Zscaler Silver Enables Zero Trust Security for Cloud Transformation

Understanding Zscaler Silver and Its Role in Network Security

In today's digital world, enterprises are rapidly adopting cloud technologies and services. However, this also expands their threat landscape as employees can now access internal applications and data from anywhere. To secure their networks, many organizations are turning to a Zero Trust approach that assumes breach and verifies each access attempt. Zscaler Silver is an integral component of this security model.

What is Zscaler Silver?

Zscaler Silver is a cloud-based security platform that acts as a secure internet gateway for organizations. It sits between users and the internet to broker all web traffic across all locations and users. This allows Zscaler to inspect traffic inline for threats, enforce granular access policies, prevent data loss, and more.

As a core component of the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange, Silver offers the following key benefits:

• Inline cloud firewall and IPS to detect and block threats
• Cloud sandboxing to analyze suspicious files
• Data loss prevention to stop leakage of sensitive data
• SSL inspection to decrypt and scan encrypted traffic
• Bandwidth control and shaping to improve network performance
• Real-time reporting and analytics

Zscaler Silver is delivered as a cloud service from over 150 data centers globally. This eliminates the need for organizations to deploy hardware appliances at each location.

How Does Zscaler Silver Enable Zero Trust?

The Zero Trust model is centered around the principles of least privilege access and trust verification. Zscaler Silver enforces these in the following ways:

• Granular access policies based on user, group, application, content, and other criteria
• Real-time user verification and posture assessments
• Contextual access control using signals like user location, device, and more
• Inspection of all traffic even across SSL to detect threats
• Microsegmentation that limits lateral movement across network

By placing Zscaler Silver between users and applications, organizations can continuously validate access and prevent threats from spreading laterally even if a breach occurs.

Challenges with Traditional Network Security

Legacy network security architectures are ineffective in today's cloud-first world. Here are some of their key limitations:

• Backhauling traffic decreases performance and inflates costs
• Hardware appliances add complexity and inhibit scalability
• Perimeter-focused defenses are easily bypassed
• Lack of inline SSL inspection leaves blindspots
• Coarse-grained access policies lead to excessive permissions

These factors mean traditional security cannot safely enable initiatives like digital transformation, cloud adoption, mobility and globalization.

Key Capabilities of Zscaler Silver

Let's look at some of the standout capabilities of Zscaler Silver for securing cloud transformation:

Inline Traffic Inspection

Zscaler inspects all traffic inline for maximum security. This includes:

• URL and HTTP header scanning
• IP and DNS reputation checks
• Pattern matching for personally identifiable information (PII)
• Advanced threat detection using machine learning
• Malware and virus scanning

Traffic is decrypted and inspected even across SSL to identify threats hidden in encrypted traffic.

Robust Access Control

Zscaler enables identity-based, least privileged access with:

• User, group and location-based policies
• Device posture checks before granting access
• Application allowlisting to restrict access
• Real-time authentication via SAML and OAuth
• Adaptive access controls using AI and ML

This limits access to only what is explicitly authorized based on contextual signals.

Rapid Threat Protection

Zscaler rapidly identifies and blocks the latest threats through:

• Over 120 threat correlation rules updated daily
• Sandboxing of suspicious files in Zscaler cloud
• Breach prevention by blocking access to known malicious IPs
• Automated protection tuned by AI/ML algorithms

New defenses are immediately applied across the Zscaler security cloud to all customers globally.

The Bottom Line

Zscaler Silver enables organizations to securely transform their networks for the cloud and mobile-first world. By acting as a secure internet gateway, Zscaler allows enterprises to consistently enforce Zero Trust principles across all their environments. Its inline traffic inspection, granular access policies and rapid threat prevention capabilities are key enablers for building a robust security posture across cloud, mobility and internet access.

FAQs

What is Zscaler Silver?

Zscaler Silver is a cloud security platform that acts as a secure internet gateway to inspect all traffic for threats, enforce access policies, prevent data loss, and enable Zero Trust network access.

How does Zscaler Silver work?

Zscaler Silver sits between users and the internet to broker web traffic. It inspects all traffic inline, including across SSL, to detect and prevent threats. Granular access policies are enforced before allowing access to applications.

What are the benefits of Zscaler Silver?

Key benefits include inline traffic inspection, granular access control, rapid threat prevention, SSL decryption, microsegmentation, bandwidth control, and centralized management from the cloud.

How does Zscaler enable Zero Trust?

Zscaler enforces least privilege access with granular policies based on user, device, location, and application. It verifies user identity and posture before granting access. Inspection occurs for all traffic to detect threats.

Is Zscaler Silver available as hardware appliances?

No, Zscaler Silver is delivered entirely from the Zscaler cloud platform. There is no need to deploy hardware appliances at different locations.