Zerto 7.5 Enhances Security While Further Tightening Azure Integration

Zerto 7.5 adds support for Azure Active Directory Managed Service Identity (MSI), which simplifies authentication to Azure services while improving security.

Zerto enables organizations to replicate their production environment to a disaster recovery (DR) target, which could be cloud-based (e.g. Azure or AWS). The DR environment must include an Active Directory instance to enable authentication of systems and users.

Azure Active Directory MSI provides an abstraction layer that enables organizations to limit visibility to authentication credentials when accessing cloud services, such as in a DR environment:

• When MSI is enabled for an Azure service (e.g. for a VM), a Service Principal (i.e. credentials used for accessing Azure resources) is created and injected into the service. When the service is terminated, so are the credentials.
• Applications then use an access token generated via MSI and Azure AD to gain access to the Azure service (e.g. a VM).
• Access is granted without needing to directly expose the actual credentials.

Azure Active Directory MSI has been available since 2017. Zerto’s support for MSI now enables its customers to leverage MSI for their DR solution.

Our Take

Zerto continues to tighten its integration with Azure, further simplifying using Azure as a destination target for disaster recovery (see Zerto Enhanced Azure Integration to Achieve Lower RTOs and Less Overhead).

Note that Zerto can also be used with AWS. However, the integration is tighter with Azure.

For Zerto customers using Azure, this also closes the gap between what organizations can already do with their production environment versus their DR environment, supporting more uniform security practices.

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