. Other leading security vendors solutions are a patch-work platform developed in the early 1990s and simply refreshed to allow additional modules to be bolted on ever since.
• Palo Alto Network’s solution is unique – it operates on the application and user layers. Other traditional solutions build their Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) around ports, which hackers can easily exploit. The success of Cryptolocker reinforces the effectiveness of Palo Alto Networks’ approach. Cryptolocker is not spreading across networks protected with Palo Alto and Wildfire – but it is running rife across networks leveraging traditional firewall technologies.

Additional information

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