Zscaler Internet Access Reviews

The primary use case is to secure internet traffic. Users want to make sure that the site doesn't have DDoS attacks or any malware. Zscaler is able to protect data for individual organizations and for the country as well.

Basically, the standard traditional model of a firewall becomes obsolete when you implement Zscaler. It goes into the secure web gateway, and it removes the hardware requirement and the annual recurring costs and the annual maintenance costs for clients, which is quite important and beneficial for smaller SMB organizations.

The best thing about Zscaler Internet Access is the website filtering. In the UAE it's quite an important feature because most of the malware comes through the SQL injection and through downloads from websites. Zscaler helps protect against that. It is very important for a telco provider, so that their customers, who rent or who buy those services from them, do not have an issue.

In terms of usage, here in the GCC, it's still growing a growing market, so the combination of DLP, data leak prevention, to a certain extent is fine. But what it requires is user-based access or role-based access. The solution needs to grow into that, which definitely takes time. There's not an easy way to integrate it when you have a cloud-based solution.

The only DLP you can have is for the web, such as iboss. The DLP part is quite crucial for this particular region.

DLP, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and some algorithms can be built into the solution. There are certain pet algorithms for AI and machine learning which everybody is moving towards, so that needs to be added to the solution as well.

We haven't had any issues or any complaints from the customer in regards to the stability of the solution. Usually, the stability depends on the end-user as well, for example, how much usage or how much they know about the technology or the product. 

For Zscaler, it is scalable for anywhere from five users up to 5,000 or 10,000 users, because of the MSS model when at telco providers. For an individual company, it is still quite easy for them to scale, based on how much hardware or cloud services they want to deploy. It's pretty easy to scale, as the organization scales.

In general, if you want to look at the number of users, this solution can deploy anywhere from five users up to 10,000 users quite easily from an MSS model, managed services model. When you talk about an on-prem model, however, scaling needs to be deployed at phases. It cannot be deployed in one go for anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 users. It has to go through a deployment phase.

We don't have experience with the vendor's technical support, as we offer our own. 

There are three levels of technical support that we provide. The first level comes when we charge the customers on the technical support if our engineer needs to go on-site and help. 

The second level of support is, if it's an MSS program, through the telco provider. 

If they still need help, then it has to go to the vendor. We always try to help our clients first instead of directing them to vendors.

If you go for the MSS model, managed services model, then the initial setup is very straightforward. You register with the telco and the services are switched on. When you want to stop paying for that, you just turn the services off. That's how simple it is.

If you go for an on-prem model, there are going to be certain challenges surrounding how it needs to be deployed. It's dependant on the client. If the client is a cloud-native organization, it becomes easier. But if the client, SMB client or enterprise client, is not cloud-native, then it is a little expensive for them.

If all the prerequisites are met and the hardware requirements are met for an on-premises model, it takes about a week to deploy the solution. That would be for a small scale organization of about 300 users.

If it is an MSS, you can expect it to take one week. That's only if all the prerequisites are met. If the prerequisites are not ready, it can take up to three to four months. It also depends on the client and how they are looking to deploy it. If they want to go phase by phase or they want to do a full-time deployment, for example.

We are consultants. We handle the implementation ourselves.

The return on investment usually comes in anywhere between three to six months, for a large enterprise. For an SMB, it usually is apparent after two to three months.

Pricing varies from customer to customer, depending on the hardware that is required and the deployment model.

Our clients might evaluate other options, like iboss and Fortinet. We offer Zscaler.

With MSS service providers, they prefer to have an on-prem OPEX-based deployment model. Like telecom providers or data center service providers, they buy the service and roll it out to customers or sell it to their own customers for a monthly fee. We have a mix of clients who prefer to have private clouds and hybrid models.

There is competition, with, for example, iboss and Fortinet in the region. iboss is hardware-free but the company is young and still growing. It's not there yet. Zscaler, however, the way they have matured the market and have become a mature model, makes them preferred over other vendors or other brands.

