Palo Alto Networks announced Cloud NGFW for Azure, a next-generation firewall as a fully managed service for Microsoft Azure customers. Cloud NGFW for Azure offers advanced threat prevention, advanced URL filtering, WildFire, and DNS security, the company said. As an Azure-native ISV Service, Cloud NGFW is available from the Azure portal.

Palo Alto Networks relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify and stop unknown and zero-day threats. Cloud NGFW for Azure integrates with Panorama to provide seamless security policy extension to on-premises for Azure. This integration enforces the same security standards in the cloud. Cloud NGFW for Azure also integrates with Azure Virtual WAN deployments, enabling customers to protect traffic across their entire network.

Because Cloud NGFW for Azure is a fully managed service, Palo Alto Networks handles scaling, resilience, and software updates.

"We continue to see enterprises rapidly moving their applications to the cloud, with many choosing Microsoft Azure as their primary cloud provider. We also see organizations making good use of their existing in-house network security expertise, maintaining consistency between security policies for cloud and on-premises, and optimizing management activities. Palo Alto Networks' release of Cloud NGFW for Azure touches on all of these points by offering a cloud-native managed version of their well-known firewalling capabilities, with the benefit of integration into the Panorama management framework," said Fernando Montenegro, senior principal analyst at Omdia.