November 18, 2022, 10:19 AM EST

Palo Alto Networks says its planned acquisition of Cider Security will support Prisma Cloud’s platform approach to ‘securing the entire application security life cycle from code to cloud.’

Shares of Palo Alto Networks jumped nearly 10 percent in after-hours trading after the cybersecurity giant reported new quarterly numbers that exceeded analysts’ already high expectations and after disclosing it planned to acquire application security startup Cider Security.

Santa Clara, Calif-based Palo Alto Networks reported Thursday that its fiscal first-quarter revenue increased 25 percent to $1.6 billion compared with the same period last year. The company’s total billings increased 27 percent to $1.7 billion compared with the same period last year.

GAAP net income for the fiscal first quarter 2023 was $20 million compared with a loss of $103 million in the same period last fiscal year. Those and other numbers exceeded most analysts’ quarterly targets.

[RELATED: Apiiro Raises $100M After Palo Alto Networks Reportedly Ends Takeover Talks]

Palo Alto Networks shares increased 9.5 percent to about $171 in after-hours trading.

Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, said on the company’s earnings call Thursday that customers continued to increase their commitment to the company’s security offerings during the quarter, even though it did see some “customer behavior” changes due to uncertain economic times.

“We do see some marginal signs of impact,” he said. “Cybersecurity deals are getting more scrutiny, suggesting deeper [and] longer reviews of transformational projects. … While some deals have been sized down or broken into phases, we are experiencing few deal cancellations.”

Cybersecurity spending remains “resilient,” Arora said, and he reiterated his previous projection that industry growth moving forward will be in the 8 percent to 10 percent range.

As for the planned acquisition of Tel Aviv, Israel-based Cider Security, Palo Alto Networks said in a press release late Thursday that the price will be “approximately $195 million in cash,” excluding the value of replacement equity awards that are “subject to adjustment.” The deal is expected to close by Jan. 31, 2023.

According to Palo Alto Networks, the acquisition will support the company’s Prisma Cloud platform approach to “securing the entire application security life cycle from code to cloud.”

Lee Klarich, chief product officer at Palo Alto Networks, said in the release that Cider Security’s technology was first-rate.

“Any organization using public cloud has an application infrastructure with hundreds of tools and applications that can access their code and yet they have limited visibility to their configuration or if they are secured,” said Klarich.

“Cider has made it possible to connect into infrastructure, analyze the tools and identify the risks, as well as how to remediate them. We are acquiring Cider for their innovation that will help enable Prisma Cloud to provide this capability that anyone doing cloud operations has to have.”

Guy Flechter, CEO of 100-employee Cider Security, said in a release that the company’s platform technology allows software “engineering to continue to move fast, without making compromises on security.”

“It’s only fitting that we join Palo Alto Networks, a company built upon landmark cybersecurity ‘firsts,’” he said. “There couldn’t be a better fit for Cider. … By scanning and securing the CI/CD pipeline, we can help identify where there may be vulnerabilities in your code. Prisma Cloud will now be the ultimate solution for code-to-cloud security.”

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — As healthcare providers use digital devices such as diagnostic and monitoring systems, ambulance equipment, and surgical robots to Excellerate patient care, the security of those devices is as important as their primary function. Today, Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) announced Medical IoT Security — the most comprehensive Zero Trust security solution for medical devices — enabling healthcare organizations to deploy and manage new connected technologies quickly and securely. Zero Trust is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust by continuously verifying every user and device.

"The proliferation of connected medical devices in the healthcare industry brings a wealth of benefits, but these devices are often not well secured. For example, according to Unit 42, an alarming 75% of smart infusion pumps examined on the networks of hospitals and healthcare organizations had known security gaps," said Anand Oswal, senior vice president of products, network security at Palo Alto Networks. "This makes security devices an attractive target for cyberattackers, potentially exposing patient data and ultimately putting patients at risk."

While a Zero Trust approach is critical to help protect medical devices against today's innovative cyberthreats, it can be hard to implement in practice. Through automated device discovery, contextual segmentation, least privilege policy recommendations and one-click enforcement of policies, Palo Alto Networks Medical IoT Security delivers a Zero Trust approach in a seamless, simplified manner. Medical IoT Security also provides best-in-class threat protection through seamless integration with Palo Alto Networks cloud-delivered security services, such as Advanced Threat Prevention and Advanced URL Filtering.

