Zscaler Internet Access Reviews

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.

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.

The solution is a cloud service, so when you have Zscaler Internet Access, you still often require firewall appliances at the edge to act as gateways to Zscaler. There are certain elements that you can't necessarily ever extract at a network level, which makes it difficult to go completely appliance-less.

You could see it as a downside, but if there's an unavoidable reality of how networking is addressed at this point, and I think that's the only thing that for us is unfortunate, having to always retain some type of alternate firewall or router capability inside the network in order to get to Zscaler, as an example.

We've noticed a trend of Linux support being available at a mobile and workstation level, which isn't available from Zscaler yet, but we are expecting it soon. Zscaler also doesn't offer easy Cisco Meraki integration, which is also on the roadmap, even though we've seen it becoming very common. If we try and use Zscaler with Meraki, it's a fairly manual process to get Meraki to connect to Zscaler, whereas in all other SDware products, there's a lot more automation. 

The only other thing we would love to see in Africa would maybe be an additional Zscaler hub in another strategic location like Kenya to really round out Africa because there are only two hubs in over 30 countries on the continent. One is in South Africa and one is in Nigeria. Africa is kind of a black hole for all cloud providers, which makes life tough for us because there are performance issues when delivering cloud-related services. A little bit more penetration into Africa would help with this.

At a platform level, it's very stable.

One of the primary features of Zscaler is that it's obviously infinitely scalable. That's one of the reasons we like it. It takes away the bottlenecks that we've seen in appliances historically. You can typically grow quite fast.

As long as the platform that they have, that we're connected to, is scaled property, which is their responsibility, then it should be very good. We did hit a problem a while back where they didn't scale properly and we had some major issues. We just hope that it'll never be repeated. It's all about how they manage it, however.

We have about 80,000 users right now. We're selling to more customers, so we're trying to double that number in the next 18 months.

Technical support has been generally very responsive at picking up the tickets in a fairly short amount of time. My experience has been very good.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. The biggest thing for us was to build our own policies. The deployment itself was only a few hours.

We are an integrator and a service provider for Zscaler in the region, so we handled the implementation ourselves.

We have seen an ROI, but the return of investment isn't really as strong as we would like. That has more to do with the reality that South Africa is a very unique and difficult market and the rand depreciation has made all global services expensive in this market. Zscaler, however, leads the local market in value versus functionality. 

Roughly, we might spend $70,000 a month on the solution.

We don't pay for anything beyond the standard licensing fee.

We work with the customers that use a range of different types of proxy services. In my personal experience, I've only ever used Zscaler.

We use the ZIA Business Suite, a version of Zscaler Internet Access.

We use the public cloud deployment model.

The solution is very straightforward. That's what we like about the cloud - all the capabilities that are there, and that are available immediately.

There are things customers really have to have before they integrate the Zscaler. They need to understand ADFS and have it integrated properly into their own network. As long as the customers that you work with do the work required of them before integrating Zscaler, then it's seamless. The problems we encounter happen when customers don't get to the point they need to in order to take it on as a product. 

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

We leverage it for web proxy and web security.

All internet access flows through the Zscaler proxy, regardless of whether people are in office or remote. I have greater control site access and I minimize the number of compromises that we experience to almost none.

Generally, the web proxy feature blocks malicious sites so that my end users don't inadvertently get compromised.

It needs better integration with other applications. It takes a fair amount of regular activity to apply the by-passes because it is very strict in its restrictions and frequently you have to go in and open things up to allow the workforce to work.

The logs that are consumed by our security solution could be a bit more definitive, from an audit perspective. It's sometimes difficult to determine which end user a particular generated alert is associated with.

Stability is good. We have a presence around the globe, it's very localized and that minimizes any kind of latency. Even though they still complain about it.

Scalability is good. Right now our internal workforce is around 120. I have no plans to increase the usage for now. They do have some features we don't use currently.

Technical support is effective.

In the past, we did use some other products. We used OpenDNS which subsequently became Umbrella. Zscaler is easier to manage than OpenDNS but now I think that product is even.

There is a short learning curve on the setup, so it's not complex, but it's not necessarily trivial either. The entire deployment took two to three hours. 

We have about 1.5 persons who manage all of our internal IT apps.

We did the implementation ourselves. 

There aren't any additional costs to the standard licensing fees.

Pay attention to the Zscaler recommended best practices. Don't try to figure it out on your own. Go with what they say to do.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

The primary use case is for organizations that have a lot of road warriors or very highly distributed small offices. It provides protection anywhere you are...whether you are in a hotel somewhere, or in Africa, it does not matter. You will get the Zscaler protection presence anywhere.

This solution helps you establish a secure connection from your laptop to the closest Zscaler point of presence. So, you have protection anywhere in the world. That's the advantage of it. You don't have to VPN all the way to your home office if you're half-the-world away. You go to the closest Zscaler connection and get your policies applied there. Its very powerful. Its great for anybody who has a lot of distributed work force, a lot of work from home people, or a lot of road warriors, that is where Zscaler shines.

The most valuable feature is the Zscaler protection from external threats. It scrubs everything, email, worms and root problems from websites. It is protection, particularly for distributors users and road warriors. Its very good. They're rated highest in secure web-data wise.

I do not have a problem with the stability of the product.

It is scalable. You can easily put new users and offices on it. It is cloud-based, so you do not run into a hardware limitation like you would with other products.

We used tech support when we first set up the solution. It was good.

It was very straightforward. Anyone with firewall familiarity will find it a simple process to download this solution.

The pricing is an issue. It is expensive if you have all of your users in the same location. It is expensive compared to other firewalls on the market.

We have made comparisons to Palo Alto and Cisco Miraki.

The solution's great, but you have to put it into context because of the pricing and the way it basically protects the device from anywhere. It is really more meant from highly distributed organizations, for organizations that have a lot of work from home and those with road warrior workers. That's what it is designed for.

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).

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.

The use cases of the solution are vast. CASB is a part of the product.

The solution has policies that work on client connectors. It’s pretty decent.

SSL inspection is a valuable feature.

The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries. The product should focus on improving its current features. They are good, but they need a lot of polishing.

I have been using the solution for almost a year. I am using the latest version of the solution.

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten.

The scalability of the tool is pretty good. I rate the scalability a nine and a half or ten out of ten.

The product must improve its support.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward. The solution is deployed on the cloud.

I see an ROI on the product.

The pricing is decent, but it is not that low. If we need any extra features, the price will increase.

People wanting to use the solution must not rely much on predefined dictionaries. I would recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.