Santa Clara: TECHzMagazine – News Desk
On August 22, 2026, NTT DATA and Palo Alto Networks forged a multi-year global strategic partnership targeting $1 billion in joint business by 2029. The collaboration, marking Palo Alto Networks’ first strategic alliance of its kind with a global systems integrator, unites its AI-powered cybersecurity platforms and Unit 42 threat intelligence with NTT DATA’s deep consulting, engineering, and managed services capabilities. The alliance aims to help enterprises confidently adopt AI, modernize cyber defenses, simplify complex environments, and establish cyber resilience.
To fuel this initiative, NTT DATA will dedicate a force of more than 2,000 Palo Alto Networks-certified professionals and Forward Deployed Engineers. Backed by joint investments, this direct engineering collaboration grants NTT DATA early access to new Palo Alto Networks platform features to rapidly deliver emerging AI security services. This workforce will be supported by NTT DATA’s global scale, which includes over 7,500 cybersecurity professionals operating across more than 70 delivery centers and 20 Autonomous Cyber Defense Centers worldwide. NTT DATA’s parent organization, NTT Group, reinforces this depth through an annual research and development investment of over $3 billion.
Initial security solutions stemming from the alliance will address the complex infrastructure challenges faced by highly regulated industries, specifically financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and the public sector. The companies have identified six primary transformation areas for their joint offerings: autonomous security operations centers leveraging automation for threat detection, AI governance ensuring safe enterprise use, identity security, Zero Trust and SASE network architectures, resilient cloud security for scaling workloads, and firewall modernization.
Abhijit Dubey, CEO and Chief AI Officer of NTT DATA, Inc., stated that while AI redefines the enterprise, it also transforms the threat landscape at unprecedented speed, requiring a new approach to cyber resilience that combines AI-driven security, deep industry expertise, and global scale. Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, emphasized that expanding this alliance allows enterprises to eliminate legacy complexity and move fast without sacrificing safety. Building upon their existing Frontier AI collaboration, the $1 billion agreement translates the synergy between best-in-class threat intelligence and global managed services into tangible security outcomes.
