Palo Alto Networks, a cybersecurity firm, has announced the release of new features for its Prisma Cloud security platform. The main highlight of the announcement is the integration of Aporeto into its platform. Palo Alto acquired Aporeto, a machine identity-based microsegmentation company, in 2019.
What is a microsegmentation?
Microsegmentation is a method of creating secure zones in data centers and cloud deployments that allows users to isolate workloads from one another and secure each one of them. As the name suggests, Microsegmentation is aimed to make network security more granular.
Identity-based microsegmentation is the approach to simplify policy management for micro-segmentation. There is a lot of communication between devices and resources over a network, and this can lead to vulnerabilities. So, it becomes necessary to identify “who”, “what” and “how” of the communication. The visibility offered by identity-based microsegmentation approach always betters up the security posture of a cloud infrastructure.
What’s new for users in Prisma Cloud 2.0?
Prisma Cloud security platform allows companies to securely connect office devices and users to cloud. It also enables SaaS adoption with a cloud access security broker and can improve security across multi-cloud deployments.
As mentioned earlier, the new feature will add the Aporeto’s identity-based microsegmentation to Prisma Cloud. It will provide visibility of network communications along with security policy control and management.
In a statement to ZDNet, Doug Cahill, Senior Security Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said, “enterprises are adopting cloud-native architectures, including containers and serverless, and embracing methodologies like DevOps to increase release velocity and achieve greater scale. This presents a requirement for security teams to integrate security across the full application lifecycle and deliver security through a platform-centric approach as markets converge. The innovation with Prisma Cloud 2.0 speaks to this approach.”
As a security firm, Palo Alto’s focus is to remain updated with cloud security as the industry progresses. Recent acquisitions have helped it build advanced security layers for its platform. Apart from Aporeto, Palo Alto also enhanced its security with RedLock and Evident.io.
The list of new updates also includes DLP capabilities that can help in discovery, classification and malware detection for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3). The new IAM features will allow users to gain visibility into who is accessing specific cloud resources. It also gives the ability to secure such resources with automated least-privileged identity access.