Palo Alto vendor of choice as Aussie company amps up expansion plans

Australian-based company SunRice has chosen Palo Alto to strengthen defences against cyber threats and consolidate infrastructure to save up to AU$100,000 over the next three years.

According to Palo Alto, SunRice has standardised on the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform to support the company's global expansion, increase security, and consolidate its IT infrastructure.

SunRice is a major international supplier of rice and other food products to geographies such as Papua New Guinea, the Middle East, and the United States. To protect against disruptions to business operations, SunRice needed to secure its dispersed operations against increasingly virulent threats and improve network performance to support growth in staff and expanded use of cloud-based applications.

To leverage the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform, SunRice purchased two Palo Alto Networks PA-3020 next-generation firewalls for the company's new data center in Sydney.

The Palo Alto Networks platform also enabled SunRice to consolidate a number of legacy appliances and replace a subscription security service, moves that the company expects to result in a cost avoidance of AU$100,000 over the next three years, according to the company.

Will Sessions, SunRice infrastructure architect, says, "The Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform has a broad security feature set and enough throughput to handle our rapidly growing network traffic.

"As a result, SunRice has greatly boosted security against CryptoLockers and other cyberthreats, reduced our appliance count significantly, and created the foundation for continued expansion of our global business."

The Palo Alto Networks security platform - which includes Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall technology with Threat Prevention, URL Filtering, and WildFire cloud-based malware analysis and more - provides increased visibility into the IT infrastructure, flexibility in adapting to changing network requirements, and greater ability to provide IT services to SunRice's global operations, the company says.