Palo Alto Networks is the latest secure access service edge (SASE) vendor to fall under AT&T’s managed services umbrella.

The new service pairs Palo Alto Networks' Prisma Access and Prisma SD-WAN — formerly CloudGenix — into a single vendor SASE platform that’s fully managed by AT&T Cybersecurity. The service is the second managed SASE offering added to AT&T's arsenal in about three months, with the first being powered by Fortinet.

The collaboration with Palo Alto Networks builds on an existing relationship centered around the vendor’s hardware and software security portfolio, according to AT&T Cybersecurity VP Rupesh Chokshi. Today’s update expands upon that collaboration to include Palo Alto Networks’ full SASE architecture.

SASE, first coined by Gartner in 2019, incorporates elements of SD-WAN, managed security, and edge compute into a single cloud-delivered platform. Palo Alto Networks was among the first security vendors to throw its weight behind the product category in late 2019, and in the spring of 2020 paid $420 million for CloudGenix to fill the gaps in its networking stack.

The acquisition allowed Palo Alto Networks to build a tightly integrated SASE offering around “best-of-breed components,” Palo Alto Networks SVP of products and CloudGenix founder and CEO Kumar Ramachandran boasted. “There's just no other solution out there that has this extent of best-of-breed capabilities that are also elegantly integrated together.”

AT&T experienced strong demand for SASE architectures in the wake of the pandemic, driven by the shift to hybrid work models, cloud and software-as-a-service application adoption, and growing security concerns, Chokshi said.

This, alongside SASE's as-a-service consumption model, has helped to "democratize" services like SD-WAN and cloud-delivered security for a broader audience, Ramachandran explained.

Because of this, the ever-so-creatively named AT&T SASE with Palo Alto Networks not only targets large, distributed enterprises and state and federal government agencies, but also has potential for adoption among mid-sized businesses, Chokshi said.

“There are lots of customers that are 30 sites, 50 sites, 1,000 employees, 500 employees. They want the same capabilities. You can’t say that security for a customer with 10,000 employees is different than a customer with 30 employees,” he said. “We are trying to package this and build that managed services experience and bring it to that mid market.”

And coming out of the pandemic, enterprises of all sizes are grappling with many of the same challenges: consistent access for workers whether they’re working from home or a branch office, accelerating public cloud adoption, and looming cybersecurity threats, he added.

Ransomware in particular is driving SASE adoption across all market segments, Ramachandran said, especially in the wake of high-profile breaches like the Colonial Pipeline and JBS Beef hacks.

“We’ve seen a huge influx, or growth, in ransomware, and the predictions are pretty terrible on that front, with state-sponsored actors at play,” Ramachandran said, adding that SASE has a role to play in preventing these types of attacks.

Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks are the first of many services the carrier plans to add to its managed SASE lineup, according to Chokshi. AT&T plans to roll out additional managed SASE services over the next year.

AT&T SASE with Palo Alto Networks is available starting today.