Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform Reviews

Most people use Zscaler SASE as a replacement for VPNs. You know, with a VPN, once you establish connectivity to the network, you have unrestricted access. But with Zscaler SASE, you have strict access control. You don't get any access unless you adhere to the policies set in Zscaler. 

So, you can control who has access to specific applications at a URL level rather than granting access at the physical IP level. That's what most people appreciate about it. IPs provide access to everything on the machine, whereas Zscaler SASE provides access to specific services within the network. 

The most valuable feature is its ability to establish connectivity for remote users and remote endpoints. It offers a high level of granularity compared to typical VPNs, which also encapsulate a lot of I/O. By using Zscaler SASE for home access or access in remote areas, it bypasses the issues introduced by ISPs. 

Sometimes ISPs block certain protocols or applications, but when everything is encapsulated within the Zscaler Cloud, the ISPs don't get a chance to interfere or block. This is especially helpful when it comes to file sharing. Sometimes ISPs block it, so we can't share files using cloud services remotely. Zscaler SASE gives non on-premise users the ability to securely access and sync with on-premise resources.

The area that requires improvement is their support. The current support is lacking. 

Other than that, once you have the right people on the phone, the product performs as advertised. However, multiple clients have complained about the support. 

I have been working with Zscaler SASE for two years. 

When it comes to stability, it's similar to any outsourced service. There will always be some outages because of the global nature of the network and the involvement of various cloud providers. There are many moving parts. I don't anticipate more frequent outages, but it's important to acknowledge that Zscaler is not flawless.

I haven't encountered any clients who have had problems with scalability or performance issues. There were a couple of outages less than six months ago, but that's to be expected. Every service experiences occasional outages. It's like having allergies; every product at a global scale will have such issues. 

I have heard a lot of complaints from my clients about the support. Even VMware's support has declined since it got acquired by Broadcom. 

So, we're not receiving the kind of support we used to get, like from Cisco. It's more akin to Microsoft and internal support.

The initial setup does take some time to get used to. Zscaler does a good job with its specialized services in setting up and installing the product. 

Once you start using the product, any issues that arise are generally handled well. The support is not as terrible as it may seem at first. While there may be instances where one technician transfers the case to another technician, it doesn't mean starting the entire process from scratch.

However, most people are deploying it on AWS or Azure. I have some clients who still prefer on-premises deployment. It depends on their specific requirements.

The pricing is quite high, especially when it comes to the gateway. It costs around $10,000 per gateway per data center, which can be seen as ridiculous. Other cloud-based solutions charge based on the number of clients without the need for a gateway for each data center. 

This pricing approach doesn't sit well with my clients anymore. When Zscaler SASE had a monopoly in the market, it could get away with it, but now there are alternatives cutting into its market share.

I would rate Zscaler's pricing model as an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive. 

There are other solutions like VMware that also have high costs, but Zscaler SASE stands out because of the expensive gateway for each data center. It's not a cheap implementation. 

Every time you set up an Azure data center, you have to spend another $10,000 to $15,000 on a gateway. It adds up quickly. Creating a VPN between data centers might be an alternative, but it introduces a single point of failure. So, that pricing policy alone makes it very expensive.

It's a great product. My advice for those considering using it is to understand the concept of zero access. It's different from just having VPN access. If someone can perform a DNS lookup, they still have access. 

People are often stuck in a VPN-centric mindset. It requires a paradigm shift, similar to transitioning from traditional applications to Microsoft applications. Instead of focusing on what services the user needs, it's about restricting access to specific applications regardless of the user. Once you embrace this mindset, it becomes easier to navigate. It's not a major impact, but it does require a change in thinking.

Overall, I would rate this product an eight out of ten, with the exception of pricing and support issues. It is one of the better implementations available, surpassing Cloudflare's capabilities. However, there are still areas for improvement, particularly in terms of pricing and support.

The security issues one faces with legacy VPN solutions are addressed using a SaaS VPN platform. If an organization wants to implement a zero-trust network architecture, then a SaaS VPN platform is the way to go about it.

