Celona and Palo Alto partner to enhance private 5G network security

Private wireless services specialist Celona is shortly to debut a major integration with cyber security supplier Palo Alto Networks that the two partners hope will enhance security for enterprise devices connecting over privately run 4G and 5G wireless mobile networks.

The integration between Celona’s Orchestrator network management platform and Palo Alto’s Cortex XSOAR security automation and response service – which is to be demonstrated at the upcoming 2024 Mobile World Congress trade fair – will enable users to map their device IMEI/IMSI data and IP addresses in real time to support automated zero-trust policy enforcement.

Such policies could cover areas such as security and incident profiling, secure access, and internet of things (IoT) device behaviour. Additionally, open application programming interfaces (APIs) will allow for the exchange of client information between Palo Alto’s IoT platform and Celona’s Edge operating system (OS).

“For 5G to live up to its promise of transforming industries, enterprises require assurance that the security of 5G networks, services, and applications is robust,” said Leonid Burakovsky, vice-president of product management 5G security at Palo Alto Networks.

“Security built on the principles of a zero-trust architecture has the potential to drive digital transformation across all industries, from manufacturing and industrial sectors to energy, healthcare, and more.

“With Celona we’re offering enterprises an unmatched solution through seamless and secure integration with Celona's open 4G/5G architecture.”

Dariush Afshar, vice-president of business development and strategic operations at Celona, added: “Our integration with Palo Alto Networks strengthens enterprise security strategies by delivering a unified access fabric supporting both private 4G and 5G technologies, allowing customers to now realise true end-to-end zero-trust network security.”

The partners say the integration will be targeted particularly at enterprise customers operating within sectors that make extensive use of the industrial IoT – areas such as transport and logistics, fuel supply, manufacturing, and so on – and hope it will bring such operations “a myriad of tangible benefits”.

These benefits will include the ability to identify and profile connected IoT devices, automate risk assessment, detect malware, exploits and other threats while assuring end-to-end quality of service from client to application over local or wide area networks.

Additionally, they said, integrating Celona’s platform with the Palo Alto next-generation firewall and IoT security offerings will allow for dynamic, real-time, granular security policies to be set up at the subscriber and device-level, not just by IP address. Using IoT cloud-delivered security service licences, they will also allow for further visibility, analytics and security policies or prevention per equipment identifier to be shared across their systems.