Two Magic Quadrant™ Leaders Become Partners: Zscaler and Vectra AI Combine Forces

The complexity and sophistication of today’s cyber threats demand a unified defense that doesn’t just detect threats but enables detailed investigation, rapid mitigation, and proactive prevention before damage occurs. This is why we believe the collaboration between Zscaler, recognized as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Security Service Edge (SSE), and Vectra AI, recognized as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response (NDR), is groundbreaking.

The integration of Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange (ZTE) with the Vectra AI Platform enables a seamless partnership that empowers network operations (NetOps) and security operations (SecOps) teams to streamline workflows, drive efficiency, and gain actionable insights across hybrid, cloud, and on-premises environments. From leveraging AI-driven detection and forensic analysis to enabling real-time threat mitigation, the integration of Zscaler and Vectra AI helps security teams stay ahead of evolving threats without complicated deployments or fragmented tools.

In this blog, we start by exploring HanesBrands Inc’s customer perspective – a prime example of how this integration revolutionizes security for a global enterprise with a complex and interconnected footprint. Then, we explore real-world themes and use cases that highlight the unique benefits of this integration – including amplifying threat detection and response, simplifying security operations, and enforcing Zero Trust security for all traffic.

Customer Perspective: HanesBrands

HanesBrands Inc., a global leader in manufacturing everyday apparel, has set a new standard for cybersecurity in its industry by combining Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange (ZTE) and the Vectra AI Platform. Employing 48,000 associates distributed globally and with 70% of its supply chain owned and operated across 30 countries, HanesBrands is at the forefront of cloud-enabled operations. The Zscaler-Vectra AI integration gives HanesBrands real-time threat visibility, AI-driven threat detection, investigation and response along with cross-environment traffic analysis so security is embedded in its digital DNA. By enforcing Zero Trust across hybrid and multi-cloud environments and using AI to create threat intelligence, HanesBrands can respond faster to incidents and streamline security operations. These capabilities let the company stay ahead of cyber attackers while driving innovation and operational resilience at scale.

"Our business and digital transformation depends on smarter, more proactive security. The Zscaler and Vectra AI integration gives us the ability to analyze, detect and respond to threats with precision – whether it’s identifying east-west movement within our environment or mitigating encrypted network anomalies in real time. This integration doesn’t just enhance our security posture, it lets us expand globally while being agile and sustainable. By aligning security to business goals we’re building a resilient company that leads by example."

John Opala, VP and CISO at HanesBrands Inc

Amplifying Detection, Investigation, and Mitigation

Modern enterprises face the challenge of securing their data, users, and applications across an increasingly complex IT environment that spans public and private clouds, SaaS applications, encrypted traffic, and hybrid networks. As organizations adopt distributed architectures and enable remote work at scale, traditional perimeter-based security models struggle to keep pace. Threat actors exploit unmanaged applications, north-south and east-west traffic within environments, or encrypted communication channels to gain unauthorized access, move laterally, and exfiltrate sensitive information – all while avoiding detection. Addressing these challenges requires comprehensive visibility, consistent policy enforcement, and advanced threat detection across all traffic and environments, regardless of location or access method.

Accelerated Investigation

Let’s say a financial services organization experiences suspicious east-west traffic originating from an employee workstation and targeting internal database servers. Zscaler immediately detects encrypted traffic anomalies, helping identify the threat’s starting point. Meanwhile, Vectra AI enables NetOps teams to create custom indicators of compromise (IoCs) from the attacker’s behavior, gaining insights into lateral movement patterns.

The integration enables the incident response team to quickly isolate the compromised device and mitigate the attack with precision, avoiding downtime and ensuring customer data remains secure.

This collaboration highlights how combining deep forensic capabilities with AI-driven Network Detection and Response (NDR) empowers security teams to investigate attacks on their own terms while automating critical steps in the mitigation process.

Simplify Security Operations with Integrated Workflows

In distributed environments with hybrid workforces, detecting threats is only half the battle – efficiently investigating and mitigating them is what truly protects an organization from harm. However, security teams often face operational challenges, such as juggling disconnected tools, managing overwhelming alert volumes, and relying on manual workflows that slow response times. This fragmented approach not only increases risk but also burdens SecOps teams with inefficiencies. By leveraging the Zscaler and Vectra AI integration, organizations gain a streamlined solution that unifies threat detection and response, harnessing AI-driven insights to prioritize actions, automate workflows, and empower security teams to mitigate threats swiftly and effectively.

