On the heels of a major industry first, cyber security firm Zscaler has bumped up their IPO plans up by six months after the success today’s FireEye IPO. FireEye exploded in its first day of trading today, more than doubling its projected $20 IPO price. It’s the latest stock market tech winner and one that further certifies the increasing public interest in the cyber security market.
CEO Jay Chaudry, who co-founded the company in 2008 and steered it into a global security provider to more than 4,000 enterprise customers, told Reuters in an interview that FireEye’s eye-popping first-day performance clinched his decision.
He said his company, which originally intended to go public in about two years, was already cash-flow positive, meaning it is breaking even or profitable at an operational level.
Zscaler’s Direct-to-Cloud Network processes more than 8 billion transactions a day with near-zero latency to instantly secure over 10 million users in 180 countries, with no on-premise hardware or software required for customers. Zscaler’s CEO Jay Chaudhry just appeared on NBC’s Bay Area “Press: Here.” Jay Chaudhry Can’t Lose and the company’s VP of Security Research Michael Sutton speaks regularly on cyber security threats.
Most recently the company introduced the first cloud-based security solution built to address the entire advanced threat defense lifecycle, including protection, detection and remediation in the announcement of Zscaler for APTs. The product also enables continuous coverage of any user on any device in any location. With this shift of delivering behavioral analysis security on a scalable cloud-based platform, the product is an instant mainstream leader. Cloud-based architecture also means that appliances are out of the picture.
Advanced Persistent Threats, or APTs are some of the most significant cyber security threats in existence today. Advanced Targeted Attacks, or ATAs, are closely related. Endpoint protection, your basic anti-virus, even your perimeter protection is no match for these types of threats. They are much more sophisticated and beyond the reach of traditional IT security. These types of threats scan and probe networks looking for weak spots or ways to send information out – typically undetected because they are designed that way. They can literally come in from anywhere, any egress into your environment, mobile, apps, web, email – anywhere. As mentioned, they typically are designed to evade common detection methods, they’re intermittent, they often appear innocuous in what they access, and they may go to sleep for a while before waking up and contacting the outside world on its mission. That’s where organizations are finding such value in advanced threat protection – it’s behavioral, and detects anomalies that wouldn’t come up anywhere else. That’s exactly what Zscaler provides and as designed on the cloud-based platform, you can expect to see rapid adoption of cutting-edge technology.
Many security vendors have overhyped APTs, blurring its definition to distract the market from the fact that their solutions are simple features that should be included in a greater platform,” said Michael Sutton, vice president of security research, Zscaler. “Advanced threats are more than just social engineering, zero-day attacks or data exfiltration; they are the sum of these parts and more, requiring a comprehensive solution to address each individual attack surface as a whole.”
Zscaler for APTs is delivered from the Zscaler Direct-to-Cloud Network, the world’s largest and most scalable global security cloud, which leverages community threat intelligence from its more than 10 million deployed users – an install base ten times greater than any other community defense platform – to provide on-going visibility and protection from emerging threats, regardless of device or location. The Zscaler Direct-to-Cloud Network enables enterprises to eliminate traditional security appliances, streamlining management and vastly reducing network infrastructure costs by securing users as they travel “direct-to-cloud.”