Zscaler partners with Microsoft on Azure access platform

Zscaler has announced the availability of its Private Access (ZPA) platform for Microsoft Azure, with the company saying it will provide a fast and secure user experience to access Azure applications.

The ZPA platform runs on the Azure Cloud to provide direct access to Azure applications, while eliminating the cost, complexity, and poor user experience of on-premises de-militarised zones (DMZ), which typically consist of multiple appliances, including firewalls, IPS, DDoS, load balancers, and VPN concentrators.

The ZPA platform also integrates with Azure Active Directory (AD) for authentication and policy management and leverages its new features such as conditional access.

Punit Minocha, Zscaler senior vice president of business and corporate development says, "While enterprises are moving applications to Azure, the access to these applications is still being done using traditional hub-and-spoke networks, which worked fine when applications were in the on-premises data center.

"Designed for the world of cloud and mobility, ZPA provides local internet breakouts for fast and secure access to Azure applications without backhauling traffic through the DMZ.

Zscaler says the platform provides a revolutionary approach to secure application access that delivers the DMZ as a cloud service and fundamentally changes the security access model.

It says this is accomplished in a few different ways, including;  

• Securely connecting users to applications without bringing users on the network.

• Avoiding application exposure to the internet and eliminating the need for DDoS protection.

• Segmenting access to applications without relying on the traditional approach of network segmentation.

• Providing remote access using any network, without a VPN.

Yousef Khalidi, Microsoft corporate vice president for Azure networking says the solution will help businesses connect to the Azure platform, and cloud more generally.  

"Zscaler helps to simplify the enterprise journey to Microsoft Azure for both public and hybrid environments, and we're excited to see them choose Azure to build out their access technologies," he says.

"Zscaler Private Access gives users the choice and the benefit of secure connectivity for any authorised user to business applications over any internet connection and remote access points as if it were a SaaS application.