Zscaler has entered the advanced persistent threat (APT) market with the launch of Fall 2014.
Combining robust internet security, APT protection, data loss prevention, SSL decryption, traffic shaping, policy management, security assessment and threat intelligence, the company said that the technology comes with a capability to monitor and manage a deployment via a mobile device.
Daniel Druker, chief marketing officer at Zscaler. “As a cloud-based system deployed at massive global scale, we at Zscaler leverage trillions of transactions to prevent, detect and remediate the most sophisticated zero-day attacks and APTs, providing far better security than appliances, coupled with unmatched ease of administration and superior economics.”
The APT Protection includes automatic Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) decryption, so it can inspect encrypted traffic, and incorporates multiple layers of security for defence in depth including automated behavioural analysis, sandboxing, detonation, forensics and analysis of suspected zero-day and advanced threats.
Asked if this could decrypt HTTPS traffic, Druker told IT Security Guru that it has to as decrypt this traffic, as around 35 per cent of overall traffic uses SSL, but more than 55 per cent of advanced threats are using SSL to hide.
He said: “To address employee privacy concerns, which are absolutely valid, Zscaler’s SSL decryption is governed by policy, so you can control what traffic is decrypted and what is not. Most of our clients put liberal white–listing policies in place, so for example, they won’t decrypt traffic going to consumer banks or healthcare companies that their employees are using – and they make it easy for employees to ask for additional sites to be white listed.
“The discussion with employees is about the balance between privacy, the protection of intellectual property, and compliance with Government regulations.”
The release also includes the ability to do administration, policy management, reporting, analytics and forensics from a single device. It said that the web-based, next generation graphical administrative and reporting tools can be managed via an internet connection and a Mac, PC or an iPad.
Druker said: “First – in most organisations, mobile devices and tablets are absolutely going unprotected by current security infrastructure. How is a security appliance in the corporate data center going to protect your iPad that is connected to the internet over 4G? Zscaler is unique in that we are ‘inside the internet connection’ so we can always protect mobile devices and ‘things’, regardless of where they are or how they are connected to the internet.
“Secondly, in Fall 2014 we introduced a new graphical administrative and reporting tools that work great on iPad. While I do not expect large enterprises to use an iPad to set up and manage their global security infrastructure, I do expect people to use our dashboards, reporting and analysis on their iPad.”
Also offered is a Security Preview option which offers an instant risk assessment to see how effective a company’s current security systems are at stopping threats, complying with regulations and safeguarding intellectual property.
