I’m proud to share that Palo Alto Networks has named NWN its 2026 North America State, Local & Education Partner of the Year — one of the highest distinctions Palo Alto Networks confers, reserved for a small, elite group of partners worldwide. This award belongs to our engineers, architects, and account teams who show up every day for our clients’ most strategic technology challenges, and to our counterparts at Palo Alto Networks who have built a differentiated approach with us. It caps a record year for our alliance, one where our business with Palo Alto Networks grew more than 50%, and it reflects what happens when two organizations decide to build and invest together rather than just sell together. 

The story here is about alignment towards a shared goal.  This past  April, our teams integrated Prisma Access monitoring directly into NWN’s Experience Management Platform (EMP), so our public sector and enterprise customers get unified visibility across service connections, data centers, and global status, with faster threat detection and response built in. That kind of work only happens when field teams on both sides are in the trenches together, and it’s part of why we were also named a Palo Alto Networks NextWave Diamond Innovator this year. In an era when AI is reshaping both sides of the threat landscape, we hear our clients loud and clear that they need a full-stack managed security approach that integrates as core to their technology footprint and helps to drive their business outcomes. That’s what this partnership is built to deliver. 

Palo Alto Networks President of Strategics East Tom O’Brien joined us to keynote our Newport Summit in June, putting it better than I could: “The partnership and the platform combined creates tremendous value — one plus one equals three.” That’s exactly what is playing out in the market today. 

Watch the keynote (https://vimeo.com/1204227307/7666f469d7) to hear Tom’s take on defending against AI-accelerated threats, and visit our offerings page (https://nwn.ai/solutions/security/) to learn more about how NWN and Palo Alto Networks are teaming up for our clients.