The most valuable features of Zscaler Private Access are its ability to integrate with multiple IDPs and application segmentation.

More on-prem infrastructure is required when Zscaler Private Access is to be implemented as a single point of entry.

Since the whole concept of app segmentation is license based, making the app segmentation extremely granular becomes very expensive for an organization. As a result, not all organizations would adopt a granular approach for rolling out their Zscaler Private Access solution. So the entire approach must be seen differently, not the standard license-based approach. As an organization, if I want to make the access for my employees more granular, then it means that I will have to buy more licenses. Organizations with 10,000 to 20,000 applications, including their business partners also connecting to their applications, would need to invest a lot of money into making it granular. Okay. That kind of investment may not be viable for every organization to make, which could limit the use of Zscaler Private Access.

I have been using Zscaler Private Access for about two and a half years.

I rate Zscaler Private Access a nine out of ten for stability.

I rate Zscaler Private Access a ten out of ten for scalability. Zscaler Private Access can be used for more than 2,00,000 users.

Zscaler tells you right at the front that the implementation needs to be taken up by Zscaler-certified people. It does require a good amount of knowledge of the platform. Other options are available where Zscaler makes professional services and resident engineers available. So Zscaler Private Access is a complicated solution, but they facilitate much of that implementation. I rate Zscaler Private Access a seven out of ten for ease of initial setup.

Zscaler Private Access's deployment depends on how much time an organization spends preparing for the solution's implementation. If you have a checklist prepared beforehand, you can deploy the solution in probably one and a half or two months. But if you start deploying it and then start making the necessary preparations for the change, it could easily take more than a year for a large organization.

To deploy Zscaler Private Access, you need to follow a full-fledged project management process. This process includes requirement definitions, coming up with a high-level design document, preparing your project plan, coming up with a low-level design document, going into a pilot phase, and then the production rollout.

Zscaler Private Access is extremely expensive. I rate Zscaler Private Access an eight out of ten for pricing.

Zscaler Private Access has its own data centers and its own private cloud.

Overall, I rate Zscaler Private Access a seven out of ten.

I work for a service provider for a defense customer. We are using Zscaler Private Access to connect to the Internet. This is how we keep our customers protected with the latest inspection of the URLs.

The most valuable feature of Zscaler Private Access is the categorization of the dynamic URLs which keeps the customer's environment protected. The threats and the malware are correctly categorized.

Zscaler Private Access's reporting is poor. We should have more insight into the reports regarding what is blocked and allowed.

I have been using Zscaler Private Access for approximately four years.

I rate the scalability of Zscaler Private Access a ten out of ten.

I rate the support of Zscaler Private Access a five out of ten.

Neutral

There is a lightweight agent on six laptops and the agent reaches out to the SaaS-based cloud.

The process of deployment takes 15 to 30 days.

I rate the initial setup of Zscaler Private Access an eight out of ten.

I rate the ROI from Zscaler Private Access a seven out of ten.

The price is competitive. 

I rate the price of Zscaler Private Access five out of ten.

If the reports were improved the customer would have more insight.

I rate Zscaler Private Access nine out of ten.

We use this solution for traffic and establishing the connection.

It's deployed on-premises.

There are 60,000 people who use Zscaler in my organization.

The best feature is the ability to establish the connection between your public network and automatically connect to the intranet connection.

The stability could be improved.

I have worked with Zscaler Private Access for six months.

I would rate the stability as eight out of ten.

I would rate Zscaler as eight out of ten.

Zscaler offers a point-to-site or point-to-point connectivity to a dedicated service in a secure way. The DNS encryption is based on the identity of users or the identity of a group of users.

It's a cloud solution. We use Zscaler App Connector to manage the solution. As a company, we need to manage connectors. Some are attached to the virtual machine.

Typically, we have 200 fixed users. We can increase the number of users by 10% each year.

The integration with cloud providers, like Azure or GCP, is easy. The Live Logs are a cool feature. We can directly identify issues and divert user traffic.

