Well that was an interesting 12 months

On this day in 2020 I started at Palo Alto Networks, working for Cortex Team in ANZ. I had just finished an almost 15 year stint at Cisco. 4 Weeks later we move into lockdown in Victoria and the world is transformed due to the Coronavirus pandemic and nothing will be the same again.

Now when you are in a new job, a new role in a part of the business which is effectively a startup and you are now 4 weeks in, locked down at home, no ability to engage with your customers, colleagues and co-workers. Well that can test the individuals, the leaders and the company. And I was not let down by any of their promises.

I took the decision to isolate myself and my family almost 10 days earlier that official lockdown. My VP (Phil Vasic) was fully supportive of this, the company as a whole implemented plans, programs and initiatives to ensure that no Palo Alto Networks employ was impacted during this pandemic, and that still holds true today.

Now let's talk about Cortex, a new part of Palo Alto Networks focused on outcomes for transforming Security Operations. During the interview process Phil would tell me about what was going to be done, what was coming. By the end of the first month (February 2020) since I joined Palo Alto Networks, the execution by the Cortex Product Management was at pace I have never seen before, in fact it seemed like that pushed the pedal down harder on quality and speed each passing month.

By the end of 2020 the Cortex XDR Product Team had over delivered on what I was promised by Phil during that interview process, we had launched our Australian Cortex Data Lake (went live in December, official announcement in January 2021) and it sounds funny when I still think we are just getting started. 2.7 was launched this week, and this just continues on the amazing work the XDR team continue to deliver on. We have acquired Crypsis Group (global incident response and threat team), Expanse (Attack Surface Management) and I cannot forget what the Cortex XSOAR team have done with that platform.

Thank you to my friends and colleagues at Palo Alto Networks, the last 12 months have been some ride and each new day will be amazing. Zoom Backgrounds will never be the same again, shine on all you crazy diamonds

Regards

Rocket

(excuse all grammatical errors, a mild dyslexic operating the keyboard - dyslexics untie ;o)