Case Study: IMAA - CNR secures scientific research and cuts incident response to under 20 minutes with Palo Alto Networks

Ensuring hundreds of Italian scientific researchers work securely and with confidence

CNR-IMAA, the Institute for Environmental Analysis within Italy’s National Research Council, conducts satellite, airborne and ground‑based earth observation and supports pan‑European programs such as ACTRIS and CAMS. Its data centre holds petabytes of research data and dynamic virtual workloads, creating a need for high‑availability, low‑latency protection of both north–south and east–west traffic while preventing credential theft, enabling dynamic policies, and automating security management.

To meet those needs CNR‑IMAA deployed Palo Alto Networks ML‑Powered NGFWs in an active/passive high‑availability cluster, centrally managed with Panorama and augmented by GlobalProtect, AutoFocus and Cloud‑Delivered Security Services. The solution provides Layer‑7 visibility, automated threat intelligence and integration with Elastic/Prometheus—reducing false positives, cutting incident response from one day to under 20 minutes, and moving the institute closer to a Zero Trust security posture so researchers can work securely and continuously.

IMAA - CNR

Ermann Ripepi

Head of Infrastructure and Networks