SonicWall deepened its relationship with security vendor Perimeter 81 today to add zero-trust network access (ZTNA) to its emerging secure access service edge (SASE) offering. The announcement came alongside a swath of new appliances from SonicWall, including revamped enterprise and small branch next-generation firewalls running the company's SonicOS 7 operating system.

"This is our first real foray into the SASE market," said Kayvon Sadeghi, executive director of product marketing at SonicWall, in an interview with SDxCentral.

While remote access is nothing new for SonicWall, the company's existing VPN offering was appliance-based, whereas its new Cloud Edge Secure Access platform — based on Perimeter 81's ZTNA technology — is a cloud-based offering.

ZTNA is "the first entry into the SASE," said Sadeghi, who explained that everything SASE encompasses — secure web gateway, cloud-access security broker, cloud-based firewalls, and SD-WAN — are all dependent on authentication. He explained that by starting with ZTNA, it's possible to apply security and access to users dependent on identity.

"Logically it made more sense for us to start with ZTNA and then move on to the other components of the SASE model," Sadeghi said.

The ZTNA service is designed to run in the cloud and can interface either with existing branch appliances or run as an agent on customer hardware. When Cloud Edge Secure Access launches on Nov. 23, the platform will be available in any one of SonicWall's 30 points of presence in North America, Europe, and the Asian-Pacific.

Key to this is SonicWall's existing partnership with Perimeter 81, which itself has pivoted to a SASE model in recent months. Despite the fact both companies are now technically competing in the same space, Sadeghi said there isn't actually any overlap in the vendor's offerings and that the two companies remain complimentary.

The ZTNA is just the first step in SonicWall's SASE journey, explained Sadeghi. "We have plans in the future."

However, what these plans entail and whether they will also leverage Perimeter 81's security products, he did not disclose.

SonicWall Expands Branch Portfolio, Revamps Enterprise Appliance

Alongside the partnership with Perimeter 81, SonicWall also refreshed its small-business firewalls with the launch of the TZ270, TZ370, and TZ470. These firewalls are designed for small-businesses deploying SonicWall's SD-branch platform. All three appliances also support 5G connectivity through a USB modem.

"This is the refresh of our low-end models," Sadeghi said, who added that the firewalls support anywhere from 2 Gb/s to 5 Gb/s of throughput.

Sadeghi noted that several customers have expressed interest or are in the process of deploying SonicWall TZ-series firewalls to employees home to address remote work security concerns.

SonicWall also launched the NSa 2700 next-generation firewall, which is aimed at customers in the enterprise, managed security service providers, government agencies, health care, and hospitality spaces.

SonicWall plans to release updates to the rest of its NSa-series firewalls in the coming months.