“If You Wanted to Have Civil Disobedience and Start the Process of Unraveling a Society, We're a Pretty Big Target”: How National Gas Is Shielding Itself Against Cyber Threats with Palo Alto Networks

Why It Matters

Securing the nation’s primary energy conduit against escalating cyber threats protects millions of homes and stabilizes the UK’s power grid, making the partnership a strategic imperative for national security and business continuity.

Key Takeaways

• National Gas uses Palo Alto for full‑stack cloud security.
• Migration kept gas flow unchanged while moving workloads cloudward.
• Architecture 2.0 aims for cloud‑agnostic, AI‑enhanced resilience.
• IaC adoption improves consistency, reduces data‑center refresh costs.
• Threat intel team monitors state‑sponsored OT attacks continuously.

Pulse Analysis

National Gas operates the United Kingdom’s National Transmission System, delivering gas that fuels up to 75 % of winter electricity and heats 20 million homes. Because the energy sector now ranks as the top target for cyber adversaries, the company’s security posture is a matter of national importance. Partnering with Palo Alto Networks, National Gas has built a full‑stack defense that spans network firewalls, Prisma Cloud, and emerging XDR capabilities, creating a unified shield for both operational technology and enterprise workloads. This collaboration aligns with the National Cyber Security Centre’s call for hardened critical national infrastructure.

The migration strategy deliberately ring‑fenced the core gas‑flow systems, moving them to the cloud on a like‑for‑like basis to avoid any service disruption. Primary applications now run on Google Cloud Platform while legacy security tools remain on Microsoft Azure, giving the organization flexibility to shift workloads as geopolitical or commercial needs evolve. Palo Alto’s portfolio—covering firewalls, Prisma Cloud, and upcoming XSOAR automation—provides consistent policy enforcement across environments. By adopting infrastructure‑as‑code, National Gas has increased deployment repeatability, cut operating overhead, and eliminated costly data‑center hardware refresh cycles.

Looking ahead, National Gas is building ‘Architecture 2.0’, a cloud‑native, AI‑enabled framework that extends security beyond traditional XDR into SaaS and managed services. The company is deploying SASE edge solutions and iPaaS integrations, allowing identities, privileges, and network termination points to be shifted transparently for users. A robust threat‑intelligence function monitors state‑sponsored OT attacks, ensuring rapid posture adjustments. Emphasizing digital sovereignty, critical keys are stored in external hardware security modules, giving the organization absolute control over its most sensitive assets while maintaining agility for the AI‑driven energy future.