Palo Alto Joins Fortinet as AT&T SASE Partner

AT&T is turning to another partnership to deliver secure access service edge (SASE) capabilities.

The carrier on Tuesday announced a new offering in conjunction with Palo Alto Networks. The solution brings Palo Alto’s SD-WAN and security capabilities and AT&T’s network connectivity into the same platform. As a result, customers can securely modernize their networks through a single managed service provider.

“To drive innovation throughout the hyper-connected enterprise, customers are looking for a simplified solution for network and security,” said Rupesh Chokshi, vice president of AT&T Cybersecurity. “As one of the largest MSSPs, AT&T is collaborating with Palo Alto Networks to offer a comprehensive, managed SASE solution that helps enable new user experiences at the edge.”

AT&T’s Rupesh Chokshi

Partners can sell the offering through the AT&T Alliance Channel.

Kumar Ramachandran, Palo Alto’s senior vice president of products, said an increasing number of businesses are demanding zero-trust architecture to support the work-from-anywhere era.

Palo Alto Networks’ Kumar Ramachandran

“By bringing Palo Alto Networks’ SASE solution together with AT&T Cybersecurity’s managed security services, we are delivering an integrated solution to help organizations achieve optimal access with the highest levels of security,” Ramachandran said.

Benefit

Customers can use AT&T SASE with Palo Alto Networks to optimize their network performance at the edge. Businesses won’t need to backhaul traffic to the data center in order to connect remote users to the network. In addition, customers can access professional services from AT&T Cybersecurity Consulting. Furthermore, AT&T and Palo Alto will build a threat insights application.

Craig Robinson, IDC‘s program director of security services, said AT&T and other managed security service providers will play a key role in helping businesses transition to SASE.

IDC’s Craig Robinson

“Applications drive core business processes today, and ensuring the performance and protection of those applications is critical to a business’ growth and resiliency. This is why approaches like SASE have become appealing, because they help organizations centrally manage access, policy management and network performance in one platform. However, many are still struggling with how to deploy SASE in their hybrid environment — especially as legacy network and security architecture won’t disappear overnight,” Robinson said.

AT&T has already launched a SASE solution. The company in March announced a partnership with Fortinet to launch an offering that combines SD-WAN with secure web gateway, zero-trust access and other security features.

Last year, AT&T expanded its SD-WAN portfolio by partnering with Cisco.

Palo Alto last year acquired the SD-WAN provider CloudGenix and integrated CloudGenix into its Prisma Access SASE solution.