Modern enterprises operate across an increasingly interconnected ecosystem of SaaS applications, cloud infrastructure, identities and sensitive data. AI agents and third-party integrations are deepening those connections, creating new pathways for attackers to exploit misconfigurations, excessive permissions and exposed resources. Yet security remains fragmented across SaaS and cloud environments, limiting visibility into how individual risks connect and where attackers could move next.
Today, Cortex CloudTM by Palo Alto Networks is introducing SaaS Security to extend unified protection across cloud and SaaS environments.
The Growing Challenge of Securing Connected Environments
SaaS applications and cloud infrastructure are increasingly interconnected through shared identities, integrations, and access to sensitive data. Business-critical data moves between applications, identities maintain access across systems, and AI agents increasingly interact across both SaaS and cloud environments. A single misconfiguration or overprivileged identity can create exposure well beyond its originating application.
According to the 2026 Unit 42 Global Incident Response Report, 87% of attacks unfolded across multiple attack surfaces, reinforcing the need to understand risk beyond individual assets and environments.
AI adoption introduces further complexity. Palo Alto Networks projects that 75% of enterprises will have autonomous AI agents in production by 2028. As agents gain access to sensitive datasets, enterprise applications and business workflows, security teams must understand not only what AI assets exist, but what they can access and how connections can introduce risk.
Protecting these environments requires a unified approach that connects security posture with the identities, data and threats surrounding it.
Introducing Cortex Cloud SaaS Security
Cortex Cloud brings SaaS security into the broader cloud security experience, unifying posture, identity, data, and AI security across SaaS and cloud environments. This integrated approach helps safeguard SaaS applications against misconfigurations, AI risks and data exposure as the attack surface expands. By connecting risks across these four areas, organizations can uncover exposures, investigate potential attack paths and accelerate response with greater context.
Unify Visibility Across SaaS and Cloud
Disconnected security tools make it difficult to establish a complete picture of enterprise exposure. Cortex Cloud addresses this fragmentation by bringing SaaS security findings into a unified view, alongside broader cloud security context.
Figure 1: SaaS Security Dashboard
With visibility into ~100 SaaS applications, security teams can examine application posture, identify exposed assets and investigate risks involving identities, sensitive data and AI. The centralized SaaS Security dashboard consolidates security findings and active threat context, making it easier to understand how risks intersect across the connected attack surface.
Security teams can also streamline issue prioritization through targeted initiatives, setting risk reduction goals with clear SLAs and tracking progress toward those goals. This helps teams organize remediation and identify where further action is needed.
Continuously Assess SaaS Security Posture
Application configurations change constantly as organizations introduce new integrations, modify access settings and expand SaaS adoption. Without continuous assessment, misconfigurations and risky settings can persist unnoticed.
Cortex Cloud continuously evaluates supported SaaS applications for configuration weaknesses, risky integrations and compliance gaps. Security teams can investigate individual findings, monitor posture trends and assess alignment with industry frameworks, replacing fragmented, point-in-time assessments with ongoing security oversight.
Investigate Connected Identity, Data and AI Risks
Understanding an individual finding is only the beginning. Effective investigation requires context around the identities, data and AI resources connected to an exposed asset.
Cortex Cloud automatically correlates security context across supported SaaS and cloud environments to reveal relationships that might otherwise go unnoticed. Security teams can discover AI agents, identify dormant agents and examine permissions and connections to datasets, AI endpoints and other resources.
Cortex Cloud brings together AI-powered data classification, data access governance and threat detection across supported SaaS applications. Organizations gain a clearer understanding of where sensitive data resides, who can access it and where potential exposures exist.
Accelerate Response with Agentic AI
Identifying connected risks is critical, but reducing exposure requires action. With Cortex AgentiX, organizations can accelerate security investigations and remediation through agentic AI-driven workflows across SaaS and cloud environments, reducing the manual effort required to address complex security findings.
Secure Your Connected Attack Surface with Cortex Cloud
As SaaS, cloud and AI environments converge, isolated security assessments can no longer provide the context needed to manage enterprise risk. Cortex Cloud SaaS Security brings posture, identity, data, AI and threat security together to help organizations understand their connected attack surface and act on emerging exposures.
See Cortex Cloud SaaS Security in action. Book a demo to learn more.