Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE is built with a cloud-native architecture engineered to scale effortlessly, delivering best-in-class security and unparalleled service uptime. At its core lies a proprietary security engine—the dedicated data plane—operated exclusively for each tenant. This isolation ensures that every customer benefits from a tailor-made security environment with dedicated resources, directly addressing the need for personalized, high-performance security experiences that businesses demand.

The availability of a dedicated data plane provides businesses with another way to address their user productivity and business continuity risks due to the mass adoption of AI, accelerated shift to cloud, remote work and the ever-growing sophistication of cyberthreats.

Organizations need security solutions that are not only robust but also agile, precisely tailored, and capable of delivering predictable performance in the face of dynamic demands. The "noisy neighbor" problem, the risk of data exposure during support, and the constant pressure to maintain a strong public reputation are just a few of the critical business problems enterprises face daily.

The dedicated data plane available with Prisma SASE helps address these issues. It works with the comprehensive Prisma SASE ecosystem of microservices, robust network load balancers and other cutting-edge cloud-native assets sourced from the most resilient and high-performing public cloud providers, including Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), and Amazon Web Services (AWS). These strategic partnerships and integrations guarantee optimal performance and availability, which are foundational for business continuity and user productivity.

Enhancing Cloud-Delivered Security with a Dedicated Data Plane

Businesses need robust and agile security solutions precisely tailored for their unique business requirements and computing environment. Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE sets itself apart by architecting an isolated and dedicated data plane for every tenant—a design that ensures each customer receives a personalized, high-performance security experience. This directly translates into business benefits such as minimized downtime, consistent application performance and a highly resilient security posture, all critical for maintaining business continuity and productivity, ultimately impacting the bottom line.

What Is a Dedicated Data Plane?

By design, Prisma SASE assigns a dedicated data plane to each tenant. This means that for every customer, this dedicated instance is isolated, performing security processing and tasked solely with inspecting that tenant’s user traffic using exclusive compute resources.

In practical terms, an organization’s traffic remains entirely separate from that of other organizations. There’s no intermingling, which ensures that operations, security and performance are optimized on your terms. This isolation is a game-changer for businesses because it shields critical applications and sensitive data from the performance fluctuations and security risks associated with shared cloud environments.

Additionally, each tenant’s data plane comes with its own provisioned capacity and any compute and network resource auto scaling happens independently. This architectural granularity means that growth or sudden changes in one tenant’s traffic won’t impact another’s operational stability. For businesses, this translates to predictable costs, reliable performance during peak times, and the peace of mind that your security infrastructure scales precisely with your unique needs without compromising the experience of others.

Figure 1: Dedicated data planes for each tenant.

Why a Dedicated Data Plane Makes a Difference

The design of a dedicated data plane unlocks several key benefits that drive enhanced performance and security, directly addressing critical business pain points.

• Dedicated Capacity per Tenant: With a dedicated data plane, each tenant receives a defined amount of compute and network resources. This tailored capacity ensures consistent, predictable and scalable security processing to support dynamic workloads and fluctuating demand. For businesses, this means guaranteeing service level agreements (SLAs), maintaining application responsiveness, and ultimately, ensuring uninterrupted business operations even during traffic spikes.
• Elimination of the “Noisy Neighbor” Problem: In shared infrastructure environments, one tenant’s traffic burst or network anomaly can inadvertently impact others—a phenomenon known as the “noisy neighbor” problem. Prisma SASE isolated data planes prevent this risk entirely, ensuring that your performance remains unaffected by activities in adjacent environments. This directly solves the business problem of unpredictable performance, allowing your employees to remain productive and your customers to experience consistent service, free from disruptions caused by other tenants.
• Isolated Security Incident Response: Security incident response requires speed and specificity. An isolated data plane confines, analyzes and mitigates security events within your traffic without interference from other tenants. This containment streamlines incident response and minimizes potential fallout across broader networks. For businesses, this translates to faster recovery times, reduced financial impact from breaches and improved compliance with regulatory requirements by ensuring incident scope is limited and manageable.
• Dedicated Public Egress IP Addresses: A dedicated dataplane offers a dedicated public egress IP, a significant advantage over shared IP reputation systems. By leveraging dedicated egress IP addresses, enterprises can strengthen their security posture by implementing IP allowlists to control access to public SaaS platforms and external third-party or partner applications. Furthermore, with your own egress IP, the impacts of other tenants’ behavior on your public reputation are mitigated, ensuring better control over external interactions and reputation management. This is crucial for businesses that rely on strong online reputations, ensuring their outbound communications, like emails or web requests, are not blocked or flagged due to the actions of unrelated entities. It safeguards your brand's integrity and ensures smooth business interactions.
• Flexibility in Service Upgrades: Your infrastructure needs to evolve as security threats evolve. The dedicated data plane approach provides unmatched flexibility in rolling out upgrades or modifications. Upgrades can be managed on a tenant-by-tenant basis, reducing the risk of downtime and ensuring that new features or security patches are applied seamlessly without cross-tenant disruptions. From a business perspective, this means minimizing operational risk, ensuring continuous security posture improvements, and avoiding forced downtime that could disrupt critical business processes.
• Safeguarding Customer Data Throughout Product Support: The Prisma SASE dedicated data plane provides a transformative level of protection when executing Prisma SASE product upgrades or maintenance. Because each tenant's environment remains completely isolated, any troubleshooting or maintenance work is strictly confined to your unique tenant space—with no risk that support tasks for another tenant might inadvertently access or expose your data. This maintains data privacy and compliance, providing assurance that your sensitive information remains secure even during necessary support interventions.

A Blueprint for Modern, Cloud-Delivered Security

Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE epitomizes modern cloud-delivered security by combining isolation and dedicated resources with intelligent automation and scalability. Organizations can confidently scale their security posture within their unique tenant and dedicated data plane, knowing their data and traffic are safe from cross-tenant interference. This architectural choice fosters an environment where enhanced security, predictable performance and agile adjustments are not just aspirational but guaranteed by design. Businesses can achieve operational resilience, reducing security-related risks, and gain the agility to effectively respond to market changes and the evolving threat landscape.

Optimize Your Operational Resilience with Prisma SASE

Prisma SASE’s dedicated data plane provides organizations with a secure, isolated and scalable way to navigate the complexities of digital transformation and the evolving nature of cyberthreats. Learn more about how Prisma SASE and its dedicated data plane can provide the tailored performance and network performance your business demands.