The new Palo Alto Networks Medical IoT Security uses machine learning (ML) to enable healthcare organizations to:

• Create device rules with automated security responses: Easily create rules that monitor devices for behavioral anomalies and automatically trigger appropriate responses. For example, if a medical device that typically only sends small amounts of data unexpectedly begins to use a lot of bandwidth, the device can be cut off from the internet and security teams can be alerted.
• Automate Zero Trust policy recommendations and enforcement: Enforce recommended least-privileged access policies for medical devices with one click using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls or supported network enforcement technologies. This eliminates error-prone and time-consuming manual policy creation and scales easily across a set of devices with the same profile.
• Understand device vulnerabilities and risk posture: Access each medical device's Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and map them to Common Vulnerability Exposures (CVEs). This mapping helps identify the software libraries used on medical devices and any associated vulnerabilities. Get immediate insights into the risk posture of each device, including end-of-life status, recall notification, default password alert and unauthorized external website communication.
• Improve compliance: Easily understand medical device vulnerabilities, patch status and security settings, and then get recommendations to bring devices into compliance with rules and guidelines, such as the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and similar laws and regulations.
• Verify network segmentation: Visualize the entire map of connected devices and ensure each device is placed in its designated network segment. Proper network segmentation can ensure a device only communicates with authorized systems.
• Simplify operations: Two distinct dashboards allow IT and biomedical engineering teams to each see the information critical to their roles. Integration with existing healthcare information management systems, like AIMS and Epic Systems, helps automate workflows.

Healthcare organizations are using Palo Alto Networks products to secure the devices that deliver cutting-edge care to millions of patients all over the world.

"Establishing and maintaining acute situational awareness of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) environment is paramount to establishing an effective enterprise cybersecurity program. The ability to accurately detect, identify and respond to cyber threats is critical to ensuring minimal operational impact to clinical operations during a cyber event," said Tony Lakin, CISO, Moffitt Cancer Center. "Palo Alto Networks IoT capability seamlessly integrates with our continuous monitoring processes and threat-hunting operations. The platform consistently provides my teams with actionable information to allow them to proactively manage the threat surface of our medical device portfolio."

"With thousands of devices to manage, healthcare environments are extremely complex and require intelligent security solutions capable of doing more. Palo Alto Networks understands this requirement and is leveraging machine learning (ML) for Medical IoT security. Adding intelligence will enable providers to Excellerate operational efficiency, which will enhance patient and practitioner experience and alleviate the burden of an ongoing IT skills shortage," said Bob Laliberte, principal analyst, ESG.

"Healthcare providers continue to be high-value targets for attackers. This reality, combined with the diversity of medical IoT devices and their inherent vulnerabilities, points to a real need for device security that is purpose-built for healthcare use cases. The ability to defend against threats targeting critical care devices while maintaining operational availability and strengthening the alignment of device governance responsibilities between IT and Biomed engineering teams is quickly becoming a necessity for the protection of patient data and lives," said Ed Lee, research director, IoT and Intelligent Edge Security, IDC.

More Information

• Learn more about Medical IoT Security here.
• Read the Medical IoT Security announcement blog here.
• Register to attend the Palo Alto Networks Ignite Conference on Dec. 12th - 15th, 2022, here.
• Follow Palo Alto Networks on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

Availability

Medical IoT Security will be available in January 2023.

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks is the world's cybersecurity leader. We innovate to outpace cyber threats, so organizations can embrace technology with confidence. We provide next-gen cybersecurity to thousands of customers globally, across all sectors. Our best-in-class cybersecurity platforms and services are backed by industry-leading threat intelligence and strengthened by state-of-the-art automation. Whether deploying our products to enable the Zero Trust Enterprise, responding to a security incident, or partnering to deliver better security outcomes through a world-class partner ecosystem, we're committed to helping ensure each day is safer than the one before. It's what makes us the cybersecurity partner of choice.

At Palo Alto Networks, we're committed to bringing together the very best people in service of our mission, so we're also proud to be the cybersecurity workplace of choice, recognized among Newsweek's Most Loved Workplaces (2021), Comparably Best Companies for Diversity (2021), and HRC Best Places for LGBTQ Equality (2022). For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks and the Palo Alto Networks logo are registered trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. Any unreleased services or features (and any services or features not generally available to customers) referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available (or are not yet generally available to customers) and may not be delivered when expected or at all. Customers who purchase Palo Alto Networks applications should make their purchase decisions based on services and features currently generally available.

SOURCE: Palo Alto Networks Inc.

Software stocks are on sale in 2022. Valuations slumped across the board following spiking stock prices in 2021. That previous rally was built on the assumption that demand for software services would continue soaring as it did in earlier phases of the pandemic.