Streamlining SecOps

Imagine a scenario where a healthcare organization identifies unusual data transfer activity involving patient records, raising concerns about potential misuse or unauthorized access. To thoroughly investigate this activity, the integration of Zscaler and Vectra AI enables SecOps teams to capture, study, and replay traffic related to the incident for deeper analysis. Zscaler ensures secure, controlled collection of cross-environment traffic, while Vectra AI’s detailed forensic tools analyze behavioral patterns and connections over time, revealing key indicators of compromise (IoCs).

Using the traffic data provided, SecOps teams can create custom IoCs and signatures tailored specifically to the threat actor’s techniques. These signatures are then incorporated into existing protection mechanisms to improve proactive defenses against similar threats in the future. This workflow ensures the organization not only resolves the immediate incident but also enhances its detection and protection capabilities.

This use case highlights how the Zscaler-Vectra AI integration empowers SecOps teams to move beyond reactive response, enabling deeper analysis of threats and the creation of tailored countermeasures to strengthen their overall security posture.

Complying with Regulatory Requirements

In tightly regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare, and public sector services, ensuring compliance with stringent data privacy and security regulations is critical. Certain regulatory requirements mandate comprehensive monitoring and protection of sensitive data, detailed reporting of network activity, and often direct visibility into traffic content to ensure adherence to legal standards. Failing to comply can result in severe penalties, reputational damage, and lost customer trust. The integration of Zscaler and Vectra AI provides an effective solution for organizations looking to navigate these regulatory challenges, combining traffic inspection with AI-driven insights to capture, analyze, and protect data while simplifying compliance workflows.

Ensuring Compliance

Let’s say a global investment bank is required to comply with strict regulatory frameworks, which mandate protections against data breaches and insider threats, along with comprehensive monitoring of sensitive transactions and communications. For the organization, capturing traffic content – including encrypted communications of the bank’s employees – is essential to satisfy audit requirements and detect potentially malicious insider actions.

By leveraging the Zscaler and Vectra AI integration, the bank ensures compliance while maintaining robust security controls. Zscaler can perform TLS/SSL inspection at scale, inspecting traffic leaving and entering the network. Simultaneously, Vectra AI tracks and analyzes internal network activity to detect behavioral anomalies consistent with insider threats, such as unauthorized database queries.

If an anomaly is detected, the integration enables real-time responses, such as restricting access or alerting the bank’s compliance and security teams for investigation. By capturing, archiving, and analyzing traffic content, the bank not only fulfills its regulatory requirements but also strengthens its defenses against insider threats while preserving a complete audit trail for regulatory submissions.

This use case demonstrates how Zscaler and Vectra AI simplify compliance while safeguarding sensitive financial data.

Zero Trust with AI-enabled Threat Detection

In an evolving threat landscape, Zscaler and Vectra AI – leaders in Security Service Edge (SSE) and Network Detection and Response (NDR), respectively – transform how enterprises implement Zero Trust security and AI-enabled Threat Detection.

With this joint offering, NetOps and SecOps teams benefit from:

• Accelerated Threat Investigation and Mitigation: Enables teams to rapidly identify & mitigate threats, create own IoC from forensic analysis with in-depth investigation
• Streamlined Security Operations: Integrating workflows and automating responses to operate seamlessly across distributed environments, reducing alert fatigue and manual interventions.
• Enforcing Zero Trust Security for all traffic: Ensure seamless protection with secure access across cloud, network, and hybrid environments with industry leading AI-driven insights
• Meeting Compliance Requirements: Capturing traffic content to comply with regulatory compliance requirements.

If you are a Zscaler customer interested in this integration, please reach out to your account team today! 

We also have an upcoming blog detailing how to configure Zscaler packet capture (PCAP) and how Vectra AI consumes the data with their sensors.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge, Charlie Winckless, Thomas Lintemuth, Dale Koeppen, Charanpal Bhogal, 20 March 2025

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Network Detection and Response, Thomas Lintemuth, Esraa El Tahawy, John Collins, Charanpal Bhogal, 29 May 2025.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.