Palo Alto Networks, the cybersecurity company known primarily for its next-generation firewall technology, made another move last month toward the new “zero trust” approach to security with the announcement that it’s buying Aporeto, a microsegmentation company that uses machine identities to restrict network traffic.
“We believe the addition of Aporeto’s unique machine identity technology will further enhance our leading Prisma Cloud capabilities and strengthen our commitment to helping customers secure their journey to the cloud,” Nikesh Arora, Palo Alto’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
Palo Alto declined to provide any additional information about the acquisition, but in its most recent earnings call, Arora said that firewall revenues “did not deliver to our expectation… Firewall as a platform grew only 11 percent year over year.”
Security market experts DCK spoke with explained that there is a broader industry shift away from perimeter-focused, firewall-based security toward a new model, where security is everywhere and is based on identity, such as the identities of users, applications, and machines that are sharing or requesting information.
