Arista & Palo Alto Networks launch new AI-era data centre security

Arista and Palo Alto Networks have announced the expansion of their partnership to deliver new security solutions designed for AI-era data centre operations, as organisations continue to adopt distributed and hybrid IT environments.

Hybrid data centre challenges

Modern data centres increasingly span private clouds, public clouds, and colocation sites. This shift allows development and operations teams to move workloads based on regulatory, cost or performance needs. However, it also creates complexities for both networking and security, as teams must respond to heightened levels of east-west traffic and face larger attack surfaces.

The risks are compounded by the rise of threats powered by artificial intelligence. Attackers can now use AI to create advanced attacks that move faster than ever, bypassing traditional defences and compressing the timeline from days or weeks to mere hours or minutes for data breaches, vulnerability exploits, or ransomware attacks.

Integrated security approach

Arista is joining forces with Palo Alto Networks to address these challenges. Their approach combines Arista's AI for networking tools, including its Autonomous Virtual Assist (AVA), with Palo Alto Networks' Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) and Strata Network Security platform. Together, these technologies aim to deliver enhanced segmentation, visibility and control over data centre network traffic.

"This unifies segmentation, visibility and inter-zone protection via Palo Alto Networks NGFW and Arista MSS (Multi-Domain Segmentation Services) fabric. With the integrated solution, every packet traversing east-west or north-south can finally be seen, protected and controlled. Operators can now enforce granular microperimeter policies directly on the Arista switches or intelligently steer traffic to Palo Alto Networks NGFW clusters for advanced stateful inspection. This redirection service operates within a single data centre or across multiple data centres, providing an elegant solution to enable symmetric policy enforcement in remote, active-active data centres," said Kumar Srikantan, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Arista.

Real-time threat response

The partnership improves how networks respond to sophisticated threats. Palo Alto Networks' firewalls can detect and identify attacks using machine learning, while Arista's CloudVision Multi-Domain Segmentation Services can immediately quarantine affected endpoints at high speeds directly within the network.

This capability limits lateral movement by attackers and automates the quarantine process across gigabit and terabit networks.

Unified policy management

With data centres running across on-premise and multicloud environments, policy management can become fragmented. The combined solution allows for centralised orchestration of security policies through Palo Alto Networks' management plane, while enforcement is handled by Arista's hardware. This configuration treats a distributed network as a single logical entity, enabling the rapid migration of workloads and policies without compromising compliance.

"Distributed data centres spanning on-premise and multicloud environments should not mandate fragmented policy orchestration. Palo Alto Networks management plane centralises zone-based and microperimeter policies and CloudVision MSS responds with the offload and enforcement of Arista switches. This treats the entire geo-distributed network as a single logical switch, allowing workloads to be migrated freely across cloud networks and security domains," said Alessandro Barbieri, Vice President of Products, Palo Alto Networks.

Automation for operations teams

Support for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines is also a focus. Arista's Validated Design (AVD) data models support infrastructure as code, enabling integration with automation workflows. These models can be generated by Arista's AVA AI agents, bringing guardrails and compliance into automated deployments. This approach aims to allow NetOps and SecOps teams to operate at the speed demanded by DevOps, without creating bottlenecks.

The companies state that customers will be able to scale network topologies, upgrade software, and maintain compliance controls independently by maintaining a clear separation between network and security functions.