I have used this solution for four years.

It's stable, but sometimes we need to do things manually to get access. For example, if there is a new user, they need to log out and log back in to enforce updates.

It's scalable.

I would rate technical support as four out of five. We don't always get the desired answer because of the limitations of the product.

We have also used Azure Point-to-Site.

Setup is a bit complex because there are many steps that need to be taken before onboarding and activating the solution. The difficulty of setup will depend on the use cases.

It took at least one hour to activate everything and deploy the solution.

The cost is expensive. It depends on the number of users. There is a license for basic encryption. If we want to add new features, we have to pay to activate them. We have two types of licenses: a license for users and a license for our subscription.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

We've so far recommended the solution in one or two engagements.

We work with customers who have various businesses like banking, finance, travel, et cetera, where we do a solution for them, a security solution for them. We are an IT service consultant company.

We generally use that product for the proxy setup, for URL dealing and blacklist blocking, and all that stuff. When the customer has a requirement where their workforce is very mobile or if they're on-premise and moving the workforce, we do recommend the Zscaler product.

There are also other cases. We extend other modules like CASB or another setup, where we say they can access the public cloud or send some data against the policy.

Scanning the internet traffic for any malware, et cetera, is quite useful. That is the primary use case. 

It is straightforward to set up.

The solution is stable.

It's scalable.

We would like to extend the SASE applications for Zscaler. We'd like to see more work in the area. In our understanding of it, SASE features are very helpful in extending to various other applications like CASB, DLP, et cetera, ensuring the network can be set up to be very agile. SASE adoption is a very prime focus for most customers due to its benefits.

We've dealt with the solution for a year and a half. 

For our use cases, we have found the solution to be reliable and stable. I haven't dealt with crashes or it freezing. There are no bugs or glitches. 

The solution is scalable. It's cloud-based, making it scalable and agile. It's great if companies are going through mergers and acquisitions. 

I've never reached out to technical support.

Before Zscaler, we used to use a lot of other products, however, when we were introduced to Zscaler we became confident it could meet the use cases. Due to its cloud features and cloud-based proxy, unless the customer has very specific use cases that don't include the cloud, it's one of the best products. 

The solution is straightforward to set up. There may be certain use cases where it may be more complex; however, largely, it is easy.

How long it takes to deploy depends on how the workforce is enabled and how they are deployed across, as well as whether they are in a single country or multiple countries. There are instances where we have deployed within a country within less than three months for a scale of 10,000 users.

We typically go for annual license payments.

I'm not a product seller. I'm a service seller. We are mainly a service integration team. We do recommend certain products. However, we don't sell products. I'm a consultant.

If it aligns with a client's needs, I would recommend this solution to others. 

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

We are using Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange for its Zscaler Internet Access service. It provides web security, DLP, data protection, prevention, and lots more features.

It has improved our organization’s working process and efficiency.

It has some good data security and WIP features, providing secure Internet access. We get seamless access with our agents and users. It has some fantastic hardware. They have AI-powered integration with in-built features for the scheduler. It provides security and is connected to manage the security level, which is good.

The solution needs to improve a lot of aspects.

I have been using Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange for more than one year.

I don’t contact the support, but my team usually does.

Previously, I used Citrix.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took almost three months to deploy, but it was smooth.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

It’s a SaaS platform. It enables enterprise security and provides the advantage of SaaS applications while protecting our valuable digital assets from cyber threats.

The product provides a seamless user experience. It provides enhanced security, SSO login, and real-time visibility. Data protection is fine.

The product is not reliable. ZTNA must be improved. It is slow sometimes. It is unreliable. It’s lengthy to troubleshoot.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The tool is stable. There are no vulnerabilities. Everything works well. It provides real-time threat updates and monitoring.

The tool is scalable. Almost 60 to 70% of the people in my company are using the solution. Our entire network is on Zscaler.

Technical support is good. When we raise an incident, the team provides support immediately. Support depends on whether we have a normal license or a premium one.

