Zscaler

Infobox_Company
company_name = Zscaler, Inc.
company_
company_type = Private
company_slogan = Provide every user with a rich Internet experience from any place, on any device while enforcing business policy and mitigating risk.
foundation = 2008
location = 2620 Augustine Drive, Suite 245 Santa Clara, CA 95054, USA
key_people = CEO: Jay Chaudhry
CTO: K. Kailash
industry = Internet
homepage = [http://www.zscaler.com/ www.zscaler.com]

Zscaler, launched on August 4, 2008, provides an in-the-cloud security service for web traffic. The service offers multi-tenant SaaS security protection against Web 2.0 threats and enforce policies for outbound, user-initiated web traffic. The company was founded by Jay Chaudhry, a security industry veteran and K. Kailash, scalability guru and former chief architect of NetScaler. Prior to Zscaler, Jay Chaudhry founded and funded several successful companies, including CipherTrust (acquired by Secure Computingcite news|url=http://news.cnet.com/Secure-Computing-to-acquire-CipherTrust/2110-7350_3-6092971.html|title=Secure Computing to acquire CipherTrust|first=Fried|date=July 11, 2006|publisher=CNET News|accessdate=2008-09-22] ), AirDefense (acquired by Motorolacite news|url=http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail.jsp?globalObjectId=9957_9886_23|title=Motorola to Acquire AirDefense, a Leading Wireless LAN Security Provider|date=July 28, 2008|publisher=Motorola|accessdate=2008-09-22] ), CoreHarbor (acquired by USI/AT&T), Air2Web, and SecureIT (acquired by VeriSign).

Functionality

The Zscaler service offers functionality in four distinct areas.
* Secure — In addition to signature-based anti-virus and anti-spyware, Zscaler offers protection against advanced threats such as botnets, 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 media, webmail, and instant messaging. Zscaler uses proprietary, patent-pending, dynamic content classification (DCCTM) to identify applications and manage their use.
* Comply — Zscaler detects and protects against data leakage through the HTTP/HTTPS channel (including webmail, instant messaging, 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^TM technology, Zscaler has reduced storage requirements by a factor of fifty, which enables rapid log analysis and forensics capabilities.

Technology

Zscaler has a variety of patent-pending technologies including:
* Distributed Global Infrastructure to enforce user policy close to where the user is, rather than redirecting traffic to far away data centers. This eliminates latency—the hardest problem to solve in SaaS security.
* Multi-tenant Architecture enables distributed Internet gateways to handle multiple customers using a single instance of the infrastructure, making SaaS delivery scalable and robust.
* High performance platform with Single-Scan, Multi-Action (SSMA) technology ensures accurate application identification, without introducing latency.
* NanoLog^TM technology reduces web log size and provides consolidated reporting and data mining in real-time.

How Zscaler SaaS Works

Zscaler provides risk mitigation and policy enforcement for businesses through its in-the-cloud utility service, while enriching the user’s Internet experience. Organizations do not need to purchase, deploy, or manage countless point products. Companies simply define their corporate security control and compliance policy by accessing the Zscaler utility. The web traffic leaving the network firewall is easily redirected to one of the data centers in Zscaler’s global infrastructure. Based on an organization’s policy, traffic is blocked, throttled, or allowed to access the Internet. As the browser retrieves web content, Zscaler scans the content for a range of malware threats and delivers clean traffic to the end user.

Benefits

The Zscaler cloud eliminates the cost of acquiring point products, the cost of deploying them and the costs of maintaining them. Organizations pay an annual subscription fee to use the service. Zscaler allows IT administrators and security analysts to focus on defining and enforcing company policy, rather than spending their time managing and updating security appliances.

References

External links

* [http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/web-filtering-moves-to-the-cloud/ New York Times: Web Filtering Moves to the Cloud]
* [http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/080408-internet-security.html Network World: Internet security moves to the cloud]
* [http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsID=102297&pagtype=all Techworld: Startup promises cloud-based security service]
* [http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/security/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210003804 InformationWeek: Startup Of The Week: Zscaler]