From Dashboards to Agents
Palo Alto Networks has acquired Console, an AI-native platform that enables organizations to build agentic workflows — systems where AI agents can investigate alerts, prioritize work, and take remediation actions autonomously. The deal was announced September 1, the same day the cybersecurity giant reported fiscal Q4 and full-year 2026 financial results that beat analyst estimates.
"Security operations can no longer be about managing dashboards and queuing tickets just to help humans work faster," said Nikesh Arora, Chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. "By bringing Console into Palo Alto Networks, our customers can have a direct conversation with data and build agentic workflows in natural language that helps alert and remediate issues automatically."
What Console Does
Console is an AI-native platform designed to let organizations express operational goals in natural language, with intelligent software handling the complexity required to achieve them. The platform enables teams to create workflows that automatically identify and resolve security issues — from alert triage to incident response — without requiring human intervention for every step.
Andre Serban, Co-Founder and CEO of Console, described the vision: "We built Console around a simple idea: people should be able to express an operational goal, and intelligent software should handle the complexity required to achieve it."
The acquisition will deepen Palo Alto's agentic capabilities within its Cortex security operations platform, supporting teams as they investigate signals, prioritize work, and take action across their environments.
The Shift to Software-as-Agent
The deal signals a broader industry trend toward what Arora calls "software-as-an-agent" — a model where security platforms don't just help humans work faster, but autonomously handle routine operations. As AI reshapes the threat landscape, organizations need security tools that can operate at machine speed, analyze vast amounts of data, and respond to threats in real time.
Console's customers have already demonstrated that AI agents can dramatically reduce operational overhead, according to the company. Joining Palo Alto Networks gives the platform access to the security expertise, infrastructure, and global customer base needed to bring that vision to the world's largest enterprises.
