Unlocking the Economic Benefit of NGFWs

Palo Alto Networks Firewalls Deliver 229% ROI in Forrester TEI Study

Cyberthreats are increasing in volume and complexity, making it difficult for network defenders to protect their organizations. Threat actors are evolving their tools and techniques, finding new ways to employ artificial intelligence (AI) to avoid detection and exploit vulnerabilities. Hybrid work, rapid app development and public cloud deployments are expanding the attack surface and increasing threat vectors at an accelerating pace.

In response to these challenges, security vendors have delivered a wide range of point products, systematically targeting new threats as they arise, as well as new elements of the enterprise attack surface that gain popularity.

While coverage has certainly broadened, there has also been an incredible increase in complexity, with the average Palo Alto Networks customer leveraging 31 unique security tools. The result is that, despite big security investments, enterprises are unable to achieve the security outcomes that they are after.

Over the past several years, we have invested heavily in creating a unified network security platform, on a mission to eliminate complexity while maintaining the best possible detection and prevention capabilities across the cyber kill chain. Despite this investment, our customers continue to ask, will moving to a Palo Alto Networks network security platform deliver the security outcomes we haven’t been able to achieve with point products? To find out, we partnered with Forrester to help our customers answer this question.

Forrester interviewed six representatives with experience using Palo Alto Networks NGFWs. Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization that is a distributed enterprise with 50,000 employees and $7 billion in annual revenue. Prior to deploying Palo Alto Networks for network security needs, the customers who were interviewed leveraged various point solutions to secure their environments. The organizations lacked modern security technology as the security and IT teams tried to keep up with evolving business needs. The results speak for themselves.

229% ROI with Palo Alto Networks ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewalls

Investing in Palo Alto Networks ML-Powered Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) provided a 229% return on investment (ROI) and a net present value (NPV) of $9.82 million for the composite organization.

Our ML-Powered NGFWs use inline deep learning to detect and prevent today’s most evasive attacks before they can cause harm. Backed by our world-renowned Unit 42® Threat Research team, our firewall platform uses the network effect of 85,000 global customers to share intelligence from all threat vectors to stop known, unknown and zero-day threats 180x faster than any other platform or point solution.

Palo Alto Networks commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study that examines the potential ROI enterprises may realize by deploying ML-Powered NGFWs. Read The TEI of Palo Alto Networks for Network Security to understand the cost-savings and business benefits enabled by NGFWs.

Key Findings from the Study – 3-Year, Risk-Adjusted, Present-Value, Quantified Benefits for the Composite Organization:

• 50% decreased likelihood of a data breach after 3 years.
• 25% to 60% reduced number of security incidents requiring manual investigation.
• 20% decreased mean time to resolution (MTTR).
• $2.5 million saved from reduced number of endpoint devices requiring reimaging, reduced security incidents, and decreased MTTR.
• $5.2 million in business value from improved end-user productivity with better system availability and less intrusion to the network.
• $2.5 million saved by avoiding and rationalizing security infrastructure.
• $1.1 million saved by reallocating 50% full-time security professionals to higher-value initiatives, due to management efficiency from a common platform.

Other Benefits:

• Increased visibility in the security environment.
• Better integration with tools and platforms in the security tech stack.
• Better employee experience.

Director of network security engineering at a financial services organization said:

“[Palo Alto Networks] is a cornerstone of our security program. If we didn’t have it, we would probably be in trouble managing different consoles and having feature limitations as certain models of firewall have certain capabilities. Without it, I think we would have a lot less certainty about performance.”

Learn the cost savings and business benefits of Palo Alto Networks ML-Powered NGFWs. Read the Forrester TEI to discover your ROI and saved costs when using a unified firewall platform with consistent security across environments.