Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Talon Cyber Security, an Israeli startup selling a secure browser technology to enterprise customers.
Palo Alto first announced plans to buy Talon in November 2023 in a deal pegged at $625 million.
Talon had raised about $125 million in multiple funding rounds and has gained traction with software that helps businesses deal with risks from unmanaged devices.
When announcing the acquisition, Palo Alto vice president Anand Oswal said the plan is to bake Talon’s enterprise browser technology into its Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) suite to secure all devices – managed and unmanaged – with complete zero-trust principles.
Oswal explained that current approaches to securing unmanaged devices are ineffective and are forcing corporate defenders to either ignore security entirely in favor of flexibility and user experience, or to adopt cumbersome technologies that add operational complexities.
With the Talon purchase, he said Palo Alto gets new technology to enable unmanaged devices to securely access enterprise apps and protect them from malware, phishing and keylogger-type attacks.
Oswal said the new technology also lets Palo Alto provide data security controls natively in the browser to prevent data exfiltration and software that makes it easy for IT administrators to onboard new users and have a single sign-on (SSO) integration framework on all devices and operating systems.
“We are thrilled to welcome Talon to Palo Alto Networks,” said Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. “Most work today occurs via web browsers, often on unmanaged devices, which poses enormous security risks.”
Arora said Palo Alto plans to extend Talon’s Enterprise Browser technology to “qualified SASE AI customers” at no additional cost.
Palo Alto’s acquisition of Talon comes just months after Microsoft jostled its way into the market with a new product promising a native browsing experience tightly integrated with enterprise-grade security and manageability features.
