SPLK - Palo Alto upgraded as Credit Suisse forecasts security spending acceleration

In a broader sector note forecasting accelerating cybersecurity spending in 2021 Credit Suisse upgrades Palo Alto Networks (PANW) from Neutral to Outperform with a $425 price target from $385, an 18% upside.Analyst Brad Zelnick cites the "enduring changes to how people work" and the "significantly elevated threat environment" after the SolarWinds hack as driving the increased security spending.Zelnick expects cloud security adoption in particular to "meaningfully accelerate."The firm names Zscaler (ZS) as its top way to play the "acceleration in transformational spend." CrowdStrike (CRWD), Microsoft (MSFT), and VMware (VMW) are also seen as benefiting.Zelnick calls Ping Identity Holding (PING) as an "underappreciated play on the increasing importance of identity based security."Splunk (SPLK) stands to benefit from its "strengths in security analytics and anomaly detection."PANW shares are up 2.9% pre-market to $372. ZS is up 1.2% and CRWD is up 1.2%.Last month, Wedbush tapped Palo Alto and Zscaler among its top cybersecurity names to benefit from secular trends.

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Palo Alto upgraded as Credit Suisse forecasts security spending acceleration