Channel partners helping : Palo Alto Networks secure India Inc.

Krithiwas Neelakantan
Channel & Alliances Leader, Palo Alto Networks

Consider this: when one is about to purchase a brand new car, it is not just the perspective of the driver/buyer that is in play to ensure a quality purchase. The final decision is usually informed by the marketing machinery put in place by carmakers, fellow driving enthusiasts, the one pesky neighbour with the unsolicited advice, and, finally, the buyer’s own perspective on the machines. 

Ultimately, the end-result is that a bridge supported by multiple entities is formed between the enterprise and the end-consumer which leads to the purchase of a product or service.

When it comes to the cybersecurity domain, the channel partner ecosystem works similarly. Partners employ their extensive market expertise gained by working with businesses on-ground to gain an in-depth understanding of a customer’s threat landscape. Following this, partners use the intel to work closely with cybersecurity providers to help formulate and meet customers with the right solutions. 

As cloud, networks, devices, identities, and endpoints multiply, and work goes hybrid, channel partners are responsible for guiding customers through this technological shift securely. Furthermore, they play a crucial role in ensuring that no matter what service is being deployed for the end-consumer, experiences remain seamless. 

To understand how channel partners see this and more through, it's important to understand the current predicament of the cybersecurity business through three pillars:

Insights - The business-focused changes brought on by advancements like 5G, IoT, Web 3.0, are modernising how enterprises work and, therefore, perform. However, an advanced tech stack is not just for the organisation to enjoy. “Cyber attackers are leveraging emerging technologies just as much as businesses are,” says Krithiwas Neelakantan, Channel & Alliances Leader, Palo Alto Networks. “These technologies, applied to an expanded attack surface, have resulted in attacks faster and more complex than ever before, making threats a tough beast to tame.” Channel partners are crucial in this scenario as they combine skills with cybersecurity providers to drive insight-led conversations on the best ways customers can secure themselves.

Ecosystems - The supply chain of any business consists of multiple entities that work together to ensure that operations are running smoothly. Channel partners are integral to this network because they must have a clear idea of how each part of this ecosystem functions not just to ensure efficient delivery of products but also measure how vulnerabilities inherent to these companies can impact customers.

Filling the gaps - The aforementioned pillars contribute to a significant knowledge gap for customers which gives rise to several questions pertinent to cybersecurity. As per Krithi, these questions are being raised in boardrooms more than ever. “How are we vulnerable? Where are these vulnerabilities originating from? How do our current cybersecurity frameworks fare? What must we do to improve our defenses? CXOs are always on the hunt for the right answers to these questions. And seeing how channel partners are the link between the provider and the customer, they are key to uncovering those answers.”

These trends are driving a significant evolution in the channel sphere. To ensure cybersecurity that is current and competent, channel partners must meet customers wherever they are in their security journeys. As networks modernise, future-ready solutions that supplement hyperconnectivity efficiently, are scalable, and ensure seamless experiences, will be key differentiators in the hybrid work era.

Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) frameworks go a long way in assuring this. As work is now an activity but a place, corporate networks are now home to multiple new user identities that bring in their own devices, clouds, and sub-networks along. Trusting any or all of these implicitly and providing free access is not appropriate and can heighten the risk of attack. ZTNA solves this problem by removing implicit trust from the equation and ensuring that every device and transaction within the network is validated constantly and in real-time.

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is the quintessential proponent of this framework. First coined by Gartner in 2019, SASE is a new approach to network security where Wide Area Networking (WAN) and network security services like FWaaS, CASB, and more, are merged into a single, cloud-delivered service model. ZTNA is the backbone of any SASE solution as removing trust assumptions when users, devices and applications connect from within or outside the network perimeter is integral to SASE.

Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Access makes internal network access easy

Pankaj Kumar
Director, V5 TechSol India LLP

During the pandemic when people started working from home, accessing their applications became a little difficult because of the internet problem. So we provided a solution from Palo Alto Networks which is the Prisma Access where people can easily access the internal network and application through VPN solution and can access the data and can work smoothly, even if they are working from India, abroad or anywhere. People also started working more than their working hours so good connectivity and accessing the network in a smoother way was much required. Palo Alto Netwrok’s Prisma Access solution helps these customers to work from home or anywhere in an easy and secure way. 

Palo Alto Networks is one of the leading OEMs for us. We were a Registered Partner initially, then became the Innovator Partner, the Platinum Innovator Partner and now we are the Diamond Innovator Partner. So if you see our journey from being a Registered Partner to the Diamond Innovator Partner it has been tremendous and it is just because of the collaboration between V5 Techsol and Palo Alto Networks. We have collaborated together from positioning of the products, addressing technical challenges, training and providing value to customers has helped us service our clients effectivly. V5 Techsol and Palo Alto Networks have joined hands together and we have given a better solution to our customers.

SASE: An essential infrastructure for every organization

Kaushik Mukherjee 
Director, VFM Systems and Services

Pre-March 2020 all of us work from offices and even though all organizations had some amount of mobile users, the number was probably 10% of the overall usage. Now when you went to the office there was the entire security stack in terms of perimeter security, firewall, DLP, Advanced Threat Protection, endpoint security etc. Post March 2020, we had to continue our work from home, so the only thing that you had is the endpoint security on the laptop. Business had to continue so people tried to come over through Mobile Access VPN but still that stack was missing. There were so many attacks during the pandemic time. It took little time for the vendors, system integrators and customers to come around and recalibrate the security structure that they had.

So SASE is one of the primary solutions I think every organization needs and it is an essential infrastructure today. Firewall, URL filtering, DLP etc. the entire security stack is delivered from the Cloud, irrespective of where the user is working from.

Talking about our journey with Palo Alto Networks as an OEM, there has been a lot of growth not just in terms of revenue but also in terms of the number of solutions that Palo Alto Networks has come up with over the years. They started with NGFW, after that they started bringing security solutions and today Palo Alto Networks is the top security platform vendor who has leading solutions in categories from next-generation firewalls to VM firewalls to cloud based firewalls, to endpoint protection etc. 
 

Palo Alto Networks provides AI/ML based threat protection solutions

Atul Gosar  
Founder & Director  Network Techlab India

We all know that the pandemic has created a new normal, which is a hybrid workplace and now many organizations are allowing their employees to work from anywhere. They even went to the option of bringing their own devices. Many employees are using their phones, personal laptops, tablets, to connect to corporate networks. Now this type of environment has increased the challenges for cyber security experts and the safety of information. CISOs are finding it extremely challenging to make sure that organizational data are protected while the attack surface has to be limited.

So there are serious concerns from customers regarding IPS, URL filtering, and DNS security. We see customers using Palo Alto Networks solutions and when we propose them it adds a lot of peace that they are best protected by the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence base threat protections and of course Zero Day attacks are also minimized. Palo Alto Networks is the only company who commits Real-time Machine Learning ways Zero Day protection. Of course the customers are happy when it comes to Cloud Security; Palo Alto Networks is the only organization who has uniform Cloud Security platforms.

We are a Platinum Partner of Palo Alto Networks and it is a decade old relationship. We are constantly working together to solve customer’s cyber security challenges, starting from the Next Generation Firewalls,  Cloud Security, SASE, Shift Left code protection. I think in all the domains Palo Alto is one of the companies who gives the best solution.