In the last blog post in this series on the breaking points of cloud security, we explored how fragmented visibility and the limits of native cloud controls have fractured traditional security operations across AWS and Azure environments.

What many organizations are experiencing today is not simply a tooling gap. It is an operating model that can no longer keep pace with how cloud infrastructure actually works.

Modern cloud architectures are distributed by default and workloads scale dynamically across regions. East-west traffic now dominates north-south flows, encryption is pervasive and AI workloads introduce new communication patterns and dependencies that evolve faster than static security controls can adapt.

Security teams are expected to protect environments that were never designed for infrastructure-heavy, manually operated controls. This results in a persistent tension between developer velocity and risk management, where teams feel forced to choose between shipping fast and staying secure.

That trade-off between speed and security isn’t inevitable. It is a signal that the operating model itself must evolve.

From Infrastructure Management to Security Intent

Traditional cloud security models follow a familiar path: Native controls provide baseline protection, and third-party firewalls are added to close visibility and enforcement gaps across AWS and Azure. Over time, this approach introduces more infrastructure to deploy, more policies to manage and more operational overhead to absorb.

As environments scale, the model breaks under its own weight.

A managed firewall as a service (FWaaS) approach represents a fundamental shift away from infrastructure management and toward security intent. Instead of building, patching, scaling and operating firewall infrastructure, security teams focus on defining what must be protected and how to protect it.

Cloud NGFW from Palo Alto Networks is built natively in partnership with AWS and Azure and delivered as a fully managed service. This is not a virtual appliance repackaged for the cloud. It is designed from the ground up for environments where scale, availability and continuous change are constants.

The outcome is a centralized control plane across AWS and Azure that enables consistent security enforcement without introducing additional operational burden.

Secure: AI-Powered Protection for AWS and Azure Workloads

In modern cloud environments, attackers are no longer waiting outside a single perimeter. They move laterally across virtual private clouds (VPCs) and VNets, blend into encrypted traffic, and exploit gaps between basic network controls and application-layer visibility.

Native cloud firewalls typically focus on Layer 3 and Layer 4 inspection. While effective for segmentation and routing-level enforcement, they lack the context required to detect sophisticated threats hidden within application traffic and east-west flows across AWS and Azure workloads. To compensate, organizations deploy additional tools, increasing complexity without achieving proportional security gains.

Cloud NGFW delivers inline, AI-powered threat prevention designed for these modern traffic patterns. It continuously learns from real-time signals across Palo Alto Networks’ threat intelligence ecosystem to detect and block emerging threats, stopping billions of attacks every day.

This continuous learning loop enables Cloud NGFW to identify unknown malware, command-and-control activity and evasive zero-day exploits that traditional controls miss. The result is a security foundation capable of protecting modern cloud and AI workloads running at scale across AWS and Azure.

And with a 99.99% uptime SLA, organizations can rely on consistent, enterprise-grade protection without compromising availability or performance.

Simplify: Eliminating Operational Overhead with Managed FWaaS

Cloud security should not require constant firefighting. Yet many security teams spend more time patching, scaling and maintaining firewall infrastructure than improving their actual security posture across AWS and Azure.

A managed FWaaS model changes this dynamic.

With Cloud NGFW, Palo Alto Networks handles the underlying infrastructure, software upgrades, patching, scaling and high availability configurations as part of the service. There are no connectors to deploy, no HA pairs to design, and no downtime windows to schedule.

Security teams define policy and intent. Cloud NGFW enforces it consistently.

Organizations adopting this model have seen measurable results. Global service providers have reduced firewall deployment times from days to minutes. Enterprises have eliminated significant portions of manual security tasks, freeing teams to focus on higher-value initiatives that support the business.

This is what a true managed FWaaS looks like. Operational simplicity is not an afterthought but built into the design.

Scale: Infrastructure-Aware Security That Moves at Cloud Speed

Cloud environments are inherently dynamic. Applications scale automatically. Infrastructure is defined through automation, tags, identities and application context rather than static IP addresses. Security controls must adapt at the same pace.

Traditional firewall models struggle in this reality.

Cloud NGFW is infrastructure-aware by design. It understands and leverages the same native constructs cloud teams use every day across AWS and Azure. New workloads are automatically discovered as they are deployed. Security policies follow applications as they move across regions and environments, without manual updates or tickets.

By aligning security enforcement with DevOps workflows, protection scales without introducing friction. Security becomes part of how cloud environments operate, not a constraint placed on them.

The Future of the Firewall: Cloud-Native, Intelligent and Managed by Choice

As cloud adoption accelerates and AI workloads reshape architectures, the traditional perimeter has dissolved. The need for control, however, remains.

This is where firewall strategy becomes critical.

A modern security fabric gives organizations flexibility in how they operate. Teams that want to eliminate operational overhead can adopt a fully managed FWaaS for AWS and Azure. Teams that require direct control can deploy self-managed software firewalls with the same AI-powered protection.

Cloud NGFW represents a foundational step in this evolution. It moves organizations beyond legacy operating assumptions and establishes security that aligns with the realities of cloud infrastructure today.

Not to slow innovation down, but to keep pace with it.

Identify the Risks in Your AWS and Azure Environments

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Start with our free, no-obligation Cloud and AI Risk Assessment (CLARA) to identify active gaps and exposures across your AWS and Azure environments. CLARA helps security leaders pinpoint blind spots and prioritize remediation before risk turns into impact.