The News: Cybersecurity vendor Palo Alto Networks is acquiring two companies, Talon Cyber Security and Dig Security, to bring additional defensive tools to bolster cyber barriers for its customers around the world. Talon’s Enterprise Browser product and Dig’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) offering will be brought in to complement existing Palo Alto Networks security tools. Read the full press releases about the Talon Cyber Security and Dig Security acquisitions on the Palo Alto Networks website.

Palo Alto Networks Acquiring Tech Security Firms to Bolster Defenses

Analyst Take: Palo Alto Networks is stepping up its game with its latest two acquisitions of security vendors that will bring additional innovative and powerful components to its own cybersecurity arsenal for its customers. In the cybersecurity market, standing on one’s laurels is never a good idea, while adding new technologies to fight the bad guys is always a smart practice. For Palo Alto Networks, I see both acquisitions as adding value and bringing in unique tools that will be welcomed by customers.

Talon’s Enterprise Browser product will be combined with Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) services, which allow employees and contractors to access business applications from any devices easily and securely, including unmanaged personal mobile devices and managed corporate devices. With Talon Enterprise Browser, enterprises can make it easier to use bring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategies and policies into their operations, according to Palo Alto Networks.

Meanwhile, Dig’s DSPM product focuses on data, allowing organizations to discover, classify, monitor, and protect sensitive data across their cloud data stores, giving Palo Alto Networks’ customers control and visibility of their cloud data wherever it resides.

The terms of the two deals were not disclosed. The proposed acquisitions are expected to close during Palo Alto Networks’ second quarter (Q2) of fiscal 2024, subject to customary closing conditions.

In my view, both acquisitions will be good for Palo Alto Networks customers, giving them deeper protection and tools to better watch over their employee and contractor devices, data, and operations to better protect them from dangerous and constant cyber threats. BYOD has been around since about 2009, and I think it is amazing that enterprises are still working to secure and manage its impacts and capabilities. It just provides graphic evidence of how security threats greatly affect enterprises and users starting at the device level, and that no stone can ever be unturned when it comes to ensuring business IT security even with better built-in security in today’s devices.

Palo Alto Networks and the Talon Deal

Under the acquisition plan, Talon will enable Palo Alto Networks customers to bring its Prisma SASE Zero Trust and cloud-delivered security features and capabilities to unmanaged employee and contractor devices, including both fixed desktop and mobile devices. This approach will give organizations better security control of those devices when they are being used for work where greater security is demanded.

In my view, this capability is a must have for organizations to ensure the highest security for their data, customer relationships, and business processes using personal devices. This need is a no-compromise issue in 2023, and the fact that we are still talking about it shows that there is still work being done to make it safer.

Using Talon unmanaged devices can securely access enterprise apps and be protected from threats from malware to phishing, malicious domains, keylogging, and more. Talon also adds other important capabilities natively in the browser, including controls for downloading files, copying sensitive data, and taking screenshots, as well as providing deep visibility into work-related online activities. Talon uses a single sign-on (SSO) framework that works with all devices and operating systems (Oss). When bringing in security tools and controls with this functionality, these are all words you want to hear.

Palo Alto Networks and the Dig Deal

The Palo Alto Networks’ acquisition of Dig will take a different tack – in this case focusing on integrating Dig’s DSPM tools into the Prisma Cloud platform to aim for near -real-time data protection from code to cloud. That is a big goal, but an incredibly important one, so the impacts here are huge.

Using Dig DSPM, Palo Alto Networks said it will extend code to cloud intelligence insights to cloud data stores and generative AI models used by their customers, giving their security teams broader operational views of applications, data, and cloud infrastructure in one place. This approach will also allow those teams to respond to data exfiltration more rapidly, which is a critical requirement for enterprise IT teams.

Palo Alto Networks Acquisitions Overview

When it comes to IT security, enterprises and organizations can never be too careful. The cybersecurity threats around the world are endless and always escalating, pushing existing protections to their limits. For this reason, vendors such as Palo Alto Networks remain committed to constantly improving, re-engineering, and bolstering defensive tools and strategies to always try to stay ahead of the bad guys.

In my view, the acquisition of Talon Cyber Security and Dig Security bring useful new security capabilities for Palo Alto Networks customers and their employees and contractors. Always driving to improve security is a laudable practice for any security vendor, and I am impressed with these latest improvements and capabilities being added to the Palo Alto Networks product family.

Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.