Palo Alto Networks™, the leader in next-generation firewalls, today announced that DTE Energy has deployed PA-4000 Series next-generation firewalls for improved visibility of network traffic and for the ability to manage non-business applications running on its network.
DTE Energy is a Detroit-based diversified energy company involved in the development and management of energy-related businesses and services nationwide. Its operating units include Detroit Edison, an electric utility serving 2.2 million customers; MichCon, a natural gas utility serving 1.2 million customers; and other non-utility, energy businesses focused on gas pipelines and storage, coal transportation, unconventional gas production, and power and industrial projects.
Prior to Palo Alto Networks, DTE Energy lacked full visibility into the traffic on its 14,000-user network, and attempting to gain visibility and correlate information from disparate log files was a time consuming and fruitless task. Other solutions DTE Energy evaluated could not deliver the visibility its IT department required, and lacked useful reporting across limited data. Now, DTE Energy can see the applications on its network for improved security, and knows which users are employing which applications. With this information, they can enable appropriate policies to facilitate productivity, and engage in remediation where needed.
"With Palo Alto Networks we found the visibility into our network we were seeking," said John Townsend, Manager, Information Protection and Security at DTE Energy. "Now we get better visibility into what’s going on inside our network and into the applications attempting to access our network. From a bandwidth perspective, we don’t want to be too restrictive, but we do want to ensure appropriate resources for our business traffic."
"DTE Energy, like many enterprise IT leaders, recognized the need for application visibility and control, and chose the only firewalls that can deliver – Palo Alto Networks’ next-generation firewalls," said Larry Link, Palo Alto Networks VP of sales. "Not only does Palo Alto Networks enable the visibility into applications, users, and content that DTE Energy needs to best secure its networks, but also presents that information in a comprehensive, actionable manner – which greatly enhances the productivity of the DTE Energy infrastructure and security team."
Over time, DTE Energy sees expanding the role of the PA-4000 Series to consolidate the functionality of other security devices, improving security with enhanced application control while simplifying their infrastructure and reducing operational costs.
Palo Alto Networks’ next-generation firewalls are the industry’s most powerful firewall products, enabling enterprises to see and control applications, users and content – not just ports, IP addresses and packets. This is a critical need for enterprises’ management of risk as industry studies continue to show enterprises lack visibility into and control of application traffic due to the outdated functionality of legacy security technology. Palo Alto Networks’ next-generation firewalls enable enterprises to create granular, business-relevant security policies and safely control new enterprise and consumer applications as business enablers instead of the block-or-nothing approach offered by traditional port-blocking firewalls.
About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks™ is the leader in next-generation firewalls, enabling unprecedented visibility and granular policy control of applications and content – by user, not just IP address – at up to 10Gbps with no performance degradation. Based on patent-pending App-ID™ technology, Palo Alto Networks firewalls accurately identify and control applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or SSL encryption – and scan content to stop threats and prevent data leakage. Enterprises can for the first time embrace Web 2.0 and maintain complete visibility and control, while significantly reducing total cost of ownership through device consolidation. For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.
-Note 1 – "Application Usage and Risk Report," Palo Alto Networks, April 20, 2009.
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