Google Cloud Partners with McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, Qualys for Advanced Security

Google Cloud on Monday unveiled more than a dozen new solutions and security partner integrations.

This includes a new solution with McAfee, Palo Alto and Qualys that’s designed to help customers manage the deployment of agent-based endpoint security and vulnerability management solutions.

Vineet Bhan, Google Cloud’s head of security partnerships, tells Channel Partners the new solutions and integrations will benefit MSSPs and other cybersecurity providers in the channel in many ways.

Google Cloud’s Vineet Bhan

“These deeper integrations simplify how the security partner products are deployed and managed,” he said. “For example, McAfee’s endpoint security solution can now be deployed automatically for every virtual machine (VM) that is spun up as a policy. Similar capabilities are also available with Palo Alto Networks and Qualys.”

Google Cloud also is increasing its strategic partnership with Palo Alto to expand its use of services on Google Cloud, and to jointly develop new solutions for Anthos and threat detection.

In addition, a new strategic partnership with McAfee will integrate its Mvision cloud solution for data security, threat prevention, governance and compliance capabilities for container workloads with Google Cloud, as well as its endpoint security solution for Linux-and Windows-based workloads.

And Exabeam will expand its SaaS cloud security management platform on Google Cloud to help customers bring cloud to their existing security information and event management (SIEM) platform.

Integration of partner solutions with Google Cloud Security Command Center helps simplify monitoring of critical events in customer’s Google Cloud platform (GCP) deployments, Bhan said.

“We’re also announcing Fortinet‘s FortiCWP service has integrated with Google Cloud Security Command Center,” he said. “Additionally, MSSPs often manage endpoint (EDR) security for clients, and the ability to retain much more endpoint data for analysis … enables new add-on services that provide benefits for customers as well as new revenue for the channel.”

These new solutions and integrations will make it easier to deploy and monitor security products on GCP, Bhan said.

“It’s important to develop and invest in a strong partner ecosystem to address customers’ needs and provide flexible defense-in-depth implementations,” he said. “We know that many of our customers have invested significantly in dedicated tools and strategic relationships with security vendors. We want to meet customers where they are on their security journey, allowing them to preserve investments as well as benefit from functionality not available on other clouds.”

Increasingly, customers are choosing to move critical workloads and applications to the cloud because of the “strong security protections” it can provide,” said Anand Ramanathan, McAfee’s vice president of product and marketing.

“As more of these enterprises choose to leverage Google Cloud’s hyperscale capabilities, we’re excited to integrate our core capabilities in VM and container security to ensure Google Cloud customers can benefit from the highest levels of data protection and threat prevention,” he said.

“We are excited to partner with Google Cloud to help customers secure their cloud journey,” said Rahul Sood, Palo Alto‘s senior vice president of Prisma Cloud. “By partnering with Google Cloud to deliver a jointly developed security framework for multicloud environments and the new integration for threat intelligence, we will simplify how customers secure their cloud-native environments, whether they are single or multicloud. Our partnership on Prisma Access allows us to deliver secure access for customers to their cloud applications from more locations. Through our partnership on Cortex, we bring enterprise scale analytics for prevention detection and threat response on integrated endpoint, firewall and cloud data on our Cortex platform.”