Palo Alto Networks has launched what it describes as the industry’s first 5G-native security offering. It said the offering enables service providers and enterprises to turn 5G networks into highly secure networks.
“For 5G to live up to its promise of transforming industries, companies need the confidence that 5G networks and services have enterprise-grade security,” commented Anand Oswal, senior vice president and general manager, Firewall as a Platform, Palo Alto Networks. “We created 5G-native security in order to give enterprises the confidence they need to harness 5G for business transformation and to help service providers secure the new enterprise services they are creating.”
“5G networks bring new capabilities and transform the network architecture adopting containers and multi-clouds, enabling dramatic service innovation,” said Tanner Johnson, Senior Cybersecurity Analyst at Omdia. “Enterprises in verticals such as automotive, manufacturing, oil and gas and mining are embracing 5G networks to transform their industries. This presents a requirement for service providers and enterprises to integrate security across the entire 5G network, and establish secure connectivity services. The innovation with Palo Alto Networks 5G-native security speaks to this approach.”
“The move from 4G to 5G has enormous implications in terms of the massive increase in device density, edge compute capability, which together drives a large rise in the overall security risk,” agreed Mauricio Sanchez, Research Director, Network Security & Data Center Appliance, SASE Market Research, Dell’Oro Group. “When you put lots of devices and lot of compute pool resources all over the place, the threat surface for attack is enormous. Good security has to be built natively into the network.”
The 5G network architecture is a sizeable leap in terms of the expected network richness that 5G networks are expected to offer, he noted. “For example, the ability for service providers to provide end-to-end network slicing just begs to have good security be built into the network foundation,” said Sanchez. “Whatever security infrastructure the service providers deploy needs to speak and be able to natively partake in the new 5G architecture and protocols, in order to support the new 5G network uses cases the best. Palo Alto has a great security pedigree in the enterprise space and now being able to integrate into 5G lets them expand what is an already healthy Serviceable Available Market in the high-end FW space, where lot of service provider spend shows up.”
For 2019, Dell’Oro valued the high-end FW market as being $4.2bn, of which Palo Alto had $806m (19% share) against Cisco’s $1.3bn (31% share).
The following events should be considered unmissable for anybody wanting cutting edge discussion of security issues or 5G:
Why 5G matters in a world of IoT, VR, AR, AI and Edge – NetEvents
