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Bytes Software Services

Palo Alto Cortex Xpanse

Cortex Xpanse is an Active Attack Surface Management (ASM) solution that helps your organization actively discover, analyse and respond to unknown risks in all connected systems and exposed services.
Cortex Xpanse provides complete, current, and accurate visibility into your public-facing infrastructure without any manual intervention from your security teams. bssgc

Features

  • Monitor and enforce corporate policies and compliance
  • Detect, Manage and Mitigate risk from unknown shadow IT operations
  • Detect, Manage & Mitigate risk from supply chain vulnerabilities
  • Continuous Artificial Intelligence (AI) Machine Learning (ML) driven security monitoring
  • Provision of daily CFAA-compliant vulnerability scanning of known assets
  • Full 'cradle to grave' Discovery Analysis Remediation via integrated automation
  • Inclusive of ongoing security rule additions updates Palo Alto Networks
  • No requirement for Hardware Software Agents or Firewall Rule Changes
  • Highly extensible solution with deep integration capabilities
  • Provision of detailed metrics inclusive of pre-built widget driven dashboards

Benefits

  • Reduce the risk of Malware & Ransomware infection
  • Eliminate unknown Shadow IT / Cloud operations
  • Significantly improve on Zero-Day response times
  • Expand due-diligence processes for Merger & Acquisition (M&A) assessments
  • Detect & eliminate supply chain vulnerabilities
  • Gain full visibility of all public facing Internet operations
  • Reduce Cyber Insurance premiums
  • Implementation and compliance with NCSC cyber security guidance

Pricing

£1 a unit

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at tenders@bytes.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

9 7 5 3 5 4 7 8 6 4 1 2 1 4 0

Contact

Bytes Software Services Chris Swani
Telephone: +44 (0) 7951 326815
Email: tenders@bytes.co.uk

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
What software services is the service an extension to
1. Attack Surface Management
2. Asset Management
3. Vulnerability Management
4. Supply Chain Management
5. Cyber risk management
7. Vulnerability testing
8. Shadow IT monitoring
9. Cortex XSIAM
Cloud deployment model
Public cloud
Service constraints
Platform is wholly SaaS based and requires no agent software or internal infrastructure
System requirements
N/A

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
24x7x365 Support
Priority 1 (Critical) - < 1 Hour
Priority 2 (High) - 2 Hours
Priority 3 (Medium) - 4 Hours
Priority 4 (Low) - 8 Business Hours
Support Service Level Agreements (SLA) are identical for Monday to Friday and Weekends/Public Holidays.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
Yes
Online ticketing support accessibility
None or don’t know
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
24 hours, 7 days a week
Web chat support
No
Onsite support
Yes, at extra cost
Support levels
All Cortex products from Palo Alto Networks come with a standard support offering included which entitles the customer to 24x7x365 email and telephone support.
Other 'enhanced support' options exist inclusive of premium customer success support and provision of dedicated engineers for short or long term engagements - all such options can be negotiated and applied as required
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
As a customer or partner of Palo Alto Networks, provision to our online training platform (Beacon - https://beacon.paloaltonetworks.com/student/catalog) is made available. Which enables customers and partners to learn at their own pace and only invest in classroom training either when they are ready or if they need to at all.
Palo Alto Networks offers on-site training (EDU-210, EDU-214, EDU-220, EDU-330, and more) and online training (EDU-110, EDU-114, EDU-120, etc.).
In addition, publicly accessible user-documentation which details everything from initial setup through to ongoing maintenance & usage and how to use the API.
Professional Services are also available in the form of "Quickstart" packages to rapidly onboard organisations.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
Cloud data that Palo Alto Networks hold on an organisation/tenant can be exported and deleted by contacting Palo Alto Networks support. If no contact is made data will automatically be purged after 90 days post cessation of the contract(s).
Customers have full access to data through the Expander API. All data may be retrieved and stored in another system prior to contract end date.
End-of-contract process
At the end of the contract, if the organisation chooses not to renew and continue with the service all data pertaining to the organisation is deleted. If the organisation chooses to renew then the service continues as normal. 90-days prior to the contract expiration date an initial reminder email is sent, followed up by gradually increasing reminders until the date of expiration.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
No
Service interface
Yes
User support accessibility
None or don’t know
Description of service interface
The admin interface provides users the ability to set up integrations with cloud providers and Prisma Cloud, as well as control over active policies.
Accessibility standards
None or don’t know
Description of accessibility
Expander is accessible through the web UI and through its extensive API.
Accessibility testing
N/A
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
There is full parity between the UI and the API
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • Open API (also known as Swagger)
  • HTML
  • PDF
API sandbox or test environment
No
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
Admin users can adjust available policies based on customer risk tolerance. Can also set up integrations with AWS and Prisma Cloud to ingest known cloud assets.

