FINAL WORD
Rob Standing , Regional Director – Middle East , Turkey and Africa at Zscaler
Change is not easy and there are a lot of hearts and minds to win over , especially when altering a security setup .
On one hand , you ’ ve got the operation teams wanting to give everyone a great experience with utilising services . On the other hand , you ’ ve got the security teams that want to make sure everything is locked down . So , it ’ s a matter of pleasing both . At Zscaler , we uncover their desired state and give recommendations on achieving that unified goal .
For organisations that do not have a secured cloud solution or are looking to modernise existing workloads , what should be their starting point ?
Just reach out to us . I came on board a couple of years ago and was fortunate to start building this region for Zscaler from a vendor presence perspective . Now we have 15 people here ! We ’ ve got very strong engineering , architecture and support teams , who will guide you expertly on your Zero Trust journey .
We also have over 200 customers across the region – so speak to any of those businesses that are utilising us . We ’ re also very grateful to have big exposure to several C-level individuals from clients around the world and in different verticals that have already benefitted from our solutions .
How are Zero Trust solutions for state or local government different in implementation from private businesses and organisations ?
We have over 150 Points of Presence ( PoP ) around the world , 13 of which sit within the MEA market to ensure that we are compliant with local data regulations and law . But the implementation for either public or private sectors is quite similar if not the same , so companies have a couple of options .
They can either connect all their user traffic to one of our nodes around the world . For example , if an individual travels from Dubai to New York , they can connect to our local New York node with the same policy enforcement or report back to their original Dubai node .
We can also have a hybrid model . In the MEA setup , we can extend our data plane to on-premises . That is either via a virtual service Edge or a private service Edge , depending on the number of users we ’ re looking to support . This gives businesses all the benefits of our cloud service run by our current operations team .
How unique is Zscaler ’ s cloud solution adoption approach and how do you use Zero Trust architecture to securely connect users , applications and devices from data loss and provide a great user experience ?
For the last 10 years , we have been leaders in the Secure Web Gateway space . Since then , organisations and third parties have coined this Secure Service Edge ( SSE ).
There are four main components of SSE , which is Secure Web Gateway , Zero Trust Network Access , DLP and CASB . We are a leader in that SSE quadrant . Every 24 hours , we process around 200 billion transactions , block 7 billion threats and update the platform over 200,000 times a day . So , no matter where you are , every client reaps the same benefit .
Furthermore , we have a large portfolio of security features and capabilities spanning the entire globe . This is all done by single-scan multi-action – all made by us . This is important to a customer because we ’ re able to inspect the packet and then allow or deny it , thus contributing to a better user experience .
Lastly , it ’ s good to think about the breadth of our platform , about 30 % of our global workforce is R & D related , allowing our platform to continually strive for excellence .
In your experience with the cloud and looking at the multiple organisations Zscaler continues to serve , are there any predictions on how activities around the cloud will evolve in the future ?
The SSE space is just getting started with companies becoming more aware about it than two years ago . In the last six months , AWS has come to the region and I predict more hyperscalers coming to the MEA market . This is going to drive further cloud adoption as there ’ s new support and acceptance within the region for these services .
Securing remote workers is a business challenge that is here to stay , with the pandemic demonstrating that people can be effective working from anywhere . So , as we continue to invest in R & D , we ’ re dedicated to improving our platforms and our growth in Middle East and Africa reflects this .
To conclude , Zscaler has been on a fantastic journey in the MEA market . We are one of the fastest growing regions for the business and I think we ’ re just getting warmed up , so there ’ s lots more to come ! p
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