Zscaler: Zero Trust Model: The New Way of Security

As mobility and the cloud become ubiquitous, a major trend in corporate IT transformation is adopting a Zero Trust security model. Since mobile users began connecting via unmanaged devices to business applications over the internet, there has been a growing need to implement zero trust security. Traditional IT network security is based on the castle-and-moat concept where it is hard to obtain access from outside the network, but everyone inside the network is trusted by default. The problem with this approach is that once an attacker gains access to the network, they have free reign over everything inside. In contrast, the zero trust approach treats all traffic, including traffic already inside the perimeter, as hostile. Unless workloads have been identified by a set of attributes—a workload fingerprint or identity—they are untrusted and blocked from communicating. At its core, the concept is simple: zero trust = assume everything to be non-trustworthy. Identity-based policies result in stronger security that travels with the workload wherever it communicates—in a public cloud, a hybrid environment, a container, or an on-premises network architecture. Because protection is environment-agnostic, applications and services are secured even if they communicate across network environments, requiring no architectural changes or policy updates.

Building a complete Zero Trust Exchange in the Cloud, Zscaler offers a modern approach, ‘Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange’ that enables fast, secure connections and allows employees to work from anywhere using the internet as the corporate network. The zero trust principle of least-privileged access provides comprehensive security using context-based identity and policy enforcement. As a “born in the cloud” security provider, Zscaler’s solution aligns perfectly with businesses embracing mobility and IT in the cloud, through adopting a Zero Trust security model.

To support clients’ shift to cloud securely, Zscaler offers a variety of solutions. Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) provides secure access to the open Internet and SaaS apps, no matter where users connect while ensuring that nothing bad comes in and nothing good leaves. Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) delivers a completely new way to provide access to internal applications, whether they reside in the data centre or cloud, without a VPNand without exposing apps to the internet. Similarly, Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX), allows clients to easily monitor users’ digital experiences with complete visibility across the user-to-cloud app experience and quickly isolates issues. Additionally, Zscaler Cloud Protection (ZCP) delivers a new approach that takes the operational complexity and headaches out of cloud workload security. “Unlike our competitors, we have built a complete Zero Trust Exchange in the cloud, so customers do not require any hardware appliances at all. This delivers Zscaler’s core offerings directly to customers, including ZIA and ZPA,” says Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and CEO, Zscaler.

The Zero Trust Exchange runs across 150 data centers worldwide, ensuring that the service is close to users, co-located with the cloud providers and applications they are accessing, such as Microsoft 365 and AWS. It guarantees the shortest path between users and their destinations, providing comprehensive security and an amazing user experience. “Our innovative zero trust architecture reduces business risk by automatically remediating security gaps, minimizing the attack surface, and eliminating lateral threat movement,” adds Chaudhry.

He highlights the instance of NAB, one of the four largest banks in Australia that rapidly wanted a way for its 35,000 staff to work from home while continuing to provide services to more than 9 million customers during the pandemic. Working with Zscaler, NAB quickly moved to provide secure remote access for their people. ZPA and ZIA enabled more than 32,000 staff to work from home, including nearly all their call center teams. NAB is now well placed to embrace a Zero Trust strategy which both increases digital security and reduces network complexity for the bank.

At its core, Zscaler was founded with the aim to help IT leaders move their security from the data center to the cloud to decrease risk, improve performance for users, and reduce costs and complexity. Today, over 4,500 enterprises worldwide trust Zscaler to help them securely transform their legacy network and security infrastructures for the modern, digital era. As a pioneer cloud-native security-as-a-service provider, Zscaler will continue empowering its clients along the path of cloud and zero trust security.