In the opening keynote of the Zenith 2025 event, Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudry positioned AI as a transformative wave comparable to the Industrial Revolution. Driving home this vision, he outlined three specific areas of innovation where Zscaler is actively creating new capabilities using AI: Zero Trust Everywhere, Data Security Everywhere, and Agentic Operations.

Zero Trust Everywhere: Zscaler is transcending its previous role as a network security company, evolving to safeguard all components of the technology stack, including endpoints, users, workloads, AI agents, large language models, and more. They are applying zero-trust principles at every layer of the communications stack as they adopt a comprehensive platform approach.

Data Security Everywhere: Zscaler is enhancing its data security capabilities by leveraging AI analysis to create a data protection solution that spans all environments. The same data loss prevention policies can be applied consistently across locations, whether in-line, on endpoints, in the cloud, or within AI applications, while utilizing AI features for rapid data classification and policy enforcement.

Agentic Operations: Zscaler acquired two companies, Avalor and Red Canary, to establish a security data foundation for processing both first-party and third-party security contexts. The Avalor solution integrates a platform approach with foundational cyber data collection and an AI-driven analysis framework, serving as an alternative to basic data lake capabilities. The cybersecurity data fabric enables Zscaler to take a more proactive stance, mitigating risks before attacks occur. The Red Canary acquisition was not discussed in detail during the Zenith presentations because it had not yet been finalized. However, it’s believed that the managed detection and response vendor was acquired to fit directly into the automation and feedback loops essential for building agentic security capabilities, and to provide Zscaler with a better connection to customer security operations teams.