Zscaler Private Access Controls Application Use

Embracing the Mobile Development Trends of 2016

For as long as anyone can probably remember, the virtual private network (VPN) has been a staple of enterprise IT. Organizations now make use of VPNs to provide access to both internal and external cloud applications. The challenge is that, once access is granted, most organizations don’t have a lot of control over which applications are being accessed by whom.

To give IT organizations more granular control over which applications are being accessed, Zscaler today announced a Zscaler Private Access service that uses its cloud security service to apply controls that limit which applications any given user can remotely access.

Intended as an alternative to traditional VPNs that are difficult to set up and maintain, Zscaler Private Access routes traffic via secure tunnels through a global network of data centers based on which of those data centers will provide the lowest network latency, says Denzil Wessels, senior director of product management for emerging technologies at Zscaler. As part of that process, a Zscaler policy engine ensures that the traffic moving through those tunnels is limited to the applications that any given user has permission to access.

That approach, adds Wessels, takes the IT organization out of the business of remotely configuring and managing remote access infrastructure.

In general, managing remote access is a time-consuming task that is prone to error. One mistake and it becomes a relatively trivial matter for digital criminals to traverse an entire corporate network. Making use of a cloud service to manage remote access not only reduces that risk, it frees up the internal IT organization to concentrate more on managing the applications that provide actual value to the business.