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Palo Alto Networks has announced PAN-OS 12.1 Orion, a major update designed to enhance network security with advanced AI capabilities and prepare enterprises for the future quantum computing era. Here are the key highlights:
- Precision AI Expansion: PAN-OS 12.1 Orion expands the use of Palo Alto Networks’ proprietary Precision AI, which leverages machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI to provide real-time threat detection, proactive risk mitigation, and automate defenses across the enterprise network.
- Quantum Readiness: Recognizing the impending threat from quantum computing to traditional encryption, PAN-OS 12.1 offers a comprehensive Quantum Readiness assessment that inventories cryptography usage across the enterprise. It introduces the industry’s first cipher translation to immediately upgrade legacy applications to quantum-safe cryptography and supports new quantum-optimized next-generation firewalls for decrypting and inspecting post-quantum cryptography at scale.
- Multicloud and AI Security Fabric: The update simplifies security across multicloud and AI environments by automatically discovering cloud and AI assets, assessing risks, deploying protection, and applying microperimeters to contain lateral threats. This unified approach aims to reduce operational complexity and improve visibility and control in dynamic environments.
Advanced New Features:
- Advanced DNS Security Resolver providing stronger DNS threat detection integrated with centralized cloud management.
- Device Security capabilities for comprehensive visibility and risk-based management of managed, unmanaged, and IoT devices using AI to reduce alert fatigue.
- AI-driven threat detection enhancements along the entire attack lifecycle, including DNS tunneling and encrypted command-and-control prevention.
- Strata Cloud Manager: This AI-powered management console offers unified visibility and control, facilitates seamless migration from Panorama, strengthens zero trust posture, and provides proactive AI-driven health monitoring and compliance tracking.
- New Hardware Platforms: Introduction of 14 new fifth-generation Next-Generation Firewalls optimized for data centers, enterprise branches, and industrial environments with enhanced performance, quantum-optimized processing, and even ruggedized 5G connectivity.
PAN-OS 12.1 Orion represents a significant leap toward an AI-driven, quantum-ready network security architecture that empowers organizations to confidently secure multicloud and AI-driven digital transformation initiatives with improved automation, visibility, and threat resilience.
