Palo Alto Networks Launches New Cloud Location in South Africa

South Africa is currently undergoing a significant digital transformation. National initiatives are focused on modernizing public services by fostering a dynamic digital economy and integrating advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence and cloud computing. This rapid technological evolution, however, also introduces an increasingly complex threat landscape. The increase of cyberattacks, particularly ransomware and phishing campaigns across the African continent, underscores the critical requirement for robust, locally hosted cybersecurity solutions.

Strategic Imperatives for South Africa's Digital Landscape

South Africa’s vibrant and expanding digital ecosystem presents both considerable opportunities and distinct challenges. As a key participant in the African digital landscape, the country exhibits a growing awareness of cybersecurity threats and resilience.

Palo Alto Networks is pleased to announce a strategic investment designed to enhance South Africa’s cyber resilience: the establishment of our new cloud location within the region. This demonstrates our commitment to providing organizations across South Africa with leading edge, AI-powered cybersecurity platforms. This initiative optimizes operational efficiency and facilitates the secure adoption of advanced digital transformation projects while supporting its customer’s data residency needs.

Comprehensive Portfolio of Cloud-Delivered Security Platforms

The new cloud location in South Africa will host the comprehensive Palo Alto Networks product portfolio, each engineered to deliver robust protection across the network, cloud and security operations. The new cloud location will give organizations in South Africa domestic, high-performance access:

• Cortex XSIAM^® – Advancing Security Operations Automation
  The AI-driven security operations platform for the modern SOC harnesses the power of AI to simplify security operations by stopping threats at scale and accelerating incident remediation. With Cortex XSIAM hosted locally, South African organizations will benefit from locally-delivered, real-time threat detection and automated response capabilities.
• Prisma^® SASE – The Industry’s Most Complete Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
  The local deployment of Prisma Access in South Africa results in reduced latency for users accessing critical applications, providing an improved user experience and optimized security performance. It provides advanced threat prevention, URL filtering and robust protection against command and control (C2) callback and DNS tunneling attacks.
• Advanced WildFire^® – Real Time Prevention of Evasive Malware
  Customers will be able to fully utilize a cloud-based threat analysis and prevention engine, while files submitted for analysis stay in the chosen region, to address data location concerns. While submissions stay in the region, customers still benefit from the global security intelligence and gain real-time, inline prevention of highly evasive threats that are known or unknown. This translates to faster signature delivery, superior detection efficacy and a near-zero false positive rate.
• Advanced DNS Security – Mitigating DNS-Layer Threats
  South African organizations can fortify their businesses with cutting-edge DNS security that effectively stops both known and unknown DNS threats in real time with reduced latency. It provides comprehensive visibility into DNS traffic, identifies potential blind spots and proactively blocks access to misconfigured or malicious domains.

• Strata Cloud Manager – First AI-Powered, Unified Solution for Network Security Management & Operations
  Strata Cloud Manager revolutionizes network security by unifying the management of all your security products into a single interface. This comprehensive solution empowers local security teams to tackle modern challenges, such as visibility, security and operational efficiency, with the support of advanced AI capabilities.
• Strata Logging Service – Cloud-based, Centralized Log Storage and Aggregation
  Customers can benefit from local log storage and aggregation for hardware and software NFGW, Prisma Access, as well as for cloud-delivered services, such as Cortex XDR^®.

Commitment to South Africa's Digital Future

This new cloud location in South Africa signifies the long-term commitment of Palo Alto Networks to the region's digital transformation journey and its cybersecurity resilience. By bringing our advanced, AI-powered platforms closer to our customers, we are helping them to achieve data residency and national data sovereignty needs, enhance performance, strengthen security posture, simplify operations and accelerate their digital transformation.

As South Africa continues its trajectory toward a more digitally interconnected and secure future, Palo Alto Networks stands as a trusted partner, empowering organizations to innovate and thrive securely within an ever-evolving threat landscape. Our new cloud location in South Africa is reinforcing our ongoing promise to deliver the best-in-class cybersecurity platforms that the country requires.

Please visit the regional cloud locations of Palo Alto Networks for more information.