Skybox and Zscaler team up for stronger cloud firewall integration

If there is one thing safer than a cloud security provider, it is two cloud security providers – in theory, at least. Zscaler and Skybox Security are coming together to connect two of their products for greater end-to-end protection.

The two companies will combine Zscaler’s Cloud Firewall product with the Skybox Security Suite, which encompasses visibility, vulnerability control, as well as firewall and network assurance for enterprise use cases. Zscaler policy information will feed directly into the firewall and network assurance modules. The data will help inform Skybox’s visual model for hybrid networks.

Customers of Zscaler Cloud Firewall will be able to ensure they are adhering to policies more easily, as well as automatically flagging violations.

“Organisations need a seamless way to deliver a consistent and compliant policy on or of network,” said Punit Minocha, SVP of business and corporate development at Zscaler in a statement. “Zscaler cloud platform’s fast and secure policy-based access connects the right user to the right service or application.

“Combined with the Skybox security policy management solution, we simplify management and allow customers to transition their access policies to a modern cloud architecture,” added Minocha.

Last week Skybox issued its mid-year report on vulnerability and threat trends which argued, among others, that cloud container vulnerabilities were on a steady upturn. Vulnerabilities in container software had increased by 46% in the first half of 2019 compared with the year previously, the company noted.

The overriding theme was of good news and bad news. While it was good that only a ‘small fraction’ of vulnerabilities published will have an exploit, increasing network complexity makes it much tougher to understand what goes where.

“It’s critical that customers have a way to spot vulnerabilities even as their environment may be changing frequently,” said Amrit Williams, Skybox VP products at the time. “They also need to assess those vulnerabilities’ exploitability and exposure within the hybrid network and prioritise them alongside vulnerabilities from the rest of the environment on-prem, virtual networks and other clouds.”