Palo Alto Networks

Vienna, VA – October 22, 2026 -- Target took three of the top honors at the 2026 RH-ISAC awards: Team of the Year, Cybersecurity Practitioner of the Year for senior threat intel analyst Chris De La Rosa, and a first-place finish in the Sharing & Collaboration Challenge team rankings. The Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center announced the winners at its Member Celebration Dinner and Awards Ceremony on April 15 in Austin, Texas.

Crocs CISO Lena Taylor wins Peer Choice Award for CISO of the Year

Lena Taylor, CISO at Crocs, received the 2026 Peer Choice Award for CISO of the Year. The award goes to a thought leader whose experience adds strategic value to the wider community.

Tel Aviv – – October 07, 2026 -- Cato Networks has appointed Chad Gardner as chief revenue officer, tasking him with leading the company's global sales organization as enterprises converge networking and security infrastructure while adopting AI.

Gardner joins from Blackfoot Communications, where he oversaw wholesale, premier, and enterprise business units

Prior to Blackfoot, Gardner served as vice president of sales for North America at SambaNova Systems. His background includes multiple leadership roles at Palo Alto Networks, including vice president of global SASE sales and vice president of sales for West Majors, as well as VP leadership positions at Netskope. He has also held executive sales roles at Denali Advanced Integration, NetApp, and Cisco Systems.

Delray Beach, Fla. – – October 07, 2026 -- The global AI Cybersecurity Market is set to grow from $31.25 billion in 2026 to $95.25 billion by 2031, a 25.0% compound annual growth rate, according to MarketsandMarkets. The market stood at $22.07 billion in 2025, underscoring an accelerating pace of enterprise adoption as organizations race to counter machine-speed cyberattacks.

Delray Beach, Fla. – October 02, 2026 -- The global Extended Detection and Response (XDR) market is projected to grow from USD 10.98 billion in 2026 to USD 38.09 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 28.2%, according to MarketsandMarkets. The market stood at USD 7.92 billion in 2025, reflecting accelerating enterprise adoption of unified threat detection platforms.

Identity-based attacks drive integration of detection signals

Growing reliance on cloud applications, hybrid identities, service accounts, and machine-to-machine authentication is pushing organizations toward XDR to correlate identity behavior with endpoint and cloud activity. Microsoft notes that non-human identities can carry high privileges, making lateral-movement detection a priority for security teams managing increasingly distributed infrastructure.

Holmdel, N.J. – September 30, 2026 -- Index Engines' CyberSense Research Lab found that 47.8% of 1,064 ransomware strains detonated in the first half of 2026 relied on directory-entry destruction, more than double the 18.3% that used full encryption, marking a shift away from techniques that trigger standard security scans.

Attackers now suppress the telltale signs security tools rely on

The lab documented new ransomware built to preserve file extensions and timestamps, maintain low entropy, and encrypt only selected sections of files slowly enough to avoid detection thresholds. One variant, Encoder, destroyed file content while leaving names, sizes, timestamps, and entropy readings unchanged, according to Jim McGann, CMO of Index Engines. A surface scan would report that data as clean, McGann said, while CyberSense identified the corruption by analyzing file content and structure directly.

Delray Beach, Fla. – September 25, 2026 -- The Shadow AI Risk & Governance Market is set to expand from USD 1.39 billion in 2026 to USD 8.64 billion by 2032, a compound annual growth rate of 35.6%, according to MarketsandMarkets. The 2025 baseline stood at USD 1.02 billion, underscoring rapid acceleration as enterprises confront AI tools deployed outside centrally managed IT environments.

Unauthorized AI usage forces enterprises toward auditable governance systems

Corporate compliance teams are shifting from written AI policies to platforms that generate traceable evidence of risk assessments, approvals, and monitoring outcomes. This demand is pushing vendors to automate evidence collection and maintain audit trails across AI applications, rather than relying on manual documentation.

Santa Clara, Calif. – September 22, 2026 -- Palo Alto Networks has launched Unit 42 Continuous Frontier AI Defense, a new agentic offensive security service built on Anthropic's Claude Mythos 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6-Cyber models, aimed at helping enterprises find and fix exposures before attackers exploit them at machine speed.

The service responds to a shift in attacker capability: threat actors using AI have compressed breach cycles by nearly 97% in some cases, cutting the time from vulnerability discovery to exploitation from weeks to hours, according to Palo Alto Networks.

Atlanta and Washington – September 17, 2026 -- Global cybersecurity exposure tied to artificial intelligence could reach as much as $3 trillion, according to Michael Gargiulo, CEO of VPN.com, a company specializing in cybersecurity and domain name brand protection.

Palo Alto Networks flagged $1 trillion in cybersecurity debt

On a recent earnings call, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora said approximately $1 trillion in global cybersecurity infrastructure must be modernized to counter automated threats that operate instantaneously.

Santa Clara, Calif. – September 11, 2026 -- Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) confirmed its management team will present at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference on September 10, 2026, at 3:45 p.m. PT.

Executives to address investors at flagship Goldman Sachs tech event

The cybersecurity company disclosed the scheduled appearance as part of its ongoing investor relations calendar. A live audio webcast of the presentation will be made available through the "Investors" section of the company's corporate website.

Webcast access signals continued transparency push for institutional investors

Palo Alto Networks did not disclose additional details on presentation content or specific executives attending. The company noted that further information on upcoming investor events will be posted to its investor relations portal.