We were using other platforms like McAfee before. We switched to Zscaler because we needed a solution that is easy to handle, deploy, and monitor. We needed real-time monitoring.

The solution provides ease of deployment. We do not require any physical appliance. We must have an understanding of the technology. There are two tunnels. We must know which tunnel is which tunnel will secure our network better.

The solution is deployed on the private cloud provider Zscaler Private Access and the public cloud provider Zscaler Internet Access. It is easy to deploy the tool on any cloud like AWS and Azure.

I recommend the product to others. The reliability and monitoring features must be improved. The traffic flow is slow sometimes. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We use the product to provide secure access to our customer's environment consisting of on-premise and on-cloud applications.

Zscaler Private Access simplifies the process of managing remote access. It doesn't require deploying and configuring physical appliances in various locations, similar to FortiGate.

The product's most valuable features are cloud-based services and secure internet access. We don't have to set up any physical appliances.

There could be more DLP-related features. Additionally, there needs to be flexibility for integrating ISP features.

We have been using Zscaler Private Access for a year as a partner.

It is a stable product with self-maintenance capabilities regarding hardware and software patches and policies.

It is a scalable product.

The technical support services are good and based on SLA.

Positive

The product is easy to integrate. It takes a week to deploy for 1000 users.

Zscaler Private Access provides a limited number of solutions compared to FortiGate and ForcePoint.

I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Zscaler is a cloud proxy that scans and provides security for traffic to cloud-based applications and resources.

Zscaler is location-independent. Even if you switch to another country, users will have the same security posture. For example, if you are in one country and travel to India tomorrow, you will still have the same security posture as the rest of your team. You will also be able to access all your resources over the Internet as a team, regardless of location. There is no dependency on local firewalls at the site. Everything is in the cloud, so you get security wherever you go.

Zscaler provides several security features, including encryption, URL filtering, application control, and credential theft protection. They are also updating their DLP capabilities.

The reports can be made easier. The solution takes time to fetch reports in the Database section. Otherwise, the reporting module itself is well-designed.

I have been using Zscaler SASE for two and a half years.

Zscaler is very stable. The customers use web services that cause issues over the internet.

Zscaler is highly scalable. Zscaler is a cloud-based service, so it takes care of all the data center and hardware infrastructure. Even if you only have one license, you will still have access to all of Zscaler's security features and performance capabilities. Around 2Lakh users are in Nestle, and all are using Zscaler.

We work with enterprise-level customers.

The customer support is good.

Positive

I have experience with Prisma Access. In terms of scalability and tech support, Zscaler is better. However, Prisma is better in other parameters because they have more experience in the firewall industry and are the leader in firewall technology. We at Nestle are forwarding most of our traffic to Zscaler for scalability. We are using Prisma for some essential functions.

The initial setup is easy. You have to plan very carefully how you are going to use Zscaler. Planning is critical, but implementation is achievable. You need to purchase cloud or host services and synchronize your user database to the rescheduler. Then, you just need to use the application to create a folder application on the system, and you are good to go.

Zscaler deployment time depends on the number of users and the policies to be deployed. A very simple setup can take around two to three weeks, while a very complex setup with multiple components can take months to implement.

We are the service providers of Nestle, which is a user of Zscaler. 

New functionality is always being added to Zscaler's products, but there are some features that we cannot have in the cloud-based platform. For example, Pulse QoS and VPN are still available as standalone products. However, Zscaler offers a variety of products that can meet these needs, such as ZIA, ZPA, and ZDA.

Maintaining Zscaler is easy. It has a well-designed admin portal and policy control. At least 20-30 people are required to manage the Zscaler product with a worldwide presence, depending on the setup. For example, Nestle requires 1-2 people to manage their Zscaler deployment.

I recommend the Zscaler solution. If I get an opportunity to use it in an environment where the users are mostly roaming users and the entire network stack is in the cloud, I will recommend they use Zscaler products. It's a great product.

Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.