The key announcements at the Zenith event highlight Zscaler’s future aspirations as it moves beyond its historical roots in network security. Zscaler is evolving past traditional network security controls while maintaining its historical lineage and DNA. The Data Security Everywhere initiative brings innovative AI capabilities to the forefront of the business, enabling the analysis of data both at rest and in transit as they transition their key offerings further up the stack. Later this year, Zscaler also plans to leverage its network security capabilities to enhance private access between organizations as it launches extended private access features. The connectivity between companies lays the foundation for agentic security technologies to facilitate inter-business communications, enabling a seamless flow of data between partners, vendors, and customers over time. This will be welcome news to Zscaler customers as they look to redesign their network connectivity capabilities.

Moving beyond network innovations, emphasizing a data-driven contextual analysis approach that extends well beyond basic network traffic foundations is essential for pushing the boundaries of analysis and enabling richer insights. As they enhance the Avalor data security fabric capabilities with threat and exposure management, threat hunting, and security operations use cases, the new Zscaler platform will contextualize vulnerability data for more accurate risk prioritization. The ability to prioritize fixes not only on Common Vulnerability Scoring System, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, or Known Exploited Vulnerabilities scores, but also with a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s environment, enabling Zscaler to devise innovative mitigation strategies, such as integrating infrastructure security controls as semi-permanent risk reductions until root cause issues can be resolved. Additionally, the acquisition of Red Canary, when completed, fills a natural gap around managed detection and response capabilities. Buyers of the Zscaler technology stack focus on outcomes that reduce risk and automate fixes. A top-tier managed detection and response (MDR) vendor provides human and technology-augmented scale to the platform. Zscaler plans to connect the MDR offering with increased agent-based AI and automation capabilities to drive value up and reduce the cost of goods sold, directly increasing their margins and bringing added value to their customers.

With these initiatives, Zscaler is well-positioned to lead in both the security of agentic AI and in utilizing agentic AI capabilities to enhance the security offerings it provides for its customers. Zscaler is working toward a vision of an agentic AI security operations center that automates the daily tasks of security analysts, freeing their time to address more complex issues that cannot currently be resolved through automation. The network security capabilities and zero-trust approach that Zscaler has developed since its inception create the foundation for secure agent-based communication, AI-based automated remediation, and an eventual self-healing system.

While Chaudhry avoids the term “platformization,” the keynote and subsequent sessions describe the consolidation of tools and costs for its customers, explicitly stating that many current cybersecurity products and technologies will be unified into a single solution. As Zscaler moves forward, it will likely adopt a more direct and prescriptive approach to its platform offerings, as it begins to compete directly with vendors providing similar value to security operations and exposure management teams.