Comcast Business and Palo Alto Networks partnered to provide networking and cloud-delivered security services to midsize and enterprise customers. The move combines Comcast Business’ ActiveCore SDN platform and Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Access secure access service edge (SASE) for branch network and mobile user security.

Partnering with Palo Alto Networks will allow Comcast Business to better protect remote workers from increasing security threats, Comcast Business SVP Bob Victor said in a statement. “In today’s hyper-connected and increasingly distributed world, cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated and prevalent,” Victor said. “Organizations are seeking integrated security and network management solutions focused on protecting their remote workers, cloud, and on-premises systems.”

According to Gartner remote work will continue over the next couple years, increasing to 45% in 2022, up from 27% in 2019. The analyst firm also expects total IT spend supporting remote workers is expected to more than double to 4.9% in 2021 to $333 billion.

“By providing a cloud-delivered security platform, Comcast Business will be able to protect businesses applications from the branch office and extend that protection to users working from anywhere,” said Shena Seneca Tharnish, VP of cybersecurity products at Comcast Business in a statement.

The partnership comes as Palo Alto Networks recently updated its SASE platform to improve remote-worker security with several new capabilities including better protection for non-web apps and auto remediation for network problems. According to the security vendor’s analysis this year of more than 500 enterprise customers using Prisma Access, 53% of all remote workforce threats are for non-web apps.

Prisma Access 2.0 addresses this with a new cloud secure web gateway (SWG) capability. It added an explicit proxy to the Prisma Access Cloud SWG so customers can migrate from legacy proxy-based services to a more comprehensive cloud-delivered security platform without requiring any network architecture changes, Palo Alto Networks SVP and GM Anand Oswal said.