Zscaler Takes Security Protection To The Cloud

Company:

Headquarters: Sunnyvale, Calif.

Technology Sector: Security

Key Product: Zscaler Cloud

Year Founded: 2008

Number of Channel Partners: 100 worldwide

Ideal Channel Partner: Managed Service Provider

Why You Should Care: Zscaler bills its "true multi-tenant" cloud security architecture as the key to offering a high level of threat detection performance and availability.

The Lowdown: Cloud computing has been making inroads in the security market, where vendors are finding it an effective way to keep up with the rapid pace of malware evolution. Cloud-based security also helps companies to deal with "security sprawl," or the proliferation of different appliances that can be difficult and time-consuming to manage.

Zscaler, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based SaaS startup, wraps these advantages into a cloud security service that protects companies from both inbound and outbound threats. What separates Zscaler from other vendors in this space is a multi-tenant architecture that's been designed specifically for the cloud, said to Jay Chaudhry, the company's CEO.

"In a true multi tenant infrastructure, customers take advantage of a common backend and they're not tied to a single data center. This is what the multi-tenant architecture is all about," said Chaudhry, a 13-year security industry veteran with previous stints at CipherTrust (now part of McAfee) and AirDefense (now part of Motorola).

Zscaler's service is powered by 40 globally distributed data center locations. Chaudhry is well aware that multi-tenant is the latest cloud computing buzzword du jour and says it's a given that other security vendors will start billing their offerings as such.

"In the security business, when you come out with something new, every vendor claims to do that virtually overnight. That's the case with multi-tenant," Chaudhry said. Zscaler's goal, therefore, is to educate customers on what a true multi-tenant architecture gives them and how it differs from conventional service-based offerings.

Chaudhry describes Zscaler as "channel centric" and says nearly 100 percent of its revenue goes through partners. The company works with traditional security VARs as well as distributors, and plans to boosts its U.S. presence in the coming year, he added.

In the industry's migration to the cloud, some technology pieces are moving faster than others -- for example, e-mail is one of the first applications to gain mainstream acceptance as a cloud service, notes Chaudhry. He expects Web security to follow suit, and estimates that within the next three years between 35 percent and 40 percent of Web security solutions will be delivered as services.