The partnership makes BT the first global service provider to offer the AI-driven platform to its customers, who will benefit from a range of new solutions to reduce the complexity of IT infrastructure, shrink their cyber-attack service and enable them to become more resilient and secure in an agile and efficient way.
“With digital innovations constantly changing how businesses operate, the threat landscape continues to expand. We are delighted to extend our business relationship and enrich our managed service offering with Zscaler, allowing us to offer new zero-trust cybersecurity solutions for customers and making sure we’ve got their back as they go through their digital transformation,” said Tris Morgan, BT’s managing director for security.
As part of the partnership, Zscaler will also supply BT Group with security solutions to protect its own operations.
“Zscaler is honoured to double down on the relationship with BT as a security service provider,” said Mike Rich, chief revenue officer and president of global sales at Zscaler.
Rich described the partnership as evidence of the BT team's trust in the power of Zscaler’s platform.
“Zero Trust security will not only modernise security infrastructure to better stop large-scale attacks and diminish the attack surface but also reduce the administrative burden to accelerate BT customers’ infrastructure and security transformation initiatives,” Rich said.
Zero trust is an IT security model that means any device and person needs to be verified before accessing a network, regardless of whether they sit inside the network or not.
This means if a breach is to occur it can be more tightly contained. A Zero Trust approach to network security is also far easier to manage and less complex, proponents of the technology say.
Included in the solutions that will become available to BT Business customers is a leading secure web gateway (SWG) delivering cloud-native, AI-powered cyber threat protection and zero trust access to the Internet and SaaS apps.
A cloud-native service will replace legacy remote access tools like VPNs and VDIs. The new service gives users fast and secure access to private apps and operational technology devices while enabling zero trust connectivity for workloads, BT said.
Digital experiences will also become available that provide visibility into the complete path between the user and the app. This will help organisations pinpoint performance issues, enabling fast, secure connections from any location.
