Zscaler And The Importance Of Zero Trust

In this clip from a Motley Fool Premium interview, Jay Chaudhry, founder of Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) explains the importance of zero trust.

Tim Beyers: Zscaler is a widely followed company at the Motley Fool and your specialty is Zero Trust. Zero Trust architecture. The idea that if you are going to operate inside a network, inside a cloud-based network, everywhere you go in that network, you must be continually verified. We don't trust you. Just when you get in the door one time, we are continually verifying that you are who you say you are, you have the credentials to be here. Which does feel very important for something like a government network where you're dealing with very sensitive data.

I wonder, Jay, this idea of Zero Trust, which you've been advocating for years. I understand that I have listened to your conference calls and heard you bang the drum for this. I wonder if this idea of Zero Trust and now finding your way into these big cabinet agencies. Does that to you reflect maturity of the cloud, maturity of Zero Trust? What do you think this signifies? Or is it just frankly, what you've been able to achieve a Zscaler?

Jay Chaudhry: It's a big change. Technology incrementally changes all the time. But every 20-30 years, there's a disruptive change that takes us to the next level. The network and network security we do today was invented 30 years ago. It's the same firewall technology. It's the same VPN technology. Yes.

There's some incremental changes to it, but the Zero Trust approach we pioneered. When I start the company, basically said, we don't put people on the network, we don't do network security. Networks should be simply plumbing and transport. You really need to secure data. Data is sitting either with applications or sitting with the users. We'll make sure the right user talks to the right application, right workload, taught to write workload. That you rightfully said. In this architecture, we are constantly verifying and checking. It starts with Zero Trust, trust, no one.

But Zero Trust is a misnomer. It's trust, no one trust someone with a minimal trust, you need to grant them to do a specific application. Not being on the network means this, if I come to see you at your headquarters, they're going to stop me at the reception and say stop, who are you? Show me your ID and I'll give you a badge. That's authentication, that's starting point. Then the old Wall, they'll say, take this badge, go to seventh floor meeting room 23. I can be wandering around the hallways, go to any room that's open. That's what can happen in today's world of VPNs and firewalls. You own the network, then you try to do segment here, segment here, it's a mess. In an architecture, once they gave me a bad, after checking me an idea that assumption, they say stop, you will be escorted to your meeting room and meeting room only you can't go anywhere. I get escort to the meeting room. They only allow me to go there.

They're very careful to make sure I'm not trying to get anywhere else and once the meeting is done, they escort me out. That's like collecting a use to application. I personally believe that the whole world is moving in this direction. The legacy architecture fundamentally changes. Now, unfortunately, there are forces that are trying to hold it back. Who would that be? The vendor who's getting disrupted. These firewall and VPN companies are claiming we got Zero Trust too, which is doing a disservice. But what's helping us is that seesaw organization that the Biden administration put in place. It is an agency whose focus is to make sure security gets done. Zero Trust gets implemented properly, and it's really helping us. We got to do this to protect our country organizations. Otherwise, you see so many attacks on all these healthcare organizations, banks and whatnot are customers of far safer than people who aren't using Zscaler.

Tim Beyers has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Zscaler. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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