Blog
Palo Alto Networks
application control

Palo Alto Networks

application control

OMG! Facebook Users are Voyeurs!

The latest Application Usage and Risk Report shows that when at work, Facebook users exhibit passive, voyeuristic usage patterns as opposed to a more active game playing or posting usage pattern. This activity pattern indicates that the “productivity loss associated with games or posting” is somewhat overblown. Inbound and outbo...

Oct 28, 2010

Palo Alto Networks

Company & Culture

Products and Services

Browser-based Filesharing: Next-Generation P2P?

Since we began tracking the use of browser-based file sharing applications in the March 2008, they have evolved to the point where there are now several distinct use cases. As described in the latest Applicatio...

Oct 21, 2010

By Matt Keil

App-ID and the Rule of All

Recently, the discussion surrounding application visibility and control provided by next-generation firewalls has become deafening. Now, every stateful inspection based firewall vendor is calling themselves a next-generation firewall that can identify and control applic...

Sep 21, 2010

By Matt Keil

What's APPening with Google Docs

Gartner’s recent forecast analysis for Software-as-a-Service observes that Web-based office suites such as Google Apps (including Google Docs) will coexist with traditional office suites as business users will find them appropriate for real-time collaboration or as seco...

Sep 10, 2010

By Palo Alto Networks

Putting BitTorrent Under the Spotlight

We have added a new video that introduces the key security concerns swirling around BitTorrent and specifically how to manage the risks that this incredibly popular application brings to your networks. We will cover how BitTorrent has evolved to avoid detection by tradi...

Sep 02, 2010

By Palo Alto Networks

Of Patience and Vigilance...

The 2010 Verizon Data Breach Report was released recently and like previous iterations, it was well worth the time to read it. For those who have not seen it, this report looks analyzes corporate level data breaches to show us what happened, how it happened and makes re...

Aug 12, 2010

By Matt Keil

What’s Old is New…

An article on The Last Watchdog points out that the act if monitoring employee activities was not brought about by increased use of FaceBook or Twitter. It is in fact a time honored practice. (more…)

Jun 30, 2010

By Matt Keil

Tune into Enterprise 2.0 Webcast Featuring Forrester Research

Palo Alto Networks' Application Usage and Risk Report has regularly reported on the facts of Enterprise 2.0 application use in large organizations. In many cases, users employ nea...

Jun 15, 2010

By Palo Alto Networks

Prepare for Soccer Hooliganism 2.0

World cup soccer is upon us and millions of people world wide will be clamoring for the latest updates on their favorite teams. In the US, the games are being streamed live by ESPN3, an easily accessible website that can deliver updates during common work hours. But the...

Jun 11, 2010

By Matt Keil

Blocking is Only One Aspect of Control

One of my colleagues recently observed that 2010 is the year when every firewall vendor jumps on the “application control” bandwagon and says they do what Palo Alto Networks does. Specifically identify and control applications. Firewall vendors are taking the path of le...

Apr 21, 2010

By Matt Keil

The Battle Against Cyber Espionage 2.0

Whereas early social engineering efforts convinced someone to provide a password or other information via a convincing phone call or conversation, today’s social engineering efforts are fare more nefarious, as evidenced in great detail within the recently published repo...

Apr 09, 2010

By Matt Keil

Can Stateful Inspection Evolve?

One of my many roles as a founder and CTO is to meet with customers and talk about their network security issues. These visits are not only informative, they can be humorous as well. For example, a recent visit to a large, fortune 500 company, they told me that one of o...

Jan 05, 2010

By Nir Zuk

A Key Benefit of Next-Generation Firewalls: More Sleep

There’s a great article on SearchEnterpriseWAN about a Palo Alto Networks customer. IDT spoke to SearchEnterpriseWAN about its experiences using next-generation firewalls from Palo Alto Networks, and discussed...

Dec 16, 2009

By Matt Keil

The Danger of Overreacting….

There is a somewhat erroneous assumption that the web provides anonymity – in particular when someone is posting a comment on an article. And then there is the old saying that knowledge is power. The challenge some people face is what to do with it. (more…)

Nov 20, 2009

By Matt Keil

Control Applications, Control Threats.

Over the past month, we've been pulled in by customers to analyze various "weird" behavior on the network. One of these instances happened a few weeks ago. A large Fortune 200 customer was reviewing application usage on the network using the Palo Alto Networks devices a...

Oct 22, 2009

By Alfred Lee

Now More Than Ever.

Now more than ever, business and security teams need to align their business priorities. Case in point, highlighted by two recent articles on social networking use in the business world. The first article, published in eWeek UK, states that most CIOs are blocking (or trying to block) social networki...

Oct 20, 2009

By Matt Keil

Beyond Ports and Protocols

Often we talk about how destination port is not an accurate classification for controlling network traffic. At this point, hopefully that is obvious. Everyone knows that just about anything can get out of an enterprise network via port 80 or 443. Lately I have had sever...

Sep 19, 2009

By Mike Jacobsen

More Control for Facebook

Sep 16, 2009

By Palo Alto Networks

Balancing the Risks and Benefits of Evasive Applications

We often use the term evasive as a means of describing how an application can bypass a traditional stateful inspection firewall. “Applications use tactics such as port hopping, non-standard ports, SSL encryptio...

Sep 08, 2009

By Matt Keil

Blocking Social Networking is an Exercise in Futility

This Mashable news article talks about how companies are blocking social networking sites. I would call this an exercise in futility. I say this because users will find a way. Social networking, along with IM,...

Aug 21, 2009

By Matt Keil

Applipedia on the iPhone

As some of you may have heard, Palo Alto Networks dropped an iPhone app late last week. We built it primarily so that our customers and partners could have an in-pocket version of our Applipedia, but there are a couple fun features in there too (e.g., access to this bl...

Aug 19, 2009

By Palo Alto Networks

Load more blogs

Load more blogs