That's not happening. But many software certified are still posting strong growth in attractive markets like productivity and cybersecurity.

With that in mind, let's look at two growing, profitable tech stocks as potential investments today. Microsoft (MSFT 3.50%) has a huge sales base and pays a growing dividend. Palo Alto Networks (PANW 2.35%) recently achieved profitability and is targeting increasing margins from here.

But which of the two stocks is more attractive today?

Growth and profits

Palo Alto Networks isn't nearly as diverse or well-established as Microsoft. But the flip side of that smaller profile is the possibility of stronger growth. Sales jumped 25% in the most accurate quarter, in fact, thanks to robust demand for cybersecurity services.

Microsoft is also enjoying booming demand in its cloud services segment. But declines in areas like gaming and PC software pushed overall growth down to just 16% in the most accurate quarter.

The software giant trounces Palo Alto Networks -- and most other peers -- when it comes to profitability. Microsoft's operating profit in its most accurate quarter landed at $21.6 billion, or a blazing 43% of sales. Palo Alto Networks' comparable quarterly figure was just $15 million, or 1% of sales.

The big differences

Both stocks are valued at roughly the same price-to-sales ratio of 9 times annual earnings. But you're getting a much different type of investment depending on which software stock you pick.

Microsoft is especially attractive if you are partial to cash. The company had over $100 billion on its books as of late September and generated over $20 billion in operating cash flow in just the most accurate quarter.

In contrast, Palo Alto Networks has only seen two quarters of profitability in the last several years. Most of its cash is also going toward the business, while Microsoft can afford to pay a growing dividend while repurchasing shares at an aggressive clip.

The growth story

The main attraction for Palo Alto Networks is its potential to become a much bigger business over time. Its last two quarters of profitability might just be the start of a long streak of expanding margins. The company has a shot at expanding its market share in the cybersecurity industry, too. Enterprises have demonstrated a willingness to prioritize spending on its platform even as they make cuts in other parts of the budget.

More success in that area could allow the company to achieve much higher sales over time than the $7 billion that management is targeting for fiscal 2023. Executives are expecting to expand at a 25% pace this year, while Microsoft is targeting about 12% growth after accounting for currency exchange rate shifts.

A Microsoft investment is much less risky thanks to factors like its massive global sales footprint, cash flow, and dividend payment. However, if you're looking for more targeted exposure to cybersecurity, and the potential for accelerating earnings growth over the next few years, then Palo Alto Networks should be your choice right now.

© 2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

© Provided by The Motley Fool 2 Growth Stocks That Could Beat the Market Over the Next 5 Years

While most of Wall Street focuses on the next few quarters, smart investors know that the best returns accrue over many years. It takes time for companies to build and capitalize on enduring competitive advantages, after all.

Yes, tech budgets will shrink in a recession. Palo Alto Networks is already seeing signs of a slowdown in its deal negotiations. But cybersecurity is a priority for most enterprises, which implies some degree of recession resistance for market leaders. In any case, this growth stock has a good shot at expanding sales and profit margin over the long term, which should help deliver market-beating returns for its shareholders.

2. Lululemon Athletica

Lululemon has just about everything an investor could want in a growth stock. It has a strong brand in a huge global industry and the business routinely delivers market-leading sales and earnings metrics. Revenue jumped 29% in the most accurate quarter, for example, as operating margin rose to a blazing 21.5% of sales through late July.

Many investors are thinking that these figures will worsen when the company announces its fiscal Q3 results in early December. Consumers are pickier about their spending as high inflation persists. Rival Nike warned about a glut of inventory that's likely to pressure its profit margin at least into early next year.

Yet Lululemon outperformed its peers through the last several quarters, in part thanks to its popular lineup of athleisure apparel. More success along those lines should translate into solid returns for investors as the company extends its reach into new geographies, new demographics, and new product lines. It will take a few years for these gains to become obvious, but patient investors are being offered an attractive discount for that lack of clarity.

Thanks to general market pessimism you can buy Lululemon stock at below 7 times annual sales compared to a P/S ratio of nearly 9 at the start of 2022. Given its excellent long-term prospects, that valuation drop seems like a great reason to take another look at this investment. Looking back in five years, you'll likely be glad that you did.

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November 10, 2022, 05:33 PM EST

‘This is all about monitoring user experience. This is all about getting metrics on how call quality is going,’ says Zscaler executive.

Cybersecurity heavyweights Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler have deepened their partnerships with Zoom Video Communications as part of a move to enhance security and user experiences during video conferences.

