Expanding its list of industry-wide endorsements, Palo Alto Networks today announced that its next-generation firewall, the PA-4000 Series, has earned the much-coveted Best of Interop Grand Prize Award. 

InformationWeek's panel of expert judges awarded Palo Alto Networks with a pair of honors. In addition to highlighting the company as the Best of Interop overall, Palo Alto Networks also earned the top spot in the hotly contested security category. Judges cited the company’s innovation and contribution to the continuing evolution of business security technology as key qualifications that set it apart from the competition.

“With the increase in exhibitors this year, competition was especially tough for the Best of Interop Awards,” said Lenny Heymann, Interop General Manager. “We congratulate Palo Alto Networks for its contributions – and for demonstrating that Interop is the leading business technology event to come see the exciting and latest advancements in the industry.”

Palo Alto Networks’ PA-4000 Series provides organizations the ability to identify, categorize and control applications and user behavior. This enables enterprises to safely deploy Web 2.0 and other new applications, while implementing effective, application-centric security and compliance policies. At Interop, Palo Alto Networks further differentiated the PA-4000 Series by unveiling PAN-OS v2.0, comprising a range of first-to-market capabilities for its next-generation firewall. (See release: Palo Alto Networks Announces v2.0 of PAN-OS, Strengthens Application Visibility and Control Leadership)

"Organizations and their employees want to capitalize on new applications that improve productivity and communications,” said Palo Alto Networks Vice President of Marketing Steve Mullaney. “But, they have to do that while also ensuring the necessary safeguards for security and compliance. The PA-4000 Series was built from the ground up to accommodate those requirements. Given the caliber of the competition and the judging criteria, we’re especially thrilled by the validation the Best of Interop award signals for our technology, product and vision. It’s a real honor.”

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks™ enables visibility and policy control of applications running on enterprise networks. Based on innovative App-ID™ application classification technology, the Palo Alto Networks PA-4000 Series next-generation firewall accurately identifies applications – regardless of port, protocol, evasive tactic or even SSL encryption – at 10Gbps with no performance degradation. Enterprises can now set and enforce application usage policies to meet compliance requirements, improve threat mitigation and lower operational costs. The Palo Alto Networks team includes security and networking industry veterans from Check Point, NetScreen, McAfee, Cisco, Juniper and Blue Coat. It is backed by investors Globespan Capital Partners, Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. For more information, visit www.paloaltonetworks.com.

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