ZMS communicates with the Zorp firewall software through agents. The zms-transfer-agent communicates using TCP port 1311.

The initial connection between the firewall and ZMS needs manual set up, but all subsequent communication channels are established automatically. By default, the ZMS host initiates the connection towards the agents but agents can also establish the communication if configured to do so. It is possible to administer the connections through the ZMS host main workspace and with the help of the Management / Connections menu.