In separate press releases issued during this week’s Zoomtopia conference in San Jose, Calif., Palo Alto Networks and Zscaler announced integrations with Zoom’s new Quality of Service Subscription (QSS) to Excellerate video services for all three companies’ customers.

The goal: leverage current security and other services already provided by Palo Alto and Zscaler to Zoom to collect data about any video disruptions that users may be experiencing – and then relaying that information in real-time to customers’ IT personnel and others so they can immediately fix problems.

[RELATED STORY: New Zoom Channel Chief On Hybrid Work, Profitability, And Building a ‘Partner-Centric Culture’]

The quality of video conferences can be disrupted by a wide variety of things, including hardware issues, poor Wi-Fi quality, or internet service provider (ISP) network challenges, according to officials.

The new integrations are designed to get key data as soon as possible to appropriate technicians, who can then make corrections to Excellerate the quality of video conferences while maintaining strong security.

For the Santa Clara, Calif.-based Palo Alto Networks, the new agreement integrates the company’s ‘Autonomous Digital Experience Management’ (ADEM) with Zoom’s QSS to collect reams of data related to video conferences and then providing quick insights about the root causes of meeting disruptions.

“Users expect this very high quality, seamless meeting experience,” Pam Cyr, vice president of technical partnerships at Palo Alto Networks, told CRN in an interview. “We are going to provide the administration teams of our organizations, better real time information, so they can resolve issues quickly and without user frustration.”

Cyr said there is “no question that this is going to be important for our channel partners” because Palo Alto Networks can now provide partners and customers with tools to achieve higher quality Zoom conferences.

For San Jose, Calif.-based Zscaler, the new arrangement integrates the firm’s Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) with Zoom’s QSS to collect data that can also be used to pinpoint Zoom service disruptions as soon as possible, Dhawal Sharma, vice president and general manager at Zscaler, told CRN in an interview.

“This is all about monitoring user experience,” Sharma said. “This is all about getting metrics on how call quality is going.”

Sharma emphasized that Zscaler has previously worked with Zoom on user-experience issues, not just security issues, and the new integration is simply the “next phase” of its longer-term relationship with Zoom.

In an interview with CRN, Mark Wiener, CEO of BizCom Global, a Raleigh, N.C.-based MSP, said Zoom has largely fixed its most infamous security problem – the “zoom bombing” of video meetings – that plagued the company in the early days after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent boom in remote working.

The real problem for Zoom meetings these days is indeed about the quality of its video conferences, said Wiener, explaining that meetings can get “choppy” and “fuzzy” and even freeze up at times.

He noted other video conference services, including Google Meet and WebEx by Cisco, have similar quality problems.

Wiener said his customers have complained about the quality of video conferences in the past – and he’s glad Zoom, working with other firms, is working to Excellerate user experiences.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Dec 11, 2022 (The Expresswire) -- Final Report will add the analysis of the impact of Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 on this industry.

"Cyber Security Market" Insights 2022 - By Applications (SMBs, Large Enterprises), By Types (, On-premise, Cloud-based,), By Segmentation analysis, Regions and Forecast to 2028. The Global Cyber Security market Report provides In-depth analysis on the market status of the Cyber Security Top manufacturers with best facts and figures, meaning, Definition, SWOT analysis, PESTAL analysis, expert opinions and the latest developments across the globe., the Cyber Security Market Report contains Full TOC, Tables and Figures, and Chart with Key Analysis, Pre and Post COVID-19 Market Outbreak Impact Analysis and Situation by Regions.

The MarketWatch News Department was not involved in the creation of this content.

Cybersecurity moves fast. New and bigger threats emerge all the time across an ever-expanding attack surface and there's not enough people to fill vacant jobs.

Because of this, "not every organization is hyper-focused on the subject of diversity and inclusion," MK Palmore, a director in Google Cloud's Office of the Chief Information Security Officer, told The Register. 

"We as an industry get hung up on looking for folks who have been there, done that, and want talent to jump in and hit the ground running," he continued. "We need to slow down a bit and widen the optics on what represents new talent to bring into the field."

This requires investing money and human resources into training folks who don't come from a traditional infosec background, but Palmore said the payoff is worth it for a couple of reasons. 

First, there's the well-documented worker shortage of about three million people. The security skills gap isn't going to close unless organizations hire people outside of the existing cybersecurity workforce. "We can't just keep shipping people from one company to the next," he said.

