My team received some exciting news this week and I am thrilled to share it: Gartner released its annual Secure Web Gateways Magic Quadrant (MQ) report, and Zscaler was named a Leader for the ninth year in a row. This year, Gartner positioned Zscaler as the furthest for “Completeness of Vision” and highest for “Ability to Execute,” stating that we continue to capture a majority of the cloud installed base for SWGs as one of the few pure cloud vendors on the market.
Why is that important? For the last several years, Gartner has noted that the market for cloud-delivered SWG services was growing at a rate far faster than the market for SWGs based on traditional appliances in the data center and gateways and this year reported, “Rapid growth of cloud-based secure web gateway services has become a disruptive force in the market.” We believe this disruption began when applications started moving to the cloud and users moved off the network. It has become increasingly clear that security hardware sitting in the data center to protect the network is irrelevant in the cloud and mobile era. Zscaler was founded to enable the secure transformation to the cloud era, with cloud-delivered services that operate inline to secure every connection, regardless of device, the user or app’s location, or network.
Why a nine-year Gartner leader?
Back in May 2011, Zscaler moved into the Leaders Quadrant for the first time. In the years since, we have seen it dwindle from six companies to just two, and we have now assumed the furthest position in both completeness of vision and ability to execute. Magic Quadrant Leaders, according to Gartner, are vendors with a strong track record, momentum, and a vision that indicates they are well positioned for the future. When determining Leaders, one of the many factors Gartner evaluates is Customer Experience, which can include relationships, programs that enable customers to be successful, support, service-level agreements, tools, and so on. Customer experience is my first priority and a core Zscaler value. I am gratified by this recognition from Gartner, and I’m so proud of our teams around the world that serve customers with passion and professionalism.
We believe that our advancement in the Leaders Quadrant is the result of innovations and achievements by our teams. In the last year, Zscaler acquired Appsulate, a browser isolation platform, which has exciting applications for customers with highly sensitive information. We achieved FedRAMP Authorized status, making Zscaler the first cloud-based SWG in this Magic Quadrant to do so. And we have fully incorporated the capabilities of TrustPath, a machine learning company we acquired in 2018. The new Zscaler AI/ML team is combining its capabilities with big data power to detect, predict, and block unknown threats. The training models that now run in the Zscaler cloud provide “verdicts” on these threats quickly, often in milliseconds.
Since we launched the Zscaler platform more than a decade ago, our teams have been extending its reach and capabilities with innovations that empower customers through their digital journeys and reduce risk to their organizations. One recent development is Zscaler B2B, a service that enables our customers’ authorized partners to view applications, based on business policy, without ever placing those partners on the network or exposing the apps to the internet where they are at risk of attack. Many high-profile breaches have been the result of third-party access, and Zscaler B2B is a robust solution for reducing the attack surface and protecting customers’ internal apps against exposure.
Why architecture matters
Many security vendors are now supplementing their hardware offerings with cloud security services, but to do cloud security right, you need a purpose-built architecture. You can’t take legacy boxes and stick them in the cloud and call them cloud security. That would be like taking thousands of DVD players, moving them into a cloud, and calling them a Netflix service. The Zscaler multitenant cloud architecture is purpose-built to deliver comprehensive security services inline, close to the user, providing the fastest path between a user and an application or service—backed by strong service-level agreements.
Why Gartner is the leading voice in technology for business
This year, Gartner published important research that defines a path for organizations to harness cloud speed and agility while improving security and productivity. In one report, The Future of Network Security Is in the Cloud, Gartner analysts present a new security model, the secure access service edge (SASE). This report offers a clear and thorough explanation of the need for a cloud-based, as-a-service model of a “secure edge”—one that is simple, scalable, and flexible. The Zscaler cloud security architecture was built on the same principles as the Gartner SASE model, delivering services at the edge with low latency and high security.
Earlier in the year, Gartner also published its Market Guide for Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). The ZTNA model shows that secure access capabilities must evolve to the cloud, where users are and where applications and services are moving. ZTNA, according to Gartner, improves flexibility, agility, and scalability by, again, removing critical modern services from the confines of the network. The Market Guide states, “By 2023 60% of enterprises will phase out their remote access virtual private networks (VPN) in favor of ZTNA.”
I invite you to download a copy of the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant Report for Secure Web Gateways with our compliments.
Jay Chaudhry is the Founder and CEO of Zscaler
