Virtual IT Group eyes unmet demand with new Zero Trust practice

The Instillery’s Zscaler partnership is central to accelerating zero trust deployments across the region.

Virtual IT Group has launched a specialist zero trust practice, with The Instillery's COO Jeremy Nees to head up the new unit.

This follows the recent merger with New Zealand-based MSP The Instillery — forming what he says is one of the largest managed services and security providers operating in the region.

With rising cyber threats and outdated architectures struggling to keep pace, the company sees strong demand for zero trust approaches to security. Virtual IT Group plans to leverage The Instillery’s expertise to accelerate the push into the Australian market.

“It’s becoming the dominant network architecture, as organisations prioritise cyber risk mitigation tailored to their unique operational goals and risk appetites,” he said.

Nees said there’s significant unmet need among customers, with some still relying on legacy security architectures, while others are not realising the full value of their current zero trust investment.

“At the enterprise level, we’re seeing the need for access to the deep skills required to get a zero trust implementation right,” Nees said.

In the mid-market, it’s more about accessibility.

“It’s how we can package up what can be very complex and make that easy to implement efficiently without the burden of that complexity,” he added.

Leaning into its Zscaler partnership

Instillery’s depth in zero trust and its partnership with Zscaler gives Virtual IT Group access to the technical tools and expertise to drive adoption across the region, according to Nees.

He highlighted Zscaler’s leadership and investment in evolving zero trust, contrasting it with broader vendor claims.

“Zscaler has pedigree in this space and a breadth of capability that most do not. Zero trust continues to evolve and Zscaler is investing in that continued evolution,” he said.

Zero trust goes beyond replacing VPNs and offers compliance with different security frameworks and works across sector-specific requirements.

“There’s a lot more to how zero trust principles can be applied to how we grant access to applications, data and devices,” he said.

The business is already fielding a wide range of customer discussions, extending into areas like zero trust SIMs and data protection for AI, and demonstrating the need for a wide range of solutions.

“Just today, I was speaking to a client who was exploring Zscaler Cellular for a specific use case in their business,” he said.

“For another client, we ran through a proposal to deliver Zscaler Data Protection, which takes zero trust principles and starts to apply these to granular data access policies, including how generative AI tools are being used in their business,” he added.