The alliance between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud enters a new phase with an agreement that significantly expands its reach in the areas of artificial intelligence and cloud security. Both companies are strengthening a long-standing collaboration, now fully focused on protecting the massive deployment of AI solutions being adopted by companies worldwide, including in Spain and the rest of Europe.
This move comes at a time when organizations are accelerating the adoption of hybrid and multicloud infrastructures to support new applications and services based on generative AI and autonomous agents. Against this backdrop, Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud are announcing a new multi-million dollar, multi-year agreement aimed at integrating security from the infrastructure foundation through the application and data layers.
An alliance focused on AI security in the cloud
The core of the announcement involves combining Google Cloud's infrastructure and AI capabilities with Prisma AIRS, Palo Alto Networks' AI security platform . The intention is to offer an environment where companies can fully leverage artificial intelligence without increasing their attack surface or complicating the work of their security teams.
According to data from Palo Alto Networks' 'State of Cloud' report, virtually all surveyed organizations— 99% of IT and security leaders —experienced at least one attack against their AI infrastructure in the past year. At the same time, the study detects a significant increase in the use of cloud infrastructure to develop, train, and deploy AI models and applications , a shift also observed in the European business environment.
Against this backdrop, the agreement aims to move security from being an afterthought to being embedded in every layer of the hybrid multicloud infrastructure , at every stage of the software lifecycle, and at every endpoint that interacts with AI services. This will enable organizations to advance advanced AI projects while protecting their sensitive data, intellectual property, and regulatory compliance.
For Spanish and European companies subject to regulatory frameworks such as GDPR and future AI regulations , this approach — along with sovereign virtualization initiatives for Europe — is especially relevant, as it strengthens traceability, access control and information protection throughout the entire data flow in the cloud.
End-to-end AI security: from code to cloud
One of the key elements of this expansion of the alliance is the end-to-end AI security offering , designed to cover both the development and execution of AI-based applications on Google Cloud.
Organizations can protect their AI workloads and data in production across services like Vertex AI and Agent Engine using Prisma AIRS. This includes capabilities for monitoring security posture (AI Posture Management), defending environments in real time (AI Runtime Securityâ„¢), and strengthening the protection of autonomous AI agents through AI Agent Security.
In addition, the collaboration includes AI Red Teaming functions for proactive testing , as well as AI Model Security aimed at detecting vulnerabilities in models, something particularly sensitive when working with large models (LLM) or with systems that integrate critical data from Europe.
A key benefit for development teams is that tools like the Google Cloud Agent Development Kit (ADK) will also be covered by Prisma AIRS. This allows the next generation of AI applications built on Google Cloud to be developed with integrated security, reducing friction between development and cybersecurity and avoiding last-minute patches.
This approach is interesting for companies that are creating AI agents to automate business processes , customer service, or data analysis in sectors such as banking, healthcare, industry, or public administration, where compliance and data protection are critical.
Next-generation software firewall and cloud network protection
The agreement also drives the evolution of Palo Alto Networks' next-generation software firewall in Google Cloud environments. The VM-Series firewalls, deployed as software, are designed to protect public, private, and hybrid cloud environments , as well as virtualized platforms.
Thanks to deeper integrations with Google Cloud services, these firewalls will be able to enforce advanced AI-driven security policies , deep packet inspection, and threat prevention in highly distributed environments. This includes everything from cloud-native applications to microservices architectures and containers deployed across multiple regions.
For many European organizations that are in the midst of transitioning to multicloud models, this security layer offers the possibility of maintaining homogeneous policies while accelerating the adoption of Google Cloud, avoiding protection silos and disparate configurations between different clouds.
In practice, this software firewall reinforcement aims to reduce incident response times, improve traffic visibility, and limit the impact of targeted attacks against AI services and critical workloads hosted on the Google platform.
AI-powered SASE and unified experience
Another key aspect of the announcement is the consolidation of an AI-based SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) platform using Palo Alto Networks' Prisma SASE, implemented and tightly integrated with Google Cloud's infrastructure.
