Chapter 1: Security for the Modern Enterprise with Zscaler

In the past few years, there has been a momentous shift in the way modern enterprises have evolved. They have moved from a traditional hub-and-spoke, data center type of network to a cloud-based or anywhere-access type of network. The core locations have become more decentralized because the employees are now based in various geographies and the applications are migrating to the cloud.

When we look at the infrastructure itself, enterprises invest in a variety of products such as routers, switches, and firewalls to implement various functions such as authentication and security. These products very quickly reach end-of-life from a capacity and a vendor-support perspective. This, in turn, causes the enterprises to upgrade in a 3- to 5-year cycle where they must do a lift and shift of the entire hardware in their data center. This moves the enterprise expenditure from an OPEX to a CAPEX model, which is not desirable from a business and planning perspective.

In this chapter, we will see how Zscaler steps in as a cloud-based security solution. The ZIA product provides secure internet access and the ZPA product brings the geographically spread-out end users and enterprise applications together. They both provide the following benefits:

• There are no upgrade cycles for the enterprise as Zscaler takes care of that.
• There is a shift from CAPEX to OPEX, which enterprises like because of predictability.
• An amazing user experience as users can access applications using the best path.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following main topics:

• Fundamental definitions in security
• Shift of the modern enterprise and its workforce
• The need for scalable, cloud-based security
• Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) for a safe and secure internet experience
• Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) for a zero-trust private application access

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