Stop being slow and safe

Improving the thin red line between usability and protection

Organizations are facing a growing challenge: delivering an optimal user experience while safeguarding systems and users. Too often, this results in trade-offs that sacrifice either security or usability. What if we could eliminate that compromise entirely?

One of the toughest challenges companies face today is providing secure access for external parties, such as contractors, or employees using their own devices, the so-called BYOD. (Bring Your Own Device) These devices often fall outside IT’s control but still require access to corporate networks and applications.

“With our new network security technology, you can easily address most use cases,” says Tomas Van Beek, System Engineer at Palo Alto Networks. “Centralized management, logging, and consistent security policies are integral to this approach. Prisma Access Browser is one such solution that expands the range of security use cases while being managed in the same seamless way.”

Traditionally, organizations have relied on so-called “point solutions”: tools designed to address a single, specific problem. But that approach has its drawbacks. “It leads to fragmented security, multiple management platforms, and inefficient workflows, and this in an industry already struggling with a shortage of skilled security professionals,” explains Van Beek. “Prisma Access Browser integrates easily with the broader Prisma SASE and Network Security Platform, enabling organizations to manage external access securely, simply, and consistently.”

Palo Alto's personalized approach

The interesting part is that it does not necessarily have to be the only technological option. “With a mix-and-match approach, you can select the best technology for the use case that matters most to your organization, all centrally managed and logged. It is easy to implement via an MDM solution and is fully managed and customized by the organization. Complex security measures, such as last-mile data loss prevention, decrypting challenging data, and copy-paste limitations, suddenly become effortless.”

Through a platform approach where all preventive use cases can be addressed by technology while ensuring everything is consistently enforced, logged, and managed, Palo Alto Networks brings an important transformative shift to the table. It’s a best-of-breed solution combined with a platform approach.

“In time we’ll float towards an autonomous and real-time security,” concludes Van Beek. “This would enable consistent security implementation across an organization, automatically correcting and adapting itself. This encompasses not only security solutions for networks but also cloud, identity, endpoint, application development, IoT, and more. The key enabler for this is, of course, Artificial Intelligence, which is most effectively achieved through a consistent platform approach but becomes highly challenging when working with point solutions.”