Prisma SASE is designed to ensure secure and consistent access for remote users, distributed sites, and mobile devices . The solution combines networking and cloud security capabilities and, in this case, leverages Google's global infrastructure to improve latency and user experience when accessing cloud applications and AI services hosted on Google Cloud.
Within this platform, Prisma Access operates on the Google network , leveraging Google Cloud Interconnect to connect customer WAN infrastructures to multiple clouds and applications. This helps maintain consistent security policies regardless of the access point or the cloud hosting the workloads.
Both companies emphasize that the security experience is simplified and made more unified because the solutions are pre-integrated and jointly validated. This aims to alleviate the burden on cybersecurity teams and reduce the typical interoperability issues between tools from different vendors.
By having a unique view of the hybrid multicloud environment, companies can detect risks, apply controls, and demonstrate compliance in a more agile way, which can make a difference in audits and in managing increasingly demanding regulatory frameworks in the European Union.
New multi-million dollar deal and migration of workloads to Google Cloud
The expansion of the alliance is not limited to the technological sphere. As part of the announcement, Palo Alto Networks confirmed a new multi-year agreement valued at several billion dollars to run its security platforms on Google Cloud's AI infrastructure.
Within this framework, the company plans to migrate key internal workloads from its own operations to Google Cloud, reinforcing its strategic commitment to the platform. This move also aims to leverage the scalability and resilience of Google's infrastructure, which directly impacts the performance of the security services consumed by its customers in Europe and the rest of the world.
The relationship between the two companies is built on a history of collaboration that includes more than 75 joint integrations and over $2.000 billion in sales channeled through the Google Cloud Marketplace. This new step consolidates that trajectory and further orients it toward artificial intelligence use cases.
On the product side, Palo Alto Networks is already using Google's Vertex AI platform and Gemini models to power its copilots, AI-based solutions that help automate and assist security tasks. This integration strengthens engineering collaboration and aims to ensure that all solutions running on Google Cloud are natively optimized for performance, scale, and reliability.
From a market perspective, the company has indicated that the news has had a positive impact on investor perception, with a slight increase in Palo Alto Networks' share price following the announcement, reflecting confidence in the potential of this alliance within the AI-based cybersecurity ecosystem.
Messages from top management and a focus on trust
During the presentation of the agreement, BJ Jenkins, president of Palo Alto Networks, emphasized that boards of directors are asking themselves how to harness the power of AI without increasing exposure to new threats . He explained that the goal is to eliminate the friction between security and development, and to offer a unified platform where advanced protection is a natural part of the process of creating new solutions.
Jenkins emphasized that, together with Google, they are deeply integrating AI-powered security into the Google Cloud architecture , so that the platform itself acts as a proactive defense system. In this way, security becomes an intrinsic component of the cloud environment rather than an external add-on.
For his part, Matt Renner, president and chief revenue officer of Google Cloud, emphasized that more and more companies are turning to both companies to protect their applications and data in an integrated way . This expansion of the alliance, he indicated, is designed to provide mutual customers with the right tools to secure their most critical AI infrastructures and to create new AI agents with built-in security from the start.
Both executives agree that the growth of generative AI and intelligent agents demands a change in mindset: security must be present from the design phase, encompassing everything from code and models to networks and user access . In this sense, the alliance aims to serve as a benchmark for organizations that want to advance in AI without neglecting security.
Taken together, the initiatives presented aim to offer companies in Spain, Europe and other markets an ecosystem in which AI innovation and cybersecurity advance hand in hand , facilitating compliance with regulatory obligations and reducing the risk associated with the rapid adoption of new technologies.
The expansion of cooperation between Palo Alto Networks and Google Cloud is thus emerging as a significant step in the evolution of cloud security and the protection of artificial intelligence projects, aligning infrastructure, services, and AI models with an integrated security layer that seeks to provide greater control, visibility, and confidence to organizations of all sizes.
