Zscaler to Expand Zero Trust Exchange Platform's AI Cloud with Data Fabric Purpose-built for Security
Press Release

Zscaler Defines a New Standard for In-The-Cloud Security

Santa Clare, California, August, 04, 2008

Zscaler® announced the immediate availability of its in-the-cloud security services today. This will change the way businesses allow users to access the Internet by providing the right access to the right users, from any place and on any device. Through a multi-tenant, globally-deployed infrastructure, Zscaler enforces business policy, mitigates risk and provides twice the functionality at half the cost of current solutions.

Zscaler was founded by security industry veteran Jay Chaudhry, who has founded and funded several successful companies, including CipherTrust (acquired by Secure Computing), AirDefense (acquired by Motorola), CoreHarbor (acquired by USI/AT&T), Air2Web and SecureIT (acquired by VeriSign). Jay joined hands with a team of NetScaler engineers led by K. Kailash, scalability expert and former chief architect of NetScaler, where he delivered the highest performing load balancing platform. In addition, the key team consists of hand-picked developers and executives from security and networking companies including Cisco, Juniper, SPI Dynamics, VeriSign and Wipro.

“Following the successful adoption of email security in-the-cloud, we are seeing increased interest from large and small organizations to leverage SaaS security to protect their HTTP/HTTPS channel,” said Brian Burke, Program Director for Security Products at IDC. “SaaS is ideal for large corporations with dozens of Internet gateways, where deploying traditional point products is very expensive. It is a good fit for small businesses, which do not have enough IT staff. Zscaler’s well-designed in-the-cloud service with integrated functionality provides high security and granular control at low TCO.”
 

Emerging Web 2.0 Challenges for User-Initiated Traffic

Most of today’s security products—such as firewalls, VPN, IDS/IPS—protect corporate networks and servers from threats coming from the Internet. Newer threats infect end-users accessing Internet resources by using bots, phishing and malicious active content, all of which subsequently infect corporate networks. Other than deploying caching and URL filtering products, corporations have done very little to inspect user-initiated traffic and protect their users.

Web 2.0 applications, such as social and business networking, create both opportunities and challenges. They help create communities of interest for marketing, but also create risks when users inadvertently download malicious content, or create liability when employees publish inappropriate or confidential content on blogs and social networks. Road warriors and smartphone users further exacerbate this problem—their access to the Internet often bypasses all security controls.

Current solutions require the acquisition, deployment and management of at least half a dozen point products at each Internet gateway—an expensive and impractical proposition. Zscaler’s in-the-cloud service or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for the Internet-bound traffic is the best way to provide secure and managed access to users.
 

Defining In-the-Cloud Security Service: Multi-tenant, High-performance

As SaaS has been made popular by companies such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Google/Postini, many security appliance vendors are claiming to have a SaaS solution by placing their existing appliances in data centers. These products are designed to protect a single gateway of a single customer and are not suitable as a SaaS service. Zscaler has created a new standard for in-the-cloud security service that is multi-tenant and delivers high-performance without introducing latency.

“Wipro helps its global customers deploy robust risk management and governance solutions based on industry best practices. We are seeing growing interest from our customers for Software-as-a-service (SaaS) model as it provides a more cost-effective alternative solution for enterprises to achieve regulatory compliance rather than implementing traditional packaged applications. We are glad to partner with Zscaler to provide comprehensive functionality using their SaaS model to deliver higher value and greater ROI” said Prasenjit Saha, Global Head and VP, Enterprise Security Services.
 

Comprehensive and Integrated Functionality

Zscaler provides an integrated, best-of-breed, comprehensive functionality. It allows organizations to create common, granular policies to provide the right users with the right level of access to applications by location, group and time. Its user interface literally requires no training. The four areas of functionality are: secure, manage, comply and analyze.

  • Secure — In addition to signature-based anti-virus and anti-spyware, Zscaler offers protection against advanced threats such as bots, malicious content, phishing and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Zscaler’s architecture provides inspection at forty times the speed of most competitive products, ensuring full protection without introducing the latency that afflicts current solutions.
  • Manage — In addition to offering standard URL filtering, Zscaler empowers organizations to provide managed access to Web 2.0 applications—such as social networking, blogging, streaming, Webmail and IM. Zscaler uses proprietary, patent-pending, dynamic content classification (DCC™) to identify applications and manage their use.
  • Comply — Zscaler detects and protects against data leakage through the HTTP/HTTPS channel (including Webmail, IM, file uploads) to enable regulatory compliance and secure company-sensitive information.
  • Analyze — Massive amounts of storage are required to retain Web logs from outbound Internet traffic. Due to a lack of good tools, organizations cannot use these logs to have visibility of traffic or perform investigations. Using patent-pending NanoLog™ technology, Zscaler has reduced storage requirements by a factor of fifty, which enables rapid log analysis and forensics capabilities.
     

Revolutionary Technology, Blazing Performance

Like Salesforce.com’s platform, Zscaler’s platform was purpose-built to support a multi-tenant SaaS architecture. The policy and log management is centralized, but the execution of policy happens at Zscaler processing gateways that are deployed around the globe. Each gateway can handle 250K transactions per second, which is 50-100 times the throughput of competitive proxy servers. Its single-scan, multi-action (SSMA™) technology ensures accurate application identification without introducing latency.

“We are not taking existing web proxies, sticking them in a data center and calling it an in-the-cloud service,” says Jay Chaudhry, Zscaler’s CEO. “Just as Salesforce.com’s multi-tenant architecture differentiated it from the current solutions, Zscaler’s architecture—coupled with a global security network—sets a new standard in the SaaS security space.”

 

This press release was lightly edited for inclusive language on January 7, 2022.

About Zscaler

Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) accelerates digital transformation so customers can be more agile, efficient, resilient, and secure. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange™ platform protects thousands of customers from cyberattacks and data loss by securely connecting users, devices, and applications in any location. Distributed across more than 150 data centers globally, the SSE-based Zero Trust Exchange™ is the world’s largest in-line cloud security platform.

Media Contacts

Natalia Wodecki, Sr. Director, Global Integrated Communications & PR, [email protected]