As digital threats continue to multiply in both number and severity, cybersecurity has been a growing concern for IT leaders globally.

Cybersecurity consultant group Accenture Security has been named Palo Alto Network Inc.’s Government Systems Integrator of the Year for four years, embracing zero-trust network infrastructures as the pandemic shakes up the remote workforce and cybersecurity.

“We’ve seen a lot of growth, and we’re excited about the opportunity that’s ahead of us and the meaningful outcomes that we’ve been providing our clients as it relates to vendor consolidation, toll consolidation and tech debt reduction,” said Rex Thexton (pictured), senior managing director at Accenture PLC. “There’s a lot of opportunity here to simplify our clients’ lives with them.”

Thexton spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante at Ignite ’22, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the consequences faced when moving to digital security, what executives are looking for to secure their data, multicloud solution security and more. (* Disclosure below.)

A secure cloud is an innovative cloud

Chief information security officers are voicing the need to leverage true automation and orchestration, breaking the headcount model, according to Thexton. With the lack of cybersecurity talent in the market, Accenture partnered with Palo Alto Networks to help drive innovation to assist with filling in the skill gaps.

“Our clients need scale. They need to be able to go fast and at pace, and they need to do it with confidence securely,” Thexton stated. “And that’s one of the big focuses.”

The conversation concluded with the pair discussing what’s next for the partnership between Palo Alto Networks and Accenture. Secure access service edge, an emerging network architecture providing cloud security tools as-a-service, is the big focus for now.

“What we learned out of these last few years is that these concepts work, but they can actually scale out to drive significant cost savings,” Thexton said. “At Accenture, we don’t have a network backbone anymore. We’re pure cloud wide area networking, and we’re leveraging the internet for that. I think that what we’re trying to do with Palo Alto and driving cloud WAN and SASE as a service will be super meaningful.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Ignite ’22:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Ignite ’22. Neither Palo Alto Networks Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE