Palo Alto Aperture Moves to Protect Enterprise SaaS Applications

No matter how many times IT departments warn against using consumer SaaS applications such as Dropbox, Box and Google Drive, employees continue to utilize their public cloud-based storage solutions to store enterprise documents, which can cause massive problems related to data loss or system breaches from malicious users.

Until now, there hasn’t been a dedicated solution to help these users protect sensitive information, but Palo Alto Networks (PANW) is looking to corner the market with the launch of Aperture, a security-as-a-service offering specifically designed to protect SaaS applications.

Aperture is an agentless, device-agnostic offering that discovers what cloud services are being used by members of an organization and which devices they are being accessed from, according to Talkin’ Cloud. After diagnosing SaaS applications in use within the network, Aperture automatically issues a control mechanism to dictate who gets access to them. The solution is also integrated with Palo Alto’s WildFire malware prevention solution to identify and stop potential attacks.

“Until now, this combination of visibility, analysis and contextual control of SaaS applications hasn’t existed and it forced many organizations to shoulder the risks associated with sanctioning the use of SaaS applications,” said Lee Klarich, senior vice president, Product Management at Palo Alto Networks, in a statement. “Now, the granular control provided by Aperture, along with malware protection through WildFire, can help organizations enjoy the productivity benefits of sanctioned SaaS applications while reducing the risk of data exposure and cyberthreats compromising their networks.”

In addition to delivering a way for enterprises to protect their SaaS applications, Palo Alto is banking on the solution as a way to help its partner network gain a foothold in the governance security market, according to Talkin’ Cloud. And with a recurring revenue model in place for the solution, the company hopes to attract new partners who want to expand their portfolios.

Both competition within the firewall space and disassociation between those acquiring firewalls and individuals in charge of managing governance solutions are issues Palo Alto will need to overcome to be successful with Aperture. However, the company is confident its new solution will represent an opportunity to consolidate the number of vendors that solution providers and their customers need to address both IT security and governance, according to Talkin’ Cloud.

Aperture is available now as a subscription-based offering in North America through Palo Alto’s channel partner network, and is expected to be available in EMEA and APAC by the first half of 2016.