Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN vs. Legacy SD-WAN
See how Zero Trust SD-WAN eliminates lateral movement without firewalls.
Zero Trust SD-WAN securely connects sites over any broadband connection without the risk of lateral threat movement and without expanding your attack surface. It ensures high performance access to critical applications, making it vital for modern cloud-first organizations managing a highly distributed workforce.
Zero Trust vs. Legacy SD-WAN Comparison
Traditional SD-WAN solutions come up short
Connectivity doesn’t inherently mean security—to have both, you need zero trust.
Legacy SD-WAN
Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN
Zero Trust
Extends the corporate network, creating implicit trust and increasing the attack surface. Enables lateral threat movement and facilitates ransomware attacks. Requires additional layered security to achieve zero trust, creating complexity.
Enforces zero trust through identity- and context-based access controls. Prevents lateral threat movement by brokering connections between users, devices, and apps as needed. Simplifies security by eliminating the need for firewalls, VPNs, and layered solutions.
Performance
Backhauls traffic to data centers, adding latency that impacts performance and user productivity. Forces tradeoffs between security and performance with local breakouts.
Improves application performance with direct-to-cloud architecture. Optimizes both security and performance without compromise.
Cost & Complexity
Increases costs and complexity with the need for additional firewalls and access controls. Requires extensive personnel resources to maintain layered security solutions.
Reduces cost and complexity by eliminating the need for additional firewalls. Simplifies policy management by enforcing shared policies across remote and in-office users.
Attack Surface
Extends the network everywhere, expanding the attack surface to branches, IoT devices and the cloud. Exposes VPN ports to the public internet, leaving networks vulnerable to attacks.
Minimizes the attack surface by hiding users, devices and applications behind the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™. Secures connections with no exposed VPN ports—all connections are outbound from your sites.
Benefits
Extend Zero Trust SD-WAN to your entire branch ecosystem
Accelerate branch deployment
Rapidly deploy branches with built-in segmentation to secure legacy OT systems and prevent lateral movement.
Simplify infrastructure
Replace site-to-site VPNs, firewalls, and complex routing with direct application access, streamlining IT systems.
Enhance performance
Optimize application traffic and improve user productivity with an efficient direct-to-cloud architecture.
Strengthen security
Grant direct access to applications, not your network, preventing lateral movement and advanced threats.
Use cases
Unlock security, simplicity, and agility with Zero Trust SD-WAN
Replace complex VPNs and hub-and-spoke networks with a direct-to-cloud architecture that boosts speed and performance.
Connect branches across IT environments instantly with zero-touch provisioning, avoiding the need to integrate networks.
Provide secure, clientless browser-based access to OT resources without exposing ports or VPN endpoints, slashing the attack surface.
Gain instant visibility into IoT and OT devices, auto-classify them by behavior, and easily control policies to safeguard branch traffic.
Leverage Zero Trust SD-WAN to securely connect users, locations, and cloud services via the Zero Trust Exchange—the industry leading AI-powered SSE platform.
FAQ
Yes, Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN is designed to integrate with existing infrastructure without requiring a full replacement. It supports flexible deployment options and can manage ISP connections while intelligently steering application traffic. This allows you to phase out legacy architectures gradually and adopt a zero trust framework without disrupting current systems or compromising security.
Switching to Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN reduces infrastructure costs by eliminating legacy firewalls, VPNs, and layered tools. It simplifies management, cutting IT and operational expenses. By reducing the risk of breaches and boosting application performance, it prevents a wide range of costly security incidents and improves productivity.
Zscaler Zero Trust SD-WAN enhances user experience with faster, more reliable performance through direct-to-cloud access. It eliminates performance-security tradeoffs, enabling seamless, secure access across locations. Users enjoy optimized, consistent connectivity, boosting productivity and ensuring a smooth, café-like experience in branches, data centers, or remote environments.