Scaling

Independence of resources
The service is provided in a SaaS model, and resources to discover, analyse, store and access the data collected are provided by the underlying cloud platform used to deliver the service. The system is architected for redundancy of capacity and dynamically scales based on the load required. Each customer has their own separate tenant

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
The number of assets discovered
Trend lines for assets discovered
Reporting types
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

Supplier type
Reseller providing extra support
Organisation whose services are being resold
Palo Alto

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Developed Vetting (DV)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
Other locations
User control over data storage and processing locations
No
Datacentre security standards
Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
Penetration testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
  • Other
Other data at rest protection approach
Data is encrypted at rest using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256)
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Data may be exported using the Expander API, generated reports, or CSV download.
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
  • PDF
  • JSON
Data import formats
CSV

Data-in-transit protection

Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • Other
Other protection between networks
All communications are over an HTTPS / TLS encrypted connection
Data protection within supplier network
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • Other
Other protection within supplier network
All communications are over an HTTPS / TLS encrypted connection

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
Cortex Xpanse Services shall be
available 99.9% of the time, measured monthly, excluding scheduled maintenance. Further, any downtime resulting from outages of third-party connections or utilities or other reasons beyond the control of Palo Alto Networks will be excluded.

Customers are credited 2% of monthly service fees (downtime credit) for each breach. A breach is defined as a period of 60 consecutive minutes of downtime.
Approach to resilience
The service is designed around a major cloud provider's infrastructure using their services to provide resilience
Outage reporting
Service status is reported at https://expanse.statuspage.io/

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Username and password are required, and an email or authenticator app MFA challenge is issued as well
Access restriction testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

Access to user activity audit information
No audit information available
Access to supplier activity audit information
No audit information available
How long system logs are stored for
At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

ISO/IEC 27001 certification
Yes
Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
PECB MS
ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
2020-07-06
What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
N/A
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Cyber essentials
No
Cyber essentials plus
No
Other security certifications
Yes
Any other security certifications
ISO/IEC 27701:2019

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
Yes
Security governance standards
ISO/IEC 27001
Information security policies and processes
The Information Protection Process & Procedures Policy establishes controls to ensure that the security policies (that address purpose, scope, roles, responsibilities, management commitment, and coordination among organizational entities), processes, and procedures are maintained and used to manage protection of information systems and assets, including a system development lifecylce to manage systems.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
Palo Alto Networks SOC team monitors all environments for potential compromises 24x7. Security event and incident management processes are in place including a formal Information Security Incident Response Plan. Security, availability, and confidentiality related security events are assigned to Information Security for evaluation and resolution.
Vulnerability management type
Undisclosed
Vulnerability management approach
Critical/Emergency patch must be applied and validated within 72 hrs. when a patch is available, otherwise compensating controls must be invoked.
A security patch that addresses a vulnerability which is rated as high risk must be applied and validated within 30 days.
Vulnerability scans are performed at least weekly.
Protective monitoring type
Undisclosed
Protective monitoring approach
Palo Alto Networks SOC team monitors all environments for potential compromises 24x7. Security event and incident management processes are in place including a formal Information Security Incident Response Plan. Security, availability, and confidentiality related security events are assigned to Information Security for evaluation and resolution.
Incident management type
Undisclosed
Incident management approach
Palo Alto Networks has a incident management program that has been approved by management and communicated to all relevant parties. The incident management program is owned and reviewed by our Information Security department. Reporting procedures are defined in the SLA.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Social Value

Social Value

Social Value

Fighting climate change

Fighting climate change

We take our environmental management and the impact we have on the environment very seriously. We have environmental policies in place and hold the ISO14001 accreditation. Our environmental assessments are conducted annually by an external Lead ESOS Assessor; they are signed-off by the board and compliance reported to the regulator (the Environment Agency). Our environmental policy is published on our website at https://www.bytes.co.uk/company/sustainability/environmental.
Bytes achieved carbon net zero in March 2022 through approved carbon offsetting schemes. We are always seeking to reduce our impact on the environment. We aim to minimise waste, reduce pollutants and use renewable materials. Our offices have recycling facilities for cans, plastic and paper. We aim to reduce our office printing to zero within the next few years.
An Environmental Steering Committee has been established to coordinate environmental activities and drive change.
To drastically reduce our emissions, we have switched to renewable energy. Our Head Office has reached our first milestone of using a specialist 100% renewable electricity provider. We are also exploring options to install solar panels on our Headquarters building.
Other environmental initiatives include installing electric vehicle charging points and encouraging staff to commute to work without the car (setting up a car share network and installing secure cycle parking).
We produce a SECR (Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting) report that details the companies energy consumption and carbon emissions. This report is produced annually by an independent assessor.
This report provides details of our emissions in Scope 1, 2 and 3 categories. It details the activities previously taken to reduce emissions and also recommendations for further improvements.
For scope 1,2 and 3 emissions we aim to reduce these by 50% by 2025-2026 from our 2021 baseline.
We aim to be Net Zero by 2040, covering our own operational emissions.

Pricing

Price
£1 a unit
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
No

Service documents

Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at tenders@bytes.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.