Blake Wofford, President, Fuel Board of Directors

With the recent announcement of PAN-OS 7.1, there is a lot for Palo Alto Networks users to get excited about. Here's what I'm most looking forward to:

• Management features 
  • Support for 4,096-bit RSA Certificates: these larger keys can be used to authenticate devices and users in GlobalProtect, and Site-to-Site VPN Tunnels.
  • Unified Logs: a single unified log that allows an easy view of all log types, including Traffic,
  • Threat, URL Filtering, WildFire and Data Filtering Logs, all on one pane of glass!

• App-ID
  • Now includes new reporting that allows you visibility into SaaS applications. 
• Virtualization
  • A new Microsoft Hyper-V VM-series
  • Support for VMWare Tools on Panorama and VM-Series on ESXi
  • VM-Series Firewalls in Microsoft Azure
• Wildfire
  • 5 Minute updates for even fast protection 

These are just a few of the many new release features, but I think that these are some of the coolest items coming out in PAN-OS 7.1 Also, I find it very interesting that they've done a lot of work on Global Protect and have released a lot of new features in that arena as well.

This is just another example of how Palo Alto is not only defining real and useable technology in the security space, but is also taking their existing product and maturing it as they go. This new verison of PAN-OS shows that Palo Alto is not only leading the industry, but is really listening to their users and implementing practical tools to help their customers succeed.

What are you most excited about? What do you have questions on? Tell us in the Fuel Discussion Forums.