In terms of implementing Zscaler, it's quite straightforward, but even having a straightforward technology like Zscaler requires a consultative approach of which are the critical areas where the service needs to be deployed first. That needs to be studied as per the cybersecurity guidelines so that the right protocols are implemented.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten. 

They still have some features to integrate. The solution is still evolving.

We primarily use this web security solution to protect our users in remote locations or branches from internet threats. It is very important for our organization to protect our users, even if they are not connected to our network. 

Zscaler Web Security protects our users in remote locations from internet threats even if they are not connected to our network.

What I like most about Zscaler Web Security is that we can have our users protected from internet threats and viruses even when they're not connected to our network. I love the fact that it enables us to create whitelists and blacklists based on specific users. These features are extremely important to us and that is what we like most about this solution.

The reporting could be improved to make it a little bit easier. When it comes to individual users, I'd like to see easy reporting that can be shared with executives. Due to my technical background I don't have issues to understand the reporting. 

However, if I have to give a report to an executive to read, he may find it too confusing. He wants to see something simplistic that contains information like what the user's access time was, how long the user spent time on the site, which sites was visited, what they did etc. The current reports can, therefore, be somewhat improved and simplified. 

Another thing that I would like to see is if Zscaler could have a separate product for direct access. I looked at a private access solution, but I understand there's a separate product that isn't integrated with this. 

We've never experienced any outages or other problems since we started using this solution, so I believe it is very stable and secure. 

I think it scaled quite well. We are currently using it in a small organization with about 250 users, and I would say it will scale as our company grows. 

We've used the technical support on occasion, and they were excellent. 

We bought Zscaler Web Security through our Internet Service Provider, so they handled most of the setup. So, from our part, it was quite straightforward.

Our Internet Service Provider is a reseller, and they helped with the installation and setup. Their level of expertise was outstanding. Maintenance and deployment will be easy to manage and I believe one person will be able to handle it. It won't be a full-time job. 

Although I can't put a figure to it, we've definitely seen a return on our investment.

Our monthly fee is around R3000 and I think it is very reasonable.

My advice to other users would be to determine if the reporting meets their requirements. They should get their whitelists, blacklists, groups and active directory set up properly before trying to implement it because it has a very strong integration with the active directory. Therefore, if you have your active directory well set up, you can classify your users and create groups as to who can go where and who can do what on the internet.

If I have to rate this product, I will give it a nine out of ten - simply because I never give anything a ten.

The primary use for the solution is to provide better more mature security for our client's networks.

The solution offers a level of quality of operation and services for each site. By deploying this service we reduce the overall variational risk.

The solution offers a distributed organization to master and to control all of the endpoints. Zscaler allows us to deploy their solution instead of building an in-house proprietary solution. Because it is well integrated and mature, it's faster, cheaper, and better for the company.

Zscaler should provide adjacent services, which would be complementary to their current offering that could to be more pragmatic for a customer. For example, if you take Akamai, you get multiple sets of services, all depending on the customer and the strategy and the complexity and the problems. In some areas, they are more varied in terms of coverage. For example, they also offer content delivery networks, which is complimentary, and for some customers that could solve two problems at once. By providing a wider range of services, Zscaler could reduce deployment risk and operational risk by being a one-stop-shop type of solution.

In the next release, Zscaler should offer a content delivery network.

The solution is scalable. Right now, the company has 40,000 users. The client intends to increase usage.

The initial setup that I'm aware of was not very smooth. I would not blame the product. It was more of the global maturity of the organization we were implementing for. If the organization is not able to align their team, the deployment will be difficult. This deployment is ongoing. We started it four months ago.

We consult on the implementation.

I'm currently consulting clients, and have worked with this solution extensively in the past. Most of my clients are moving from a private cloud to a hybrid cloud deployment model.

The way Zscaler has shaped their product is very good. Now they need to expand the coverage and to have a more global service. For mid-players and sometimes top-players, multiplying the numbers of providers to build an integrated solution is a complex endeavor. If Zscaler expanded their services, that would remove some complexity,

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

Zscaler is securing entire cooperate traffic using its different modules. This includes URL & aapplication filtering, malware & threat protection, bandwidth control, sand boxing and advanced fire-walling etc. Specifically, I like the URL filtering/user authentication. DLP and firewall features are also an added advantages. Also, there are various traffic forwarding mechanisms such GRE, pac file, VPN etc.

