Palo Alto Networks today updated its Cortex Cloud platform to integrate the company’s cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) known as Prisma Cloud into a platform that provides a wider range of cloud security capabilities.

Cortex Cloud traces its lineage back to a platform that Palo Alto Networks gained with the acquisition of Demisto in 2020. Since then the company has been steadily expanding the capabilities of the core platform, including technologies originally developed by QRadar that IBM later sold to Palo Alto Networks.

The Prisma Cloud platform, meanwhile, traces its lineage back to the acquisitions of Twistlock Ltd. and PureSec Ltd. in 2019. Since then, Palo Alto Networks has expanded the scope of the platform via both technologies it developed and additional acquisitions.

The Cortex Cloud now extends the extended security intelligence and automation management (XSIAM) platform to span everything from providing access to application and cloud infrastructure security tools and services via a single console.

Elad Koren, vice president of product management for Palo Alto, said at this juncture it’s become apparent the organizations would prefer a more unified approach that serves to help reduce the total cost of cloud security. Palo Alto Network is transitioning as a result toward an integrated platform that makes the various services it provides more accessible, he added. A recent joint Palo Alto Networks/IBM survey finds more than half (52%) of respondents identifying fragmentation of security solutions is limiting their ability to deal with cyberthreats.

Additionally, that approach also makes it simpler for Palo Alto Networks to aggregate the data required to train the artificial intelligence (AI) models that it is embedding across its cybersecurity portfolio, noted Koren.

Ultimately, the goal is to provide cybersecurity teams with a consistent experience that enables them to better maintain context as they navigate the multiple tools needed to thwart cybersecurity attacks that are increasing in terms of both volume and sophistication, said Koren.

Of course, rationalizing platforms should also reduce costs for Palo Alto Networks as well, after a spate of acquisitions that led to the creation of offerings that often have overlapping capabilities.

Palo Alto Networks, however, is also committed to maintaining an open platform that makes it simpler to integrate third-party products and services, noted Koren. For example, CyberCX, Deloitte, IBM and Orange Cyberdefense are all Cortex Cloud launch partners.

Regardless of motivation, many of the tools that cybersecurity teams have historically relied on are becoming features of larger platforms. Each cybersecurity team will need to decide for itself to what degree to abandon a particular tool if it becomes less costly to rely on a feature of a larger platform that eliminates any of the need to create and maintain custom integrations. Many of the security operations tasks that cybersecurity teams once needed to perform themselves are increasingly provided by the providers of an integrated platform. As more tasks become automated in the age of AI many cybersecurity teams may soon discover that the need for some tools has been obviated altogether.