Palo Alto Networks (PANW) is bringing its enterprise-class security to small business and home markets with Okyo, a Wi-Fi 6 hardware device announced today.
At $349 a year, the security and router system seems attractively priced for small businesses and companies looking to secure remote workers, who have surged in number since the start of the Covid pandemic 18 months ago.
The device will face tougher competition in the consumer market, where antivirus software with machine-learning capabilities can be had for around $100 a year.
Still, the level of protection Palo Alto offers should find some takers among home users. We’ve named Palo Alto to a dozen top enterprise security products lists, a number matched only by longtime cybersecurity market leaders Check Point, Broadcom’s Symantec business and McAfee. Palo Alto’s unbroken string of stellar independent security tests landed the company at the top of our recent top cybersecurity companies list.
With malware, ransomware, phishing and remote attack protection, online activity monitoring, Wi-Fi 6 performance, support for 30 devices and the ability to discover devices on a network, Okyo customers will be getting a lot for their money. At $399 a year for 100 devices and $449 a year for unlimited devices, Okyo’s value increases quickly.
The device was more than 18 months in development, Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora, special projects EVP Mario Queiroz and CTO and co-founder Nir Zuk said in a video announcing the device.
The device seems simple enough to activate on its own, requiring just a mobile app and the scanned QR code on the device to launch, as demonstrated by Queiroz. The device will automatically begin discovering devices and monitoring the network.
Okyo will begin shipping this fall, with an enterprise edition that ties into Palo Alto’s Prisma secure access service edge (SASE) technology slated for 2022.
It’s a bold move by the pioneer of high-end security technologies like next-generation firewalls (NGFW) and extended detection and response (XDR). Home users can only hope that Palo Alto and its competitors move further into the home market.
Further reading: Top Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) Solutions
