About tawilkins

  Extended Expertise:  The Next Evolution of our Resident Engineer Service  We want to share with you that Extended Expertise has launched! Our Extended Expertise service provides a new way to access a long-term consulting resource for cybersecurity advisory, deployment, and operational expertise.   Extended Expertise Consultants are highly trained personnel who will understand your business needs from the inside out. They are uniquely qualified to advise you on getting the most out of your Palo Alto Networks investment.   Some of the most exciting features of our Extended Expertise service include the launch of a new half-time consultant service, a remote consultant option and the launch of Professional Services Credits.   Extended Expertise offers these tiers of services: Full-time or Half-time Consultant: A consultant will be dedicated to your organization full-time (for a minimum of 12 months), or designated to your organization half-time (for a minimum of 12 months, with an every-other week schedule). Remote or Onsite Consultant: Select from an onsite or remote consultant. Onsite availability is subject to COVID-19 restrictions in your region and is for the full-time consultant option only. Choice of Core Specializations: To match your desired area of focus, select your consultant’s area of expertise from eight core specializations: NGFW/Prisma Access VM-Series Private Cloud Prisma SD-WAN (formerly CloudGenix SD-WAN) Prisma Cloud VM-Series Public Cloud Cortex XSOAR Cortex XDR Security Operations Professional Services Credits: Choose a ‘plus’ tier if you would like to include professional services credits. Use these credits during the engagement period on supplemental professional services outside the core specialization.   Flexibility We believe this service provides you with the ultimate flexibility. For example, our multi-product customers can engage multiple Extended Expertise Consultants for larger deployments and choose a mix of full or half-time options to deploy multiple technologies. Alternatively, a customer with a smaller deployment may only need a Designated or half-time Extended Expertise Consultant bundled with Professional Services credits.   The Cybersecurity Skills Shortage Finding the right cybersecurity talent can be competitive, challenging, and time-consuming. Qualified expert consultants are very often used to augment and support an organization’s security strategy. We want to help customers and make it easier to access cybersecurity expertise to maximize security.   Customization and Personalization In addition to correct implementation and configuration, successful security deployment typically requires customization of policies, playbooks and application signatures. This can divert resources from other projects and requires the right staff to be on hand and in the relevant geography. The Extended Expertise service will help solve this challenge and augment your security resources where your team and your organization need it most.   More Information Read our recent blog post and visit our Professional Services page to learn more about Extended Expertise.   Thanks for reading this blog. If you have any questions, please comment down below.   ... View more

BPA Splash Page (For illustration purposes only)   We’re thrilled to announce that the Best Practice Assessment has received some significant updates and added features. These include a new user interface and a library of on-demand, technical e-learnings. The new BPA UI is a complete redesign of the BPA front end, making it easier to navigate and also includes performance and scalability improvements . You will notice a new splash page when you first log in, highlighting the latest BPA capabilities and features.    In the BPA Summary, we have added clickable links to mapping definitions. It is now just one click to go from any section in the BPA summary to the relevant mapping definitions and then to the specific section of the BPA report to address a security gap. For Panorama-run BPAs, we have introduced device group hierarchy. To understand the adoption context for a device in a group, select a device and automatically see adoption for the device parents, grandparents and so on. This gives a complete context for adoption.   Lastly, the BPA spreadsheet has been updated. This spreadsheet is available from the bundle of files created when the BPA is generated. We have introduced a new column called “BPA verdict.” In the past, the spreadsheet only listed failed checks. Now all checks are listed and classified as “failed,” “note,” and “pass” enabling users to better track progress against all checks. New BPA e-learning videos have launched. These 200+ short videos (approximately 1 minute each) provide simple instructions on the purpose of each best practice check and how to make configuration changes in the UI to address a failed check.  These videos are embedded within the HTML BPA report and can be accessed by clicking on the movie icon within each best practice check. They can also be accessed via LIVEcommunity and our learning management system.   Resources - Video overview of new BPA UI: Video overview - E-learning: BPA e-learning Next Steps Visit LIVEcommunity for additional details, FAQs and to ask questions View and run a BPA with the new UI from the customer support portal Contact us for further questions:  BPA@paloaltonetworks.com ... View more