Interactive Story by empor.top

The Platform That Ate
Cybersecurity

How a disgruntled engineer built a $100B giant by breaking all the rules of the firewall market.

Begin the Story arrow_downward
Nir Zuk

Nir Zuk

Founder & CTO

link
history 1999 - 2005

The Check Point Defector

It’s 1999. Nir Zuk is a principal engineer at Check Point Software, the firewall king. He sees the future: the internet is changing, apps are hiding, and simple "packet filtering" is becoming obsolete.

Check Point doesn't listen. So Zuk quits. After a stint at Juniper (via NetScreen), he realizes the incumbents are too bureaucratic to innovate. In 2005, he launches Palo Alto Networks with a radical idea: a firewall that identifies applications, not just ports.

"We need to think beyond packets and ports."

— Nir Zuk, 1999

block

The Problem

Legacy firewalls were blind. "Port 80" meant web traffic, but it could be Facebook, Salesforce, or a virus.

visibility

The Solution

App-ID™: Inspect the traffic stream to identify the specific application signature, regardless of port.

CORE TECHNOLOGY

See What The Firewall Sees

Traditional firewalls only saw "envelopes" (Ports). Palo Alto Networks opened the envelope (App-ID). Toggle the switch below to experience the difference.

Technology: LEGACY MODE
Threats Blocked
0
Apps Identified
0
Unknown / Port 80
Business (Salesforce)
Social (Facebook)
Threat / Malware

*Simulation: In 2008, early demos like this convinced CISOs to replace their entire infrastructure. Source

Nikesh Arora

Nikesh Arora

CEO (2018 - Present)

Ex-Google, Ex-SoftBank.

Strategy
Platformization M&A Blitz Rule of 50

The Platform Pivot

In 2018, Nikesh Arora joined with a mandate: Transformation. The firewall business was maturing. To grow, PANW needed to become a "Platform" — owning Cloud (Prisma) and Operations (Cortex).

trending_up The "Rule of 50"

A rare feat in software: Revenue Growth % + Free Cash Flow Margin % > 50.
Arora has maintained this for 5 consecutive years while acquiring 17 companies.

Growth
Margin

The strategy was controversial. Wall Street questioned the "giving away" of products to drive platform adoption. But the results spoke: Market cap surged from $18B (2018) to over $120B (2025).

The M&A Machine

$4 Billion deployed. 17 Companies acquired. Hover over the nodes to see how they built the platform.

Logo
PLATFORM
CORE
Demisto
Twistlock
Expanse
Bridgecrew
Talon

Select a Node

Click on an acquisition to see its impact.

The Future: Precision AI

From 4 hours to 4 seconds. Experience Cortex XSIAM.

cortex_xsiam_terminal — ssh secure
System Online. Monitoring 50M+ endpoints...
AI Models: Loaded.
Waiting for events...
$ _