Since this is a cloud based product, we don't have to bother about the hardware/physical status and space. No need to monitor and manage the hardware. If there's an issue, Zscaler will switchover to another node to process the customer traffic.

Using location admin users should be better so we can merge any centralized authentication servers like AD, Radius, and any other server. This would help centralize the server management. v5.2 is being released shortly, and will have a lot of new features for TLS and HTTPS transactions.

Morethan 6 years

NO

Initially there were issues interms of stability and improved a lot now.

Zscaler is very easy to scale.

They have very excellent support team

It's an excellent product, and there's no need to worry about the hardware and maintenance cost.

We can manage our IT rules and policies using online portal.

Zscaler provides web security on the cloud for any device at any place all the time. If you use local appliances, users are not protected when they are connecting from outside the corporate network (e.g., home office, hotspots, airports, etc.).

We use Zscaler from all our locations, and for our roaming users too. In order to integrate our users to Zscaler, we use Okta (ADFS) for authentication, cloud security connectors for traffic redirection from locations (tunnels to the Zscaler cloud), and the Zscaler app for roaming users. 

One on the main benefits is protection all time from anywhere. 

Zscaler excels in security protection and the cloud is always up-to-date. It does not matter if you are a small or big organisation, you will receive the same security quality. 

In terms of management and visibility, there is a single panel where you can configure the policies for your entire organisation worldwide and the reporting tools are brilliant.  

Zscaler provides a lot of features in terms of control (URL filtering, cloud app control, etc.), which can be found in other solutions as well, but in terms of security, it is quite unique. SSL inspection, Advanced Threat Security, and Cloud Sandbox are probably the most valuable. 

• SSL inspection is easy to implement and the performance is great (it is the responsibility of Zscaler to provide it). 
• Advanced Threat Security protects you from most threats that can bypass the classic anti-malware solution.
• Cloud Sandbox completes the stack of security requirements stopping zero-day malware.

Do not expect to pay for the service and start using it, like Gmail. Zscaler requires a proper implementation to be done to make it successful.

When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. 

After a proper implementation, the maintenance is very low.

Be aware that you will need to invest some time and money to adapt your environment for Zscaler (traffic redirection, software deployment, authentication, etc).

Our primary use case of this solution is for the protection from malware and malicious attacks. We also use it for bandwidth control to compare business and individual use. We use it in conjunction with Palo Alto. 

The most valuable feature is bandwidth control. It has good traffic visibility. 

The implementation process needs improvement. Even if you have implemented it, it doesn't mean that it is done, you have to pay for the service afterward. It's not a one-shot implementation, you need to spend some more effort on it afterward.

It also needs better integration with other applications as well. There are some restrictions.

I would like to see them incorporate a user ID or application ID in the next release of this solution. 

Since you need to maintain it the maintenance payout is not that good. I cannot say that it's stable.

In my company, we have around five thousand users, but just the main account would be around three thousand. 

It works every day and it's protecting against the attacks and so we are using on a daily basis.

I would rate their technical a four out of five, based on my experience with some support cases. Their support is good. 

The initial setup was okay but the problem is that afterward, you have to put in more time and money. 

We used a consultant for the deployment. 

It's not an expensive solution but it is more expensive than some of its competitors. The licensing model is good if you pay for the medium-level licensing model. We get many features with the license but if you would like to integrate with other things, you have to spend time and money for the maintenance but other than that you don't have to buy additional new licenses. 

It was also one of four other products I believe but the Zscaler I can say that for bandwidth control, it is good, so we are not using at the moment data loss prevention feature so I cannot comment on that, but I believe, when you use Zscaler, you are not protected from all malware and malicious attacks, so you may need another tool just to cover these gaps. Zscaler is not enough for advanced protection. You need an additional tool.

Bandwidth control, reporting, and visibility are good but the cloud-based and the advanced protection aren't so great so I would give it a six out of ten.