Prosimo partners with Palo Alto Networks to enhance cloud security

Prosimo, a company specialising in multi-cloud networking software, has announced an integration with Palo Alto Networks aimed at bolstering security for applications and workloads in multi-cloud environments. The collaboration involves the use of Prosimo's Full Stack Cloud Transit platform in conjunction with Palo Alto Networks' VM-Series Virtual Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW).

This integrated solution enables enterprises to deploy security measures in close proximity to the workloads they are designed to protect, significantly reducing the time and effort needed to secure application access across multi-cloud environments. This approach is part of a wider commitment by both companies to provide a robust Zero Trust framework, ensuring fast and reliable connectivity within and across different cloud providers.

"Together with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls, we're providing organisations with a Zero Trust framework so they can be confident their application workloads are secure while ensuring fast and reliable connectivity to and across cloud providers," said Mani Ganesan, Vice President of Product at Prosimo. "This integration allows enterprises to improve observability, increase operational efficiency, and give them more control over their cloud environment."

One of the key innovations of this partnership lies in the ability to define sophisticated service insertion policies. Unlike conventional integrations that rely on IP addresses and port numbers to redirect traffic, Prosimo's approach allows users to establish detailed rules determining which traffic should be routed to the firewall for advanced inspection.

Two flexible architectures are supported for deploying Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls through Prosimo's platform. A centralised model sees the virtual firewall positioned in a centralised virtual private cloud (VPC) to manage east-west (VPC-to-VPC) or north-south (Internet ingress and egress, cloud to on-premises) traffic. Alternatively, a distributed model deploys the virtual firewalls within each individual VPC, usually in instances where VPCs require local ingress or egress and need to be isolated.

"Speed is critical in the cloud, so the speed of operations in configuring software firewalls, like the VM-Series virtual firewall, needs to match the speed of cloud deployments," said Vitaliy Sivetskiy, Senior Product Manager at Palo Alto Networks. "Integrating Prosimo's Full Stack Cloud Transit and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewall simplifies life for network security teams. Our single intuitive operating model for connectivity and virtual firewall insertion means customers have more time to focus on application business innovation versus managing network and security infrastructure. This enables organisations to help protect all clouds, the right way, with agility."

The achievement of multi-layer security in navigating cloud firewall complexity remains a key focus of this collaboration. Scaling firewalls in a well-constructed multi-cloud networking architecture presents challenges such as elasticity, complex network configurations for auto-scaling, and constant route updates to direct traffic correctly while maintaining segmentation and isolation.

By integrating Prosimo's capabilities with Palo Alto Networks VM-Series virtual firewalls, enhanced security and scalability can be achieved across both the network and application layers. Palo Alto Networks' Next-Generation Firewalls offer comprehensive Layer 7 inspection, while Prosimo supports network segmentation across Layers 3 to 7. This level of integration allows customers to provision new virtual firewalls quickly, manage their lifecycle, and scale them as required—all from a single dashboard.

The immediate benefits of this integration are reportedly: faster migration to Palo Alto Networks' software next-generation firewalls, optimised firewall sizing to control cloud costs, and leveraging existing firewall investments to manage data movement both within and across cloud environments effectively.