Palo Alto Networks Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora

Palo Alto Networks executives argue that zero-trust security becomes a business imperative in the era of hybrid cloud and flex work and an effective secure access service edge (SASE) deployment should start with next-gen zero-trust network access (ZTNA) during the vendor’s SASE Converge 2022 event.

The vendor interprets zero-trust security as “zero trust with zero exceptions … which means you have to have a very consistent security stack that can secure all the use cases” in any environment, Chairman and CEO Nikesh Arora said.

On top of the networking, users, and applications, enterprise zero-trust security should also include securing the cloud with the automation ability, Chief Business Officer Amit Singh pointed out, 

To deliver zero exceptions, the ZTNA service should offer high performance without any compromise to the user. It should also be built across hyperscalers for resilience, cover every security scenario in line all the time for all traffic, and provide a platform approach that delivers all the functionalities in a single united management console, and coverage for all applications, Singh explained, claiming Palo Alto Networks’ next-gen ZTNA — which the vendor calls ZTNA 2.0 — “hits all the marks.”

SASE is the convergence of network and security, and the market has been exploding, Arora noted. 

“It is the No. 1 project in every large-scale company, because of this move to the cloud and hybrid work being permanent,” Singh echoed. “It's essentially causing a rethinking of the network stack and the security stack.”

The merger of network and security is “where SASE becomes very effective because now we're carrying the traffic on our network on your behalf,” Arora said. “That is what we've been calling fondly ZTNA 2.0 where you can actually do an amazing job delivering security with zero exceptions in a zero trust way where networking and security are together.”

Today, Palo Alto Networks delivers ZTNA 2.0 via its Prisma Access and Prisma SASE platforms. 

For the next step, Singh said, “Our vision here is self-healing networks, security delivered as a service with no compromises. [And] we will use machine learning to actually turn our best assets where cyber security defense is done at scale using public cloud infrastructure where you can block the incredible, talented, and sophisticated attacks against you that's where we're heading."