Zscaler Introduces World’s First Cloud-Based Next Generation Firewall with Zscaler Winter 2015

Zscaler, the Internet security company, today introduced the Winter 2015 release of the Zscaler Internet security platform. With Winter 2015, Zscaler is delivering the world’s first cloud-based next-generation firewall, providing powerful network security, application control and visibility everywhere, with no on-premise hardware or software required.

Zscaler Winter 2015 is designed to protect organizations from an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape. As a fully integrated, carrier-grade, cloud-based Internet security platform, Zscaler Winter 2015 delivers robust Internet security, Advanced Persistent Threat protection, next-generation firewall, data loss prevention, SSL decryption, traffic shaping, policy management, security assessment and threat intelligence. Organizations can add new security features with the click of a button without the need to install or upgrade hardware.

“Traditional appliance-based approaches to security just don’t make sense for protecting a world dominated by mobile devices, cloud applications and the Internet of Things,” said Dr. Amit Sinha, Executive Vice President of Engineering and Cloud Operations, Chief Technology Officer for Zscaler. “Our new Next Generation Cloud Firewall is a service enabling organizations of all sizes, for the first time, to deploy next-generation firewall capabilities everywhere — at every campus, branch and remote office, at retail stores, at manufacturing facilities and even on top of highly distributed Internet-connected devices. And through the power of cloud computing, Zscaler’s Next Generation Firewall can be deployed at scale in minutes — with improved security and unmatched return on investment.”

Zscaler Next Generation Cloud Firewall

Firewalls have traditionally been delivered as centralized hardware appliance or software-based solutions. This approach to security made sense years ago, when 90 percent of employees were centrally located and most software applications ran in centralized corporate data centers. Today, users and applications are everywhere — centralized, hardware-based security appliances no longer provide complete coverage for a distributed, Internet, cloud and mobile-first world.

According to Gartner, 70 percent of enterprise firewall purchases are next-generation firewalls. However, according to Osterman Research, nearly two-thirds of next-generation firewall deployments today are only in the data center. Taken together, these two facts define the target market for Zscaler’s cloud-based next-generation firewall — to secure the distributed enterprise outside of the corporate data center, where it is too expensive and too cumbersome to manage traditional appliance-based next-generation firewalls, to protect branch offices, retail outlets, manufacturing facilities and other remote and distributed locations—protecting all employees, devices and Internet-connected things.

GMH Systems, an IT consultancy and managed security services provider based in Germany, has deployed the Zscaler Next Generation Cloud Firewall to provide cloud-based security for its customers. “Zscaler’s Next Generation Firewall enables us to offer our customers a new bundled security service that includes web security and next-generation firewall. With a cloud-based firewall, we’ve eliminated the need to put a stack of appliances at each customer location. The service can be deployed in minutes and we can now centrally manage all of our customers’ services,” said Dennis Kuhlmann, Security Architect for GMH Systems.

Features of the Zscaler Next Generation Cloud Firewall include:

• User awareness: Identifies users, groups and locations regardless of IP address
• Threat protection and compliance: Blocks threats and data leaks in real time
• Visibility and policy management: Provides globally unified administration, policy management and reporting
• Very high performance and scalability: In-line deployment at cloud scale
• Part of an integrated security platform: Integrates with sandboxing, web security, DLP, content filtering, SSL inspection, malware protection and cloud-scale correlation, reporting and analytics

Zscaler Winter 2015 Availability

Available today, Zscaler Winter 2015 is priced on an annual, per-user subscription basis, depending on deployment size, options and modules.