Case Study: Southwest Gas Corporation achieves fast, reliable zero-trust connectivity for 2,300 hybrid employees and 50 field offices with Zscaler

Southwest Gas Leverages the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange to Optimize a Secure User Experience

Southwest Gas, a natural gas utility serving about 2 million customers across Arizona, Nevada, and California, faced scalability and performance issues as it shifted to a hybrid workforce. Legacy VPNs and on‑premises security required backhauling traffic through the data center, causing latency and administrative overhead, while rural field offices and remote employees needed fast, reliable, identity‑based access without expanding the IT footprint.

The company deployed the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange (ZIA and ZPA) in a 4–6 week rollout to replace VPNs, provide direct-to-internet and SaaS access, and enforce least‑privileged, microsegmented policies. Integrations with Duo and Splunk simplified operations and visibility; the result was secure work‑from‑anywhere access for ~2,300 hybrid employees across 50 field offices, a smaller attack surface, faster connectivity, fewer help‑desk tickets, and simplified single‑vendor management (addressing ~95% of use cases).

Southwest Gas Corporation

David Petroski

Senior Infrastructure Architect