“All glory is fleeting.” Someone said this, but I really don’t know who. The first time I heard it was watching the movie Patton where the General explains the problem with reveling in your glory too long. The same thing happens every quarter on Wall Street and companies get to revel in their glory of achievement for one or two days before they are back running to make sure they don’t miss expectations for the current quarter. It’s a constant churning mix of action and strategy that makes a company glorious or not, and part of that mix, especially these days, are Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A).
What does this mean to IT and cybersecurity professionals? Well, it means we can be more relevant to our organization if we introduce capabilities that strategically and practically enable M&A. Think about it this way:
- Many companies will engage in some form of M&A activity at some point in their lives, and during the due diligence process, learn some not-so-exciting things about other companies’ security posture
- Showing how your approach to IT and cybersecurity enables the C-suite to achieve financial expectations as soon as possible is a great thing
- Translating effective technical practices and automation into capabilities speaks volumes to people in charge of purse strings—like M&A bankers, for example
- Boosting CIO and CISO relevance to the board and C-suite is critical to move beyond the overwhelming perception that IT and cybersecurity is mainly about compliance and governance
- You can get more money and tools when you deliver capabilities that enable M&A activity
We built the Palo Alto Networks Enterprise Security Platform to detect and prevent with these types of conversations in mind. A good analogy takes us back to General Patton driving the 3rd Army across Europe and vigorously refusing to give up any ground his Army takes from the enemy. Our platform takes ground back from attackers using unmatched visibility, intelligence, action and control across users, applications, endpoints, network traffic and content.
That’s quite a bit for one platform, but it’s real and ready for deployment. We can integrate directly into your infrastructure in networks, virtual data centers, mobile environments and endpoints. Our threat intelligence cloud not only provides for advanced threat detection and prevention as a feature, but also a unique kind of intelligence into evasive applications that allows us to control applications organically in network traffic based on individual user profiles.
How does this relate to M&A activity, current or future? With an approach like ours, you’ll replace the staggering number of devices and spot products most likely in use on your network. You’ll be able to expand the reach of your IT and cybersecurity teams quickly, reducing complexity. Flexibility? Speed? Better ROI? Fewer costs? Those sound like valuable check boxes for M&A to me.
Our enterprise platform helps alleviate a lot of financial burden to the IT and cybersecurity professionals because they control the process in-line with M&A and the funding doesn’t wreak havoc out-of-cycle on the IT and cybersecurity teams – upgrades are seamless, without having to deal with multiple appliances. When you’re that predictable, funding security becomes a line item in M&A.
No one else in the cybersecurity industry can claim this, and frankly, no one seems to be thinking about it. They aren’t solving your problems. We are. We want your IT and cybersecurity professionals to be an integral part of your growth without breaking the bank. We intend to continue to innovate in this fashion and build a transformational IT and cybersecurity foundation for our customers.
Invite us out today so we can show you how our Enterprise Security Platform can help detect and prevent while your business grows.