On Thursday March 19, 2026, SecureIQLab released its 2026 Advanced Cloud Firewall (ACFW) v2.0 CyberRisk Comparative Report, providing CISOs with an objective, independent third-party validation of how 11 leading security vendors protect enterprise cloud workloads. As organizations accelerate ‘lift-and-shift’ migrations and expand cloud-native footprints, they face a widening gap between operational speed and actual threat protection. To address this strategic risk, SecureIQLab executed approximately 4,500 validated attacks against virtual firewall appliances in a standardized AWS environment to measure real-world security efficacy and administrative burden. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall emerged as the top overall performer, achieving a 99.07% security efficacy score while maintaining the high operational efficiency required to support business transformation at scale.
Palo Alto Networks has a long-standing commitment to independent third-party testing as a cornerstone of transparency and product validation. We actively engage in rigorous public evaluations to ensure our security capabilities are measured against real-world threat scenarios using standardized, industry-recognized methodologies.
These independent assessments provide customers with objective, vendor-neutral insights into security effectiveness - helping organizations make confident investment decisions backed by proven outcomes. By consistently participating in these evaluations, Palo Alto Networks reinforces its commitment to delivering security platforms that are not only innovative, but independently validated at scale.
Achieve Industry-Leading Security Efficacy to Lower Cyber Risk
Many organizations assume that moving to the cloud inherently simplifies security, but the ‘lift-and-shift’ model often carries legacy vulnerabilities into modern environments. When these applications are exposed to the internet, they become targets for sophisticated attacks that traditional cloud security tools may miss. This creates significant strategic challenges for the CISO, who must defend a fragmented architecture against an ever-evolving threat landscape.
The 2026 SecureIQLab report highlights significant variances in how different cloud firewalls address this risk. While the group average for security efficacy sits at 64.55%, VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall significantly outperforms the market, attaining 99.07% - a nearly 20 percentage point efficacy lead over the next closest “Leader” competitor, who scored 79.52%. By closing this protection gap, organizations ensure digital transformation remains secure without leaving doors open for attackers to exploit migrated workloads.
- Stop Modern Attacks: Achieved a leading 97.22% score protecting against six critical threat categories: Application-based Threats, Vulnerability-based Attacks, Malware and Botnets, Browser-based Threats, Data Loss and Leakage, and Container Security.
- Control Traffic Granularity: Delivered a perfect 100% policy enforcement score to prevent unauthorized access to cloud resources.
- Maintain Business Continuity: Avoided 100% of false positives, ensuring that security measures never interrupt legitimate revenue-generating traffic.
Defeat Sophisticated Evasion Techniques with Total Visibility
Modern attackers have moved beyond basic intrusion methods, increasingly utilizing sophisticated evasion techniques like protocol tunneling and fragmented payloads to bypass standard security filters. In a cloud environment, these stealthy methods allow malicious activity to blend in with normal-looking traffic. For many firewalls, this level of complexity creates a visibility gap; the 2026 SecureIQLab report found that some vendors detected as little as 8.9% of these advanced threats.
VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall addresses this visibility gap by providing the deep traffic inspection and behavioral analysis necessary to uncover malicious activity. In SecureIQLab’s rigorous evaluation, VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall achieved a perfect 100% score against Advanced Evasion Techniques, standing alone as the only vendor to block every single attempt to disguise malicious activity. This level of technical precision is a business imperative for any organization handling sensitive data in the cloud.
Enhance Operational Efficiency to Accelerate Business Innovation
Security teams are frequently overwhelmed by the complexity of managing disparate cloud environments, often leading to configuration errors and delayed deployments. If a security solution is too difficult to manage, it becomes a bottleneck for the development teams trying to ship new features. Bridging this gap requires a solution that ensures operational excellence without sacrificing the actual threat protection required by enterprises.
VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall addresses this by delivering a 97% operational efficiency score, providing the foundation for a manageable and scalable security posture. Streamlining policy configurations and incident response enables organizations to move at the speed of the cloud. This operational excellence ensures that your security infrastructure supports, rather than hinders, your broader business innovation goals.
- Trusted Validated Methodology: This evaluation was conducted as a public test in accordance with the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) Fundamental Principles of Testing under Test ID AMTSO-LS1-TP158.
- Reduce Total Risk: SecureIQLab’s CyberRisk Ripple evaluates vendors across two key dimensions - Security Efficacy and Operational Efficiency - to determine overall effectiveness and usability. Based on this comprehensive assessment, Palo Alto Networks is ranked in the "Leader" segment of the CyberRisk Ripple for the most balanced combination of efficacy and ease-of-use.
- Optimize Cloud Spend: Certified performance badges prove the VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall handles high-throughput traffic efficiently, maximizing cloud resource ROI.
Maintain Continuous Compliance through Validated Governance
For the modern CISO, compliance is not a one and done checklist; it is a continuous requirement that must be woven into every cloud deployment. Ensuring that firewalls are configured correctly from day one is critical to preventing the accidental exposure of sensitive data. However, many vendors fail to implement "Secure by Default" settings, leaving it up to the customer to harden the system - a process that is prone to human error.
Palo Alto Networks takes ownership of these outcomes by embedding security directly into the development and deployment lifecycle. With a 98.4% compliance score and a perfect 100% "Secure by Default" rating, VM-Series Next-Gen Virtual Firewall provides the governance needed to satisfy both internal auditors and external regulators. This evidence-based approach gives your board the confidence that your organization's cloud strategy is built on a foundation of radical transparency and accountability.
Benchmark Cloud Security Efficacy Against Modern Threats
Building resilient cloud security starts by identifying the distance between current defenses and the 99% efficacy standard established in the 2026 SecureIQLab report. While cloud-native controls offer a baseline of protection, sophisticated evasion techniques and ‘lift-and-shift’ vulnerabilities often leave critical workloads more exposed than organizations realize. These unseen gaps can create potential pathways for attackers to maintain persistence or exfiltrate sensitive data. Gaining validated visibility into these hidden attack paths empowers teams to strengthen proactive resilience and reduce reactive crisis management. Independent validation ensures that you are investing in a platform with proven, real-world protection - providing the evidence needed to back your security strategy.
Download the 2026 SecureIQLab Advanced Cloud Firewall Comparative Report to see the full technical breakdown of how the market’s leading solutions performed under real-world stress. To apply these findings to your own infrastructure, sign up for a Cloud Network & AI Risk Assessment (CLARA) to benchmark how well your current native CSP firewalls are protecting you. CLARA maps your cloud network risk posture and provides the actionable intelligence needed to eliminate evasion blind spots and secure your AI and multicloud future. By identifying these gaps today, you can ensure your organization remains agile and secure as you scale into the next generation of cloud innovation.