Today’s enterprises are moving at great speed towards transformation, and the definition of their network is constantly changing—with hybrid clouds, IoT devices, and now home offices. With an expanding network edge comes increased cyber risk—inseparably linking businesses to frequent, severe and sophisticated cyberattacks.
To protect themselves, businesses need to end their dependence on reactive security measures and point solutions more than ever. Instead, they must adopt intelligent, proactive network security powered by machine learning—one that invokes a radical mind shift in cybersecurity. At Palo Alto Networks, we drove this point home with our June 2020 launch of the world’s first ML-powered Next Generation Firewall.
During the launch event we hosted a panel of IoT security experts to discuss the state of IoT security. This panel of Palo Alto Networks IoT security experts, industry leaders and peers discussed the pressing need for a natively integrated, signature-less way to secure IoT devices in the enterprise.
Top-ranked are the seven most interesting takeaways from the two sessions on IoT Security. If you’d like to watch the sessions yourself, a replay is available here.
#7 An increasing number of IoT devices are connected to the enterprise network. These devices carry an increasing amount of security risks. About 45% of enterprises already have some sort of IoT deployment, and another 26% are planning an IoT deployment in the next 12 months.
#6 Securing IoT investments has become business-critical for organizations to survive and thrive. Most enterprises agree—because for 76%, securing IoT is a top priority. Yet, only 16% feel prepared to secure their IoT devices from threats and exploits.
#5 IoT devices present unique challenges for security teams and many IoT devices are brought into organizations without IT’s knowledge. Challenging enough to secure, even identifying them in the network first and foremost is a daunting task all on its own.
#4 The most effective way to address security challenges arising out of unmanaged devices in the network is by, well, managing them. An IoT security solution identifies every device, determines which IoT devices are not running endpoint protection, and protects all of them regardless.
#3 An ideal IoT security solution uses a machine learning (ML) approach and seamlessly integrates all five stages of the IoT lifecycle—from discovery of IoT devices and their associated risks to helping assess vulnerabilities and implementing best practices to control new risk as it is inevitably created.
#2 An ideal IoT security solution empowers security teams to proactively monitor device risk, detect anomalies, recommend and apply policies for enforcement, and prevent threats all the while ensuring the most accurate and deepest level of visibility.
#1 And most importantly, the ideal solution is easy to implement. Configured with unique features and policy constructs already built into our industry-leading ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewall, our IoT Security allows IT teams to apply context-aware network segmentation of device groups to reduce risk, automation to minimize manual effort, and prevention to eliminate known and unknown threats. Simply turn on the switch on any of your existing Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls to get started.
In short, our industry-first IoT Security makes deploying single-purpose sensors a thing of the past.
We have now reached a key milestone and are thrilled to confirm the general availability of Palo Alto Networks IoT Security, starting with instances for Americas and EMEA. That means, our IoT Security is ready to secure enterprise IoT deployments around the world—as a new subscription to our current customers, and to future customers via our ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewall serving as a sensor and enforcement point.
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Watch a demo of IoT Security or to watch other on-demand sessions from our virtual event on Intelligent Network Security, register here. If you are looking for in-depth information on Palo Alto Networks and IoT security, don’t forget to visit our website.