Zscaler has expanded its CrowdStrike partnership to further develop its security operations (SecOps) detail.

The expanded partnership builds on the existing integration between Zscaler’s Zero Trust Exchange platform and CrowdStrike’s endpoint-centric Falcon service with new managed detection and response (MDR) capabilities.

Those particular provisions were recently expanded by the zero trust-focused firm’s acquisition of MDR provider Red Canary this year, in a deal touted as driving agentic AI security operations with the integration of MDR workflows into its platform.

With Red Canary integration, the offering is targeted at network customers moving from legacy endpoint services to a cloud-native architecture such as CrowdStrike’s endpoint detection and response (EDR) product.

The move itself bolsters the firm's SecOps posture, with various security functions – here, EDR and MDR – unified into a single practice. That shift has benefited rivals such as Fortinet in recent years, with billing growth attributed to SecOps; some analysts believe this strength could offset Fortinet’s current firewall slowdown.

Palo Alto Networks, meanwhile, has shown skepticism over a unified approach, arguing that network security will always remain a separate platform onto itself.

Zscaler and CrowdStrike history

Zscaler and CrowdStrike are building on a relationship that began in 2019, which has seen AI integrations and zero-trust assessment compatibility.

CrowdStrike recently updated Falcon’s Next-Gen Identity Security suite with identity and access management (IAM) alongside privileged access management (PAM) details to detect human users, machine accounts, and AI agents on the network.

Zscaler’s Red Canary tools were highlighted this week when Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry discussed how the firm is using trillions of customer logs to train its AI models, with telemetry feeding into a data fabric mesh that includes its acquired MDR platform. Consternation was raised by some regarding the potential impact on the firm's zero-trust promise.