IBM Consulting and Palo Alto Networks today announced that they will expand their strategic partnership to better enable clients to strengthen their end-to-end security postures and navigate evolving security threats. Palo Alto Networks, a global cybersecurity leader, will be in a select group of strategic IBM Consulting partners and IBM Consulting will be a premier security services partner for Palo Alto Networks.

"With cloud, data, and technology serving as the lifeblood of most businesses today, cybersecurity threats now represent an existential risk to organizations' core operating models - making it crucial for security leaders to work together for the good of our mutual clients," said Mohamad Ali, Chief Operating Officer of IBM Consulting. "Our relationship with Palo Alto Networks as a select strategic partner is a testament to IBM's open and collaborative approach to cybersecurity. By bringing together best-of-breed AI, security technology, and consulting expertise from both companies, we can help clients create a strong security program that can adapt and scale with future threats."

"The speed and scale of threats are accelerating, with many attackers exfiltrating data in less than 24 hours from the initial compromise of an organization," said BJ Jenkins, President of Palo Alto Networks. "Organizations today need the right cybersecurity partners to keep up with the pace of the ever-changing threat landscape. We are thrilled to expand our longstanding partnership with IBM to help our joint clients mitigate risk and protect critical data assets with industry-leading, AI-powered solutions, cloud security, and services."

As part of this relationship, the companies will jointly offer enhanced security solutions delivered by IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services, integrating Palo Alto Networks security technologies. The expanded partnership will initially focus on two key areas: helping companies modernize their security operations and securing cloud transformations.

Transforming and Managing Next Generation Security Operations Centers
The first new offering will combine IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services expertise with Palo Alto Networks Cortex platform to provide clients with autonomous and advanced managed security operations.

The offering will leverage multiple layers of advanced AI and automation from both IBM Consulting and Palo Alto Networks technologies. Specifically, IBM Consulting's Threat Detection and Response Services - which support a wide range of security technologies - will be jointly offered with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSIAM, an AI-driven security operations platform for the modern SOC designed to simplify security operations, help stop threats at scale, and accelerate incident remediation. Notably, Cortex XSIAM's latest capability allows customers to add their own custom AI models on the Cortex data lake in addition to the existing 1,300+ models.

As part of this service, IBM Consulting will provide 24x7 monitoring, investigation, and automated remediation of security alerts along with resources to drive continuous improvement around cyber threat intelligence, threat hunting capabilities and cyber risk reduction. IBM will also help clients design, build and modernize their security operations centers.

To further accelerate client success, IBM Consulting has already trained its sales, technical support, and delivery teams on Cortex XSIAM, and will continue with additional trainings over the coming months.

Securing Hybrid Cloud Transformation
The two companies will further accelerate clients' journey to the cloud by leveraging Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks together with IBM Consulting services - providing a range of customized services that include holistic security posture assessment, developing secure applications, implementation, and ongoing protection and investigation services. Prisma Cloud protects the entire cloud-native application lifecycle – from Code to Cloud™– helping to identify risks and remediate before they reach production environments. Prisma Cloud fosters engineering and security team collaboration with a shared understanding of securing applications and maximizing their performance. This new joint offering will build on IBM Consulting's strong ecosystem approach, working closely with industry leading partners to help companies secure their hybrid cloud transformation.

Organizations will have access to IBM Consulting's wide breadth and depth of expertise across cloud and enterprise application security and the option for tailored education and training programs.

Today's news builds on the recent announcement that IBM X-Force partnered with Palo Alto Networks to complement its existing, industry leading capabilities with the Cortex product portfolio.