Application Visibility and Control
Application Visibility and Application Control
Your network has run amok with applications you cannot see or control. Hundreds of applications are currently traversing your network and your firewall cannot see them.

Application Visibility

Application visibility is critical to understanding network risks and to achieving application control. Application visibility, from Palo Alto Network’s next-generation firewalls gives customers the ability to see streaming audio and video, file sharing, collaboration, and social networks; just a few types of applications that are capable of hopping from port to port, using encryption and non-standard ports all as a means of evading traditional firewalls. The business value these applications provide varies widely, but without application visibility and control, all of them introduce a range of risks including loss of productivity, compliance issues, threat propagation and data leakage. 

Application Control

Application control is as critical as identifying the applications. Attempts at regaining application control by bolstering the port-based firewall with intrusion prevention systems (IPS), URL filtering or proxies have been exercises in futility. None of these offerings are capable of seeing all the traffic on the network nor are they designed to act as the most strategic security element on the network – the firewall. Palo Alto Networks’ is restoring the firewalls’ strategic importance as the center of the security infrastructure with a family of next-generation firewalls that identify and control applications, users and content. Visibility and application control over the network is enabled by three unique technologies used in Palo Alto Networks’ next-generation firewall: App-ID, User-ID and Content-ID.

Customers around the world are regaining visibility and application control by deploying the Palo Alto Network’s next-generation firewalls in a wide range of network locations that include the perimeter, the DMZ, internally for network segmentation and in the datacenter. Follow the links below to learn more about how Palo Alto Networks can solve the kind of problems that the lack of visibility and application control can introduce.

  • P2P Control: Learn how you can stop the use of P2P file sharing applications.
  • Securely Enabling SharePoint:

    See how you can securely enable the use of Microsoft SharePoint

  • Traffic Shaping and QoS for Applications:  Learn how to extend application usage policies to include traffic shaping based on a wide range of criteria including applications and users.
  • URL Filtering:  Learn why application control and URL filtering are the perfect mix for positively control model security policies.
  • Simplify PCI Compliance: Learn how control over applications, users and content, combined with network segmentation, can reduce the complexity of PCI compliance.