IBM Consulting and Palo Alto Networks today  announced an expansion of their strategic partnership to enable clients to strengthen their end-to-end security postures and address evolving cyber threats.

A key focus of the expanded collaboration will be helping companies modernize their security operations centers (SOCs) through advanced AI and automation. IBM Consulting will combine its threat detection and response services with Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XSIAM platform.

Cortex XSIAM is an artificial intellgence-powered security operations platform designed to simplify security operations, stop threats and accelerate incident response. The integration with IBM's services will provide clients with 24/7 monitoring, investigatio, and automated remediation of security alerts. The companies will also be working together to help improve cloud security posture management and ensuring security by design for cloud transformation projects.

IBM Consulting and Pato Alto Networks have been partners for multiple years. In 2022, the two companies announced a collaboration around incident response.

"We are now taking our partnership to the next level and announcing new joint go to market offerings for our IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services with Palo Alto Networks’ technologies," Dimple Ahluwalia, vice president, IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services, told SDxCentral.

As to why there is a need for IBM and Palo Alto Networks to partner, the current state of cybersecurity risks is a big reason.

"The current pace of malicious activity means that cybersecurity risk is increasingly a board-level focus," Prem Iyer, Senior Vice President, Global Ecosystems at Palo Alto Networks, told SDxCentral. "Organizations have to understand security posture, cybersecurity risk and how to mitigate risk effectively. They also need trusted advisors to help them with this."

Iyer added that the speed and scale of threats are accelerating, with many attackers exfiltrating data in less than 24 hours from the initial compromise of an organization. Because of these threats, customers often have multiple strategic priorities in cybersecurity, and those are best addressed with a platform approach. In his view, the new partnership can benefit all enterprise clients.

"Most enterprise customers have siloed tools and data, inaccurate threat defense posture, and too many manual operations - enterprises today are struggling in those areas," Iyer said.

He noted that with the vast number of alerts today, human intervention in Security Operations Centers isn’t the way to scale - organizations need help and that’s what Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM delivers.

"Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM in combination with IBM Consulting Services brings together two leaders that continue to invest into AI to shape how we help clients navigate the ever changing threat landscape," he said.

There is no shortage of threats that face modern enterprises.

Ahluwalia noted that some of the biggest challenges now are the growing scale and complexity of IT environments, as well as the increasing speed of attacks.

"In order to keep pace with both of these factors, our clients need to be able to detect and respond to threats across any and all environments, with greater speed and precision -- before attackers can achieve their objectives," she said.

Security operation centers are the frontline for responding to threats. That’s why it’s one of the key new areas the  partnership is focused on. Ahluwalia noted that for joint clients, IBM’s managed cybersecurity services teams will be leveraging a combination of AI and automation from both IBM and Palo Alto Networks technologies to make response even faster and more efficient.

“As organizations lean further into a hybrid-cloud approach and need greater visibility across their extended enterprise infrastructure and applications, helping clients understand and manage their security posture is crucial, which is the second area of expansion for our partnership,” Ahluwalia said.

Ahluwalia saodthat Palo Alto Networks is now considered part of a select group of strategic partners for IBM Consulting, and IBM is now considered one of Palo Alto Networks premier security services partners.

She noted that the main impact for what this means today is that thera are a pair of new joint go to market areas. The first is around modernizing security operations, and the second is around helping secure cloud transformations.

IBM Consulting works with a wide range of technologies and ecosystem partners, including IBM’s own security software portfolio. Ahluwalia commented that IBM’s security services are designed with an open approach to support any technology our clients are using.

"For example, when it comes to our managed security services for threat detection and response, our services are designed specifically with an open approach to bring in data and alerts from any and all security toolsets -- including a wide ecosystem or partners and integrations with technology from IBM Security, Palo Alto Networks, and others," she said.

By deepening its partnership with Palo Alto networks, Ahluwalia said that IBM is equipping sales and delivery teams on both sides to better serve clients who choose to leverage our technologies and services together as part of their broader security strategy.

"By engaging clients jointly with Palo Alto Networks, we have a tremendous capability to bring additional end-to-end security capabilities to our clients, and for IBM, to help gain share in the $173B cybersecurity services market," Ahluwalia said.