Plus, diverse people bring different perspectives and ideas about how to solve problems to the table. The infosec community — still mostly male (76 percent) and mostly white (72 percent) — needs diversity to produce better outcomes, Palmore said. 

If we don't understand the importance of diversity, we're going to continue misfiring

"If your input continues to be a singular focus or monoculture, or typically comes from the usual circles, you can expect the same outcomes," he added. "It's imperative that the cybersecurity industry continues to grow and thrive, and if we don't understand the importance of diversity, we're going to continue misfiring instead of making sure that we can get ahead of adversaries."

To this end, Google Cloud recently partnered with Cyversity, a non-profit that seeks to bring more women and underrepresented minorities into infosec jobs. Palmore also sits on the Cyversity board of directors. And together with the SANS Institute and Palo Alto Networks, the org and the cloud giant announced the Cyversity SANS Diversity Academy, which will provide free education and training in an effort to place around 200 women and underrepresented minorities into cybersecurity jobs.

Women of all ethnicities plus Black, Latinx, and Native American men can apply to attend the six-month-long program until November 23.

This mission is also personal to Palmore, who arrived at Google and in an CISO role, from a non-traditional background. 

From FBI to Google Cloud Office of the CISO

Palmore grew up in Washington, DC, and after high school he attended the US Naval Academy, which had been a long-time dream of his. After college, he served in the Marines for five years, and then joined the FBI.

"I showed some interest in the FBI at a local field office in San Diego, and they jumped at the opportunity to recruit and bring in an African-American Marine Corps officer that was an Annapolis graduate," Palmore said. 

The FBI assigned Palmore to the Los Angeles field office, where he "worked all the traditional cases" assigned to new agents like bank robberies and domestic terrorism. It wasn't until he moved to the Sacramento Division that he worked his first cybersecurity case. 

"It was the mid-2000s, and the FBI was in the throes of understanding how the internet and technology was being used for terrorist communications," he remembered. "I had a fairly average terrorism case assigned to me." 

By "average" he means the technology being used by the terrorists was complex, but the case itself wasn't a well-publicized one. "But because it had such a huge technology component, it sparked a fire in me," Palmore said. "I understood that this field that I was always interested in and wanted to get into was available to me through my experience as an investigator in the FBI. So it opened a whole new door for me."

After that, he started taking every security training course that the bureau would allow and working more cyber-related cases in the field. 

Palmore retired from the FBI in 2019 after spending over 32 years in the US government, and got a job at Palo Alto Networks in a CISO advisory role. He made the jump to Google Cloud last year.

'Go where diverse talent is'

At Google, he spends a lot of his time talking to other organizations' CISOs. Obviously, cloud security is a frequent syllabu of discussion. Diversity and inclusion — how to hire and then retain women and minorities — should get equal airtime, Palmore said. 

Instead of waiting for workers to find the industry, "you gotta go where the diverse talent is, and make them aware there's an opportunity available to them," he said. "When I say go where they are, I'm talking about college-level folks who are women and underrepresented minorities who maybe he would have never considered a career in cybersecurity. I'm talking about mid-career transitioning folks who are looking for a new opportunity in an industry that represents growth and is going to be around for a significant number of years. That is cybersecurity."

Within the industry, there's enough "subdomains" that don't require a background in coding or software development, he added. "Part of the challenge is we just have to do a better job of exposing folks to the opportunity and then subsequently getting them trained."

Diversity Academy opens its doors

That's where the Cyversity SANS Diversity Academy comes in. Applicants must be at least 18, not currently employed in a cybersecurity role (other IT jobs are OK) and have residency status in one of three regions:  North America, South America or Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 

Selected participants will receive a scholarship to attend at least one training course, plus certification, at no expense. Phase one of the six-month program includes vendor training, where applicants receive access to Google Cloud and Palo Alto Networks training. Applicants selected for phase two will attend SANS foundational SEC275 training course and receive GFACT certifications. And finally, those that move on to phase three will take more advanced SANS courses and receive GIAC certifications.

SANS offers several other similar "immersion" academy programs that provide technical training, and claims 90 percent of graduates land new jobs in cybersecurity within six months of completing the programs.

The training org partnered with Cyversity on a pilot program limited to California before rolling out the larger Diversity Academy, said Max Shuftan, director of mission programs and partnerships at SANS.

"What we hear when talking to customers, it hurts them when teams aren't diverse," Shuftan said. "It makes their culture weaker and less strong. As a result, they have issues with retention, they have issues with recruitment. And with these vacancies, they're at more risk of threats and breaches." ®

© 2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.