AI-powered App Segmentation: Unlocking Zero Trust at Scale

Imagine a castle surrounded by strong stone walls and a deep moat designed to keep unwanted visitors out. The drawbridge is tightly guarded, and all of the focus is placed on making sure no one from the outside gets in. But what happens when someone crosses the bridge? Inside the castle walls, it’s a free for all. There are no locked doors, no security for treasures, and no checks on where people roam. Similarly, in many IT environments, once a user connects to the network, they often gain broad access to applications and data, with little control over what happens inside.

Organizations that rely on this “castle and moat” model put a lot of effort into perimeter defenses but they often leave the inside vulnerable, failing to stop lateral movement, often causing catastrophic damage. 

While VPNs are often seen as the backbone of a castle and moat strategy, they increasingly fall short in today’s complex environments. Organizations cite growing concerns over lateral movement, rising operational complexity, and the need to evolve toward zero trust strategies to address these gaps.

• 89% of enterprises are concerned about attackers moving laterally across the network (2025 VPN risk report)
• 41% of enterprises say that VPNs increase IT complexity and operational overhead (2025 VPN risk report)
• 81% are implementing zero trust strategies in the next 12 months (2025 VPN risk report)

The limitations of traditional VPNs highlight the urgent need for a modern approach to security. One that eliminates implicit trust, simplifies operations, and scales effortlessly with organizational growth. Central to this modern approach is user-to-app segmentation, which ensures that users are granted precise access only to the applications they need. By implementing user-to-app segmentation, organizations can reduce the attack surface, streamline operational efficiency, and enable scalable zero trust access control, forming a critical foundation for stronger security in dynamic environments.

Achieving Zero Trust at the Speed of AI 

AI-powered App Segmentation eliminates the slow, manual work of defining, implementing, and maintaining access policies that prevents you from achieving true Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Instead of struggling to discover applications, create complex granular policies, and keep them updated as your environment scales, AI-powered App Segmentation uses machine learning to automate the entire process. The result is a fully implemented Zero Trust architecture, delivered with the speed and precision that only AI can provide. 

AI-powered Segmentation delivers on this promise through four core capabilities:

• Eliminate Lateral Threat Movement with Precise Segmentation by leveraging AI/ML-powered App Segmentation Insights, which dynamically clusters applications based on traffic patterns and shared behaviors through heuristic analysis and co-occurrence modeling. These precise groupings are then processed by the AI-Powered Recommendations, which applies advanced ML techniques to evaluate user roles, behaviors, and application clusters. The result is highly accurate, least-privilege access policies that eliminate unnecessary pathways and prevent lateral movement.
• Accelerate Policy Deployment with Intelligent Automation by leveraging Adaptive App Ranking, which uses AI/ML to analyze application group risks through domain similarity, IP relationships, transaction metrics, and usage patterns. This dynamic prioritization ensures security teams can focus on the most critical application groups first, eliminating manual guesswork and accelerating Zero Trust policy deployment.
• Faster Onboarding of Private Applications by leveraging Bulk App Import that streamlines onboarding by enabling seamless bulk integration of private application details from trusted third-party tools like Qualys, Tenable, and ServiceNow. These automated processes reduce errors, minimize manual effort, and allow teams to rapidly create granular, precise access policies.
• Gain Complete Visibility Into Existing App Segments, User Groups, and Policy Usage by using App Discovery to identify unmanaged applications in your environment. This AI/ML-powered capability monitors wildcard app segments and analyzes traffic data, including FQDNs, ports, and protocols to dynamically surface unmanaged applications, providing continuous visibility. 

Introducing Autonomous Segmentation: Coming Soon 

Autonomous Segmentation builds on the foundation of AI-powered App Segmentation to take ZPA to the next level, delivering even greater security, simplicity, and scalability. By unifying Zero Trust configuration into a fully automated process, it transforms how organizations secure their environments while reducing complexity for IT teams. 

Using advanced machine learning, Autonomous Segmentation offers intelligent app clustering, deeper explainability, and real-time policy adjustments tailored to dynamic environments. With features like one-click policy deployment and continuous policy refinement, IT teams will be able to implement precise Zero Trust policies faster and more confidently than ever. 

Unlock AI-powered App Segmentation as an Add-On License to ZPA

Take your Zero Trust strategy to the next level with AI-powered App Segmentation, available as an add-on license for ZPA. This upgrade unlocks powerful features like App Discovery, App Segmentation Insights, and AI Recommendations, configured and ready to use as soon as you enable the license.

If you’re an existing ZPA customer, you can enhance your security with the AI-powered App Segmentation add-on. Talk to your Zscaler account team to learn how to trial or purchase AI-powered App Segmentation capabilities. Not a ZPA customer yet? Discover how AI-powered App Segmentation combined with ZPA can transform your organization’s security posture and accelerate your Zero Trust journey.

Resources

• Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform page
• Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) page
• ZPA Help Documentation
• Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 VPN Risk Report