Arm Your Remote Workforce with the Leading Cybersecurity Platform

Ivan Orsanic

Regional Vice President & Country Manager (Canada),
Palo Alto Networks

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented increase in the number of Canadians working from home. As workplaces continue to evolve and transition, it’s necessary to ensure that work can be done anywhere, without compromising speed, security, or performance. 

Over the last year, companies across Canada were forced to kick-start their digital transformations earlier and more quickly than expected to keep up with the need for remote offices. As networks expand and evolve, cyber threat actors look for new ways to access critical data. However, IT decision makers are becoming smarter about cybersecurity as time goes on. “Securing workforces has become a priority for organizations across all industries,” says Ivan Orsanic, Regional Vice President and Country Manager of Canada at Palo Alto Networks. “With one year of planning behind us and lots of trial and error, we’re seeing IT decision makers are preparing for the future with strategic investments into security technology.”
New technology is being developed to help businesses thrive, such as Palo Alto Networks upcoming Prisma Access 2.0, which will securely enable work-from-anywhere via its industry-leading cloud-delivered security platform. 

With experience comes expertise

Organizations are responding quickly and effectively to the new security needs of remote workforces. “Canadians are adapting to this reality with experience than when the pandemic first hit,” says Orsanic. “Organizations aren’t scrambling as they were in the beginning but are preparing for the likelihood that the new work-from-home or hybrid work model may be a permanent option for workers.”

Mindfulness of security needs is essential, with digital transformation, Internet of Things, and remote work being some of the more obvious trends. However, different ideas are circulating to help organizations stay protected. “One of the most notable trends we’re discussing with customers is around building strategic partnerships with security vendors, leveraging platforms, and automating security as we work through this pandemic and prepare for the new normal,” says Orsanic. “Doing more with fewer vendors has extensive financial and operational benefits.”  

The need for endpoint protection

The huge surge in remote workforces has resulted in a massive adoption of cloud technology. However, many cloud-delivered security offerings provide limited application coverage and inadequate protections. In 2021, Palo Alto Network’s over 500 enterprise customers, 53 percent of all remote workforce threats were against non-web apps. As a result, solutions that only protect web applications are leaving organizations open to a massive array of cybersecurity threats. 

“Visibility and control become factors with remote workforces, so having endpoint protection, cloud management for both public clouds and applications, and the right policies in place to protect data and users is important,” says Orsanic.  

Filling this gap is Prisma Access 2.0, which is able to protect all application traffic with complete security from a single cloud-delivered platform while ensuring high-performance access and optimized user experience.

Best-in-class security

Prisma Access 2.0 is resetting the bar for cloud-delivered security. Critical enhancements include machine learning-powered security to prevent attacks in real time, cloud secure web gateway (SWG) capabilities regardless of user location, and a reimagined cloud management experience. This is delivered while providing 10 times more throughput than other solutions for a faster remote connection and 4.3 million security updates per day to make organizations confident that users and data are secure. “We’re very excited to offer Prisma Access 2.0 to Canadians,” says Orsanic. “With this, we’re delivering the most complete cloud-delivered platform for securely enabling today’s remote workforces.”