Topic
33 facts from 6 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2018
Nikesh Arora joined Palo Alto Networks in 2018, when it was known as a next-generation firewall company, and the host says it has since grown six to seven times in size.
“He joined Palo Alto in 2018, when it was the next gen firewall player and has since grown it to six to seven times the size.”
2018
Arora says the average time for an attacker to break in and steal data was three to four days when he started at Palo Alto, and the fastest his firm has seen is 23 minutes.
“the average time to identify a target, get through it and exfiltrate data was in the three to four day timeframe. The fastest we've seen, I think right now is 23 min.”
2020
Nikesh Arora said that since the pandemic began he has spoken with 8,000 Palo Alto Networks employees in small groups.
“since then, I've talked to 8,000 employees in the company on the one sort of small group setting basis.”
2025
Palo Alto Networks acquired Protect AI for more than $700 million, about three years after the company was founded, according to Ed Sim.
“Palo just bought one of my companies, uh, Protect AI, for over $700 million last year, and that was three years after founding.”
2026
Palo Alto Networks' 2026 identity security landscape study, as cited by Craig Unger, found 109 machine identities per human identity in an average enterprise.
“It showed that there's 109 machine identities per human identity in an average enterprise.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora had served as CEO of Palo Alto Networks for about six years at the time of this conversation, during which he expanded and reorganized the company.
“Over his six-year tenure, Nikesh has expanded and reorganized the business to meet the full suite of enterprise and government client needs”
Undated
Palo Alto Networks packages machine learning, neural networks and reinforcement learning into what it calls 'precision AI'.
“we have packaged a whole bunch of AI slash machine learning and neural networks and reinforcement learning into what we we we politely call precision AI”
Undated
Nikesh Arora says Palo Alto Networks connects to a company's security systems and analyzes the data in real time with machine learning and precision AI.
“We are connected to every security system that exists in a company. We analyze that data real time using machine learning and precision AI.”
Undated
Palo Alto Networks acquired about nineteen companies in roughly six years, according to CEO Nikesh Arora.
“So we've bought about nineteen companies in the last six years with the premise that somebody else has figured out a way”
Undated
Nikesh Arora says Palo Alto Networks puts the leaders of acquired companies in charge of the related product areas, with Palo Alto teams working for them.
“we make our teams work for them. That's rule number one, you know, take the smarter people, take the people who are really passionate about this, get them to lead these things.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora says Palo Alto Networks gives acquired startups more resources so they need not worry about fundraising or hiring.
“we actually double down and give them more resources because we say, listen, the whole point of getting you to come be part of our fold”
Undated
Nicolai Tangen said the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund's stake in Palo Alto Networks is worth more than $1 billion.
“We own 1.1 point 2% of the company, translating into more than $1 billion.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks had a market capitalization of about $18 billion when he joined seven years earlier and around $120 billion at the time of the interview.
“Seven years ago, when I started, were approximately $18 billion in market cap, and today we're around 120, give or take.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said that when he joined, Palo Alto Networks saw cybersecurity as a roughly $200 billion annual industry in which it held about 1.5% share.
“our thesis was it's about 200 billion dollar revenue industry annually. And we were at one and a half percent market share, and we were one of the top three players in the market.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks had grown to about 4-5% of the cybersecurity market and possibly 8% of its product market.
“We're blessed that we're now about four to 5% of the market and possibly 8% of the product market, which is better than one and a half percent.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks acquired about twenty companies because it was late in its innovation cycle and could not wait four years to build products.
“We had to buy twenty companies because we were we were sort of on the back foot or late in our innovation cycle, and we couldn't wait four years.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said founder Nir Zuk served in Israel's Unit 8200, worked in the security sector, and then started Palo Alto Networks.
“he worked in in Unit 8,200 in Israel. Uh, he saw opportunities, he came, he worked in the security sector, he decided to spin out and start Palo Alto Networks.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said the Palo Alto Networks board hired him despite no cybersecurity experience because the company already had 5,000 people who understood cybersecurity.
“They said to me, we have 5,000 people who understand cybersecurity really well, so we don't need one more person who understands cybersecurity.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks pivoted to run everything in the public cloud and closed its own data centers.
“And so we pivoted our company, we burned down our data centers, we don't have data centers, we run everything in the public cloud.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks is the only vendor with twenty-four products in the top-right of the Gartner-style magic quadrant.
“Well, we're the only people who have twenty four products in the magic quadrant in the top right.”
Undated
Nikesh Arora said Palo Alto Networks sold over a thousand platformization deals in the previous twelve months.
“We sold over a thousand of these deals in the last twelve months, which is great.”
Undated
Arora says Palo Alto Networks is buying an identity security company because traditional identity tools only verify people at login.
“That's why we're buying this identity company, because identity companies today say, Oh, I checked you in the door, you're fine.”
Undated
Arora says Palo Alto Networks has grouped its product lines into three platforms.
“We have 44 magic, Quadrant and Stoplight mentions. We've turned that into three platforms now.”
Undated
Arora says Palo Alto Networks has bought 27 companies and was about to make its largest acquisition, pending approval.
“I think we bought 27 companies so far, and about to buy our largest one if we get approval to get it done.”
Undated
Arora says Palo Alto Networks acquired Protect AI, a company that scans AI models and runs continuous red-team attacks against them.
“So there's a company called Protect AI, which was actually assessing models, they were doing persistent red teaming against the AI models”
Undated
Arora says Palo Alto Networks built an AI firewall to keep enterprises' AI systems controlled and data from leaking.
“So we built effectively what we called an AI firewall.”
Undated
Arora says he meets 50 employees every two weeks to check whether the company's strategy has been understood.
“I meet 50 employees every two weeks and I ask them questions.”
Undated
Arora says an AI coding agent found a vulnerability in Palo Alto Networks security code that the company would otherwise only have discovered after it was exploited.
“I've seen the vibe coding agent find a vulnerability in security code at Palo Alto, which we wouldn't have found unless it was out in the wild.”
Undated
Arora says he tells his staff that customer support exists because of bad products, and he moved support closer to product teams at Palo Alto Networks.
“I always joke internally, I tell my people customer support exists because we build bad products”
Undated
Palo Alto Networks' quantum approach is built on three pillars: discover, protect and accelerate.
“It's a comprehensive platform based strategy built upon three key pillars, discover, protect, and accelerate.”
Undated
Palo Alto Networks offers a quantum readiness dashboard that gives leaders real-time visibility into their cryptographic risk.
“So we start with a quantum readiness dashboard to give leaders real time visibility into the organization's cryptographic risk posture.”
Undated
Palo Alto Networks introduced fourteen new next-generation firewall models engineered for the processing demands of post-quantum cryptography.
“We recently introduced fourteen new models of our next generation firewall that are specifically engineered to handle the high performance processing demands of post quantum cryptography.”
Undated
Palo Alto Networks says its cipher translation technology secures traffic to and from legacy applications with post-quantum protection without a full upgrade.
“We have developed cipher translation, an industry first technology that allows an organization to secure the communication to and from legacy applications without a full upgrade, instantly making them quantum ready.”
Episodes