Why Google’s $32B Wiz Acquisition Redefines Multicloud Security

When Google Cloud announced its intent to acquire Wiz for a staggering $32 billion, it sent a message far louder than just another big-ticket deal. It was a signal of urgency and ambition.

Google wants to become the most secure cloud for AI, data, and analytics before AWS or Microsoft do.

The price tag wasn’t just about Wiz’s technology. It was about owning the trust layer for the future of cloud and AI. Security has become a foundational pillar of cloud competitiveness, especially in the AI era.

Security is Central to Winning the AI Cloud War

As cloud infrastructure becomes locked into long-term consumption models, IaaS and compute are being immortalized through aggressive pricing and massive footprint expansion. Players like Oracle are gaining traction by rapidly building global data centers with attractive economics.

The next big bet isn’t just infrastructure, it’s AI.

And to lead in AI, a cloud provider must become the trusted security platform across a customer's entire multicloud and hybrid environment, not just within its own walls.

This goes far beyond securing traditional workloads. It’s about protecting:

• AI pipelines

• Training environments

• Cross-cloud data movement

AI workloads span clouds, regions, data centers, and edge. That means security must follow the data, not just guard the perimeter.

The Role of Unified Multicloud Security

The next evolution of cloud security isn’t about adding more tools. It’s about delivering unified, intelligent control across environments.

Enterprises don’t want a dozen disconnected point solutions. They want clear visibility into what’s happening, the ability to enforce policies consistently, and a single model that works across clouds, regions, and teams.

Visibility and firewall enforcement are the two anchor points of a modern multicloud security strategy.

CSPM Gives You Visibility. What’s Next Is Enforcement and Control.

Cloud-native platforms like Wiz have redefined visibility, surfacing misconfigurations, exposures, and risks across complex environments.

But seeing a problem isn’t the same as fixing it.

Think of it like this:

“Visibility tells you the fire started. Control ensures it doesn’t spread.”

The logical next step is control. Being able to act on what you see, isolate threats, prevent lateral movement, and automate responses.

In today’s AI-powered and highly automated multicloud world, where infrastructure spins up, scales, and tears down in seconds; manual response simply can’t keep up

Here’s the Big Question No One’s Asking: Where’s the Firewall?

In a recent conversation with a large U.S. enterprise that had just migrated from Palo Alto to Wiz for their CSPM, their security leader said:

“We’ve spent millions on visibility, but that doesn’t make us secure. What we really need is a revolution in firewalls, because we shouldn’t be spending $32 million a year on firewalls that are costly, rely on hair-pinning traffic, and don’t align with cloud-native constructs. Now Fortinet is at my door offering a 50% discount, but it’s still not built for the mutlicloud world”

That sentiment is more common than most realize.

Walk into any cloud security conversation today, and you’ll hear acronyms like CNAPP, CSPM, SIEM, ITDR, XDR, IGA, XXPM [insert your favorite letters for X], the list keeps growing.

But almost no one is talking about the firewall. Once the anchor of enterprise security architecture.

It’s ironic. We’ve added layers of telemetry, alerts, posture management, and dashboards, but the one thing that blocks threats in real time. It’s either missing or a patchwork of legacy tools that weren’t built for the cloud.

Here’s the problem:

Traditional firewall vendors haven’t truly embraced cloud-native design. They’ve taken on-prem code, wrapped it in VMs, and tried to retrofit it into a cloud model. But cloud doesn’t work like that. It’s dynamic, distributed, and API-driven.

At the same time, to address cost, complexity and effectiveness, CSPs started building their own native firewalls, but let’s be honest, they only work inside their own cloud, and security infrastructure is not their revenue engine. The result? Enterprises are left with fragmented tools, limited coverage, and no unified enforcement fabric.

It’s time to fix the firewall !!

Just like Palo Alto redefined the perimeter with next-gen firewalls 2 decades ago, the cloud era demands a new approach: Distributed Multicloud Firewalling that works across clouds, scales horizontally, and integrates with visibility platforms like Wiz, Datadog, Sentinel or Splunk.

Why NGFWs Fall Short and Why Distributed Multicloud Firewalling is the way forward  

Traditional Next-Gen Firewalls (NGFWs) were built for static perimeters; not for the dynamic, distributed nature of the modern cloud. They inspect traffic at fixed choke points; assuming all the action happens at the edge.

But AI workloads, modern apps, and data pipelines move laterally across clouds, VPCs, regions, and hybrid environments. NGFWs struggle to:

• Detect East-West traffic between workloads

• Scale without introducing latency or hair-pinning cost

• Understand cloud-native constructs like cloud resources, route tables, tags or auto-scaling groups

• Enforce consistent policy across heterogeneous CSPs

Distributed Multicloud Firewalling: The next, nextGen Firewall Built for the Cloud Era

Modern Multicloud firewalling must reflect how cloud environments work; dynamic, distributed, and API-driven. It needs to be embedded in the network fabric, not bolted on and capable of real-time, inline enforcement across clouds.

To be effective, distributed cloud firewalling must:

• Enforce policy as close to the workload as possible

• Scale horizontally across VPCs, VNets, and regions

• Support dynamic, tag-based, identity-aware rules

• Deliver unified control across AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, and hybrid environments

• Operate in real time, embedded in the data plane for full visibility and action

When paired with CNAPP and SIEM platforms like Wiz, Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, and Defender, distributed multicloud firewalling completes the foundational security stack, bridging the gap between visibility and action.

It establishes a core control layer into which best-of-breed solutions can seamlessly integrate. Like the frame of a house, it provides the structural foundation upon which other security layers naturally fit, room by room. Kubernetes firewalls, AI-driven policy engines, and identity security enforcements all plug into this base, enabling multicloud security that is future-proof, centrally governed, and operationalized at scale.

In high-stakes scenarios like the recent Salt Typhoon ransomware campaign, where time-to-action determines impact, this distributed firewalling can segment traffic, block lateral movement, and isolate compromised assets in real time.

You might be wondering, does this firewalling even exist?

It does.

Aviatrix Distributed Cloud Firewall (DCF) is one example that has been delivering this capability for more than two years and now extends its enforcement to Kubernetes environments and cloud egress as well.

Cisco is also developing its HyperShield product to operate in this modern, cloud-native model, but as always, timing and execution will determine its success.

While Cisco has deep enterprise credibility, it currently lacks native presence and traction inside the cloud. Earning trust in this space will take time, especially when compared to cloud-native platforms that have already been serving Fortune 500 customers for years. When it comes to cloud-first security, customers prioritize proven track record over legacy brand recognition.

Closing Thoughts: The Shift from Finding to Fixing

Fully concur with the thoughts from the Cloud Security panel here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/24hrs-googles-32b-acquisition-wiz-what-means-oovve/

The cloud security ecosystem has mastered finding problems. Now it’s time to start fixing them. Automatically, intelligently, and everywhere data moves. Makes your NOC/SOC faster, smarter, helping your business operate at peak performance.

That starts by rethinking what was once the cornerstone of enterprise security:

“It’s time to fix the firewall”

Because in a multicloud, AI-driven world, trust will be earned not just by who can see the threats, but by who can stop them.