American Food & Vending, a leader in the food service industry, has experienced remarkable growth and enhanced its security infrastructure by implementing Palo Alto Networks SASE solutions. Jamie Condon, Vice President of Technology at American Food & Vending, highlights the transformative impact: “Palo Alto Networks SASE solutions have supported the extraordinary growth of this company while improving our overall security posture. Our company has grown substantially without increasing the size of the IT network team. Our team has achieved our goal of installing three new locations a day.” This achievement underscores how strategic technology adoption can drive efficiency and scalability for businesses like American Food & Vending.
Streamlined Deployments and Centralized Management
The deployment of Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access has significantly accelerated the speed and reliability of kiosk installations at new American Food & Vending locations. This rapid deployment capability is crucial for American Food & Vending’s expansion. By centralizing all network traffic through Prisma Access, the company has gained unified control over its entire network, eliminating the burden on their data center. This centralized approach has also removed the need for on-site customer intervention for policy adjustments, streamlining operations and reducing potential delays.
Automation Fuels IT Efficiency and Employee Satisfaction
Prisma SD-WAN has introduced operational simplicity through automation. The Auto VPN feature eliminates the need for manual VPN configuration, automatically generating routing configurations between gateways and branch devices. This automation has effectively halved the initial configuration time, freeing up valuable IT resources.
Furthermore, the self-remediation capabilities of broken VPNs have dramatically reduced troubleshooting time. The IT team’s workload has decreased from addressing issues with multiple branch devices weekly to only a few incidents throughout the past year. According to Thompson, “We’ve been working on implementing new hardware. It’s much easier to troubleshoot issues with all logs and configurations in one place.” Centralized logging consolidates all network events in real time, creating a comprehensive and easily accessible archive, further aiding in efficient management and issue resolution for American Food & Vending’s distributed operations.
These improvements directly contribute to higher employee satisfaction and retention within the IT team. “Our network team is spending significantly less time, especially outside of normal working hours, trying to catch up on branch device changes and reconfigurations. It’s helped their work-life balance a lot,” Thompson notes. This improved work-life balance is a significant factor in maintaining a happy and productive IT workforce at American Food & Vending.
Enhanced Security Posture and Client Confidence
American Food & Vending now benefits from advanced ZTNA 2.0 security, protecting employee devices regardless of location. “Prisma Access with GlobalProtect is really nice for our mobile workforce,” Thompson explains. “The solution gives employees a lot more protection on their local devices when they aren’t at one of our offices.” This is particularly important for a company with a distributed workforce like American Food & Vending.
The company’s commitment to best-in-class security solutions reinforces trust with its clientele. “We always seek best-in-class security solutions. We serve Fortune 500 clients across a broad spectrum of industries, including defense, medical research, manufacturing, and technology. They expect us to have the best technology and cybersecurity solutions implemented. Palo Alto Networks SASE took our cybersecurity posture to the next level,” Condon confirms. This advanced security infrastructure gives American Food & Vending a competitive edge and assures clients of the highest standards of data protection.
