Security

Palo Alto Networks SD-WAN: Prisma SD-WAN and the Security-First Approach Palo Alto Networks entered the SD-WAN market through acquisition rather than organic development. In 2019, the company acquired CloudGenix — a purpose-built SD-WAN startup with a cloud-native architecture and a strong focus on application-defined networking — for approximately $420 million. The CloudGenix technology became Prisma SD-WAN, integrated into Palo Alto’s Prisma SASE platform alongside Prisma Access (cloud-delivered security). What makes Palo Alto’s approach distinctive is not the SD-WAN technology itself — CloudGenix was technically competitive but not dramatically differentiated from Silver Peak or Viptela at acquisition. The differentiation is the integration strategy: Prisma SD-WAN is not sold as a standalone WAN product but as a component of a unified SASE architecture. Understanding Palo Alto’s SD-WAN means understanding where it sits within that broader security and networking strategy. ...

Fortinet SD-WAN: Security-Driven Networking in Practice Fortinet occupies an unusual position in the SD-WAN market. It did not build a standalone SD-WAN product and later add security to it — nor did it acquire a WAN optimization vendor and rebrand the technology. Instead, Fortinet embedded SD-WAN capabilities directly into FortiOS, the same operating system that runs its NGFW, IPS, SSL inspection, and application control functions. The result is an architecture the company calls security-driven networking, and it has made Fortinet one of the leading positions in Gartner’s SD-WAN Magic Quadrant for multiple consecutive years. ...