The Palo Alto Networks Application and Threat Research team is a proven supplier of cutting edge research on emerging threats and the rapidly evolving application landscape. Our research brings immediate benefits to both our customers and the industry as a whole.
Unmatched Application Expertise
The research team continually updates App-ID, a patent-pending traffic classification technology, with new and emerging applications at the average rate of four per week. The application identity is only a small portion of what the research team delivers. Other key application research that the team provides customers includes:
- An application description
- The ports it uses
- How it is categorized
- What the behavioral characteristics are
- The underlying technology in use
The rich set of application data resides in Applipedia, the industry’s first application specific database. Customers and industry professionals alike can access Applipedia to learn more about the applications traversing their network.
Cutting Edge Threat Research
Our research is providing the best network threat protection coverage for customers around the world. Palo Alto Networks is an inaugural member of the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP), which provides us with priority access to Microsoft Corp.’s monthly security update release. By receiving vulnerability information earlier, Palo Alto Networks can provide customers with timely updates to the threat prevention engine. Registered customers can access the Threat Vault to research and stay up-to-date on the latest threats. The entire threat investigation team is active in the threat prevention community and are credited with the discovery of several critical severity threats highlighted below:
- August 2009 - Remote Code Execution vulnerability
- July 2009 - DirectX vulnerability
- June 2009 - WebDav vulnerability
- December 2008 - MS Word vulnerability
- August 2008 - Critical IE and System Event vulnerability
Active participation in defending customer networks from vulnerabilities is only part of the threat team’s responsibilities. They are also actively engaged in the research and development of protection against all other forms of malware. Palo Alto Networks has established relationships with several third party research organizations around the world that provide tens of thousands of live malware samples on a daily basis. The threat team uses these samples to create the most up to date malware signatures.
