Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Palo Alto Networks

The pace of digital change is not slowing.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cloud computing, securing applications from inception to deployment has become increasingly complex. Ricardo Gabbiati, Chief Technology Officer for Australia and New Zealand at Palo Alto Networks, spoke this week about how his company is addressing these challenges through innovation and a platform-based approach to cloud security.

"Palo Alto Networks continually delivers innovation to enable secure digital transformation," Gabbiati began. He explained the company's mission to keep pace with an ever-changing environment by focusing on world-class threat intelligence and expert services, particularly as organisations pivot towards cloud-based infrastructure.

At the heart of the discussion was Prisma Cloud, Palo Alto Networks' flagship cloud security solution. "Prisma Cloud is what we would call a cloud native application protection platform," said Gabbiati. Known by the acronym CNAPP, it is designed to protect applications throughout their entire lifecycle - from initial development to deployment and beyond.

Gabbiati highlighted that building modern applications today involves multiple steps, ranging from authenticating developers in the cloud to compiling code, creating images and containers, and finally launching the application itself. "Each one of these steps is actually an opportunity for a vulnerability or an attack to happen," he warned. "We've built an entire ecosystem to tackle all those elements at the same time and protect the application lifecycle development."

Expanding on this, Gabbiati pointed out that as cloud adoption has soared, so too has the attack surface for businesses. "Even just in Australia over the last 12 months, 89 percent of respondents to a recent survey said they have increased their cloud usage by over 30 percent on a yearly spend," he said. "That means that their attack surface… is mostly exposed within the cloud."

Sophistication of Threats

What worries Gabbiati most is the increasing sophistication of cyber attackers who adapt rapidly to the way technology evolves. "Attackers have been very smart in adapting their techniques to the way we are now building our technology elements such as applications in the cloud," he stated. Examples cited included rogue developers infiltrating the application lifecycle and growing threats related to the software supply chain, with attackers targeting vulnerable segments of third-party code.

He also noted that most modern applications are built using open source code, which may have been validated by individuals anywhere in the world. "Eventually it becomes vulnerable and with that the entire application suite that we have built becomes vulnerable with it," Gabbiati added.

Lessons from the Past

Reflecting on previous security architectures, Gabbiati said, "Applications and architectures were quite monolithic and static… we used to host them in our own data centres, we had plenty of time to build the servers and harden those servers." In that environment, teams could afford to make mistakes and remediate them before attackers could strike.

However, that luxury is gone in the cloud era. "In cloud, this is not possible anymore. Applications are built and made available in a matter of minutes nowadays, so every single mistake or misconfiguration... becomes expanded or exposed to tenfold of possible attackers at the same time," he said.

To keep up, Gabbiati advocates for a "shift left" in security, meaning security must be integrated during development, not retroactively. "No modern application can be secured once it's been completed in its development, but it has to be secured while it's getting built," he explained.

Reducing Complexity

The attempt to solve cybersecurity challenges has led to proliferation of tools, each designed to address specific issues in areas such as the network, endpoints or the cloud itself. This, Gabbiati said, has actually made things more difficult for security teams to manage. "Unfortunately, complexity in tools introduces more risk," he noted. "Although we feel like we have a lot of tools that we can use to secure our applications, the more tools we have the more we introduce possible gaps in between them."

According to Gabbiati, the solution lies in consolidation. "A great strategy is actually the one of consolidation and that is where a platform like Prisma Cloud... tries to bring it all together," he said. This approach enables issues detected early in the lifecycle to be connected through to deployment, creating a seamless and more effective security operation.

Shifting Culture and Teamwork

Alongside technical changes, Gabbiati stressed the need for cultural transformation within organisations. "If we're merging tools, we should probably try and merge teams as well," he advised. The days of developers and security teams operating in silos must end, he believes, if organisations are to avoid fragmentation that leads to vulnerabilities.

Survey results reinforce this trend, with "over 87 percent of Australian businesses now embedded security professionals within the development team," Gabbiati revealed. He said this shift has been crucial to encourage "a culture of doing security while we are building application at the same time".

A Vision for the Future

For those seeking further guidance, Gabbiati pointed to the recent Code to Cloud Summit, which Palo Alto Networks hosted to provide on-demand content and deep dive sessions for businesses wanting to improve their approach to cloud security. "We have all this content on demand, from our co-founder describing the modern challenges to application development and even deep diving sessions to figure out how Prisma Cloud operates," he said.

Gabbiati closed by expressing optimism about collaboration and shared learning. "Thank you very much – it's been a pleasure," he said.