Palo Alto Networks capped off its Ignite virtual event this week by posting first-quarter fiscal 2022 revenues of $1.25 billion, which grew 32% on the strength of the company's secure access service edge (SASE) and extended detection and response (XDR) portfolios.

Heightened cybersecurity awareness in the wake of several high-profile breaches drove these gains, CEO Nikesh Arora told investors on Thursday’s earnings call.

“This quarter we saw a fair amount of press out of Washington, D.C., as cybersecurity funding was included in the recent infrastructure bill, and executive orders are mandating focus from federal agencies,” he added.

Software and support services saw strong demand during the first quarter of Palo Alto Networks' 2022 fiscal year, accounting for $952 million in revenue. “Growth in our NGS solutions was driven by Prisma SASE and [Prisma] Cloud,” Arora said.

The company’s subscription services, which include SASE, XDR, and its virtual firewalls, raked in $579 million in revenue during Q1 — an increase of 35%. Meanwhile, support revenues accounted for $373 million in revenue, up 33% from the year prior.

“Prisma SASE continues to be a source of strength in our business as our customers proceed on their own journey toward a permanent state of hybrid work,” Arora said.

“We saw our SASE customers grow 61% year over year at over 1,700,” he said, adding that 25% of those customers are new to Palo Alto Networks.

Cortex, which is Palo Alto Networks’ security operations center platform that combines security operations, automation, and response (SOAR) with extended detection and response (XDR), also saw strong gains during the quarter, with customers up 75% year over year to roughly 2,800, Arora boasted.

While software once again stole the show in Q1, hardware remained in particularly high demand, despite ongoing supply chain challenges facing the broader technology market. Hardware revenues topped $295 million during the quarter, accounting for 25% of Palo Alto Networks’ total revenues.

The ongoing semiconductor shortage drove extended lead times, which in some cases now extend out more than a year.

“Despite these challenges, we have managed to deliver against our orders,” Arora said, adding that the company expects its lead times to slip just two to four weeks over the next six to nine months.

“Overall, I think our teams have done a phenomenal job in managing this environment,” he added.

Thanks to this strength and improved visibility into its product pipeline, Palo Alto Networks expects hardware to make up a larger part of its product mix in future quarters.

At the beginning of the quarter, Arora predicted hardware refreshes and SASE sales would drive strong revenue growth going into the 2022 fiscal year. “The SASE train has barely left the station,” he said at the time.

That optimism appears to have been justified, and Arora remains bullish going into the second quarter.

The security vendor expects Q2 revenues in the range of $1.265 billion to $1.285 billion, a year-over-year increase of 24% to 26%.

Meanwhile, full-year revenue for 2022 is expected to grow at between 26% and 27% to between $5.35 billion to $5.40 billion.