Zscaler is fundamentally not a traditional VPN, despite offering secure remote access capabilities that superficially resemble VPN functionality. Instead, Zscaler represents a paradigm shift in how organizations approach remote access and network security through its cloud-native Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) architecture, specifically delivered through its flagship product Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) and the broader Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform. While VPNs create encrypted tunnels that place users directly onto organizational networks, Zscaler employs an application-centric model that connects users directly to specific applications while maintaining applications invisible to the internet and preventing unauthorized lateral movement within networks. This distinction is critical for understanding how modern security architectures are fundamentally reimagining remote access in an era of cloud computing, distributed workforces, and sophisticated cyber threats that have rendered traditional perimeter-based security obsolete.
Understanding Virtual Private Networks and Their Historical Context
The Origins and Function of VPN Technology
Virtual Private Networks emerged in the late 1990s as a revolutionary solution to the problem of secure remote access and data protection. The technology evolved from Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP), released in 1996, which represented the genesis of secure wireless data transfer and eliminated the need for expensive, inefficient hardwired connections between locations. Before the development of VPN technology, organizations that needed to exchange sensitive information between computers faced a critical dilemma: the security offered by physical wired connections came at an enormous cost in terms of infrastructure investment, maintenance burden, and operational complexity. VPN technology changed this landscape by introducing encryption standards and specialized hardware capabilities that could create secure wireless tunnels at a fraction of the cost and complexity of traditional approaches.
The core function of a VPN is straightforward in concept but profound in implementation. A VPN works by taking a standard user-to-internet connection and creating a virtual, encrypted tunnel that links the user to an appliance in a data center, protecting the traffic in transit so that malicious actors using web crawlers and deploying malware cannot steal sensitive information. One of the most common encryption algorithms used for VPNs is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a symmetric block cipher designed to protect data in transit. Most often, only authenticated users can send their traffic through the VPN tunnel, though depending on the type of VPN or its vendor, users may have to reauthenticate to keep their traffic traveling through the tunnel and safe from bad actors.
The Traditional VPN Advantage for Remote Access
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, VPN technology represented a genuine breakthrough that transformed how enterprises could support remote workers and distributed operations. The network could be extended into every household and users could work from home as if they were in the office, which fundamentally changed the possibilities for organizational flexibility and workforce composition. From a security standpoint, VPNs established a trusted perimeter model: once a user authenticated to the VPN and successfully connected, they were placed on the corporate network where they received the same level of access and privileges they would enjoy from within the office environment. This model made intuitive sense given the technological constraints of the era—most applications were on-premises, most data was in corporate data centers, and the threat landscape was dominated by external attackers trying to breach the corporate perimeter rather than adversaries already positioned inside networks attempting lateral movement.
The benefits that VPNs provided were substantial and undeniable for their time. VPNs could limit permissions by requiring users to authenticate their way into the network, preventing anyone from gaining access without proper credentials. They could prevent throttling through encrypted tunnels that prevent visibility from the outside, theoretically keeping bandwidth wider and speeds fast. Remote desktops and devices running Android and iOS operating systems could be protected with the help of VPN technology. Additionally, VPN solutions were relatively straightforward to implement compared to alternative approaches, making them attractive from a management and deployment perspective for IT teams that were already managing complex on-premises infrastructure.
The Architecture and Types of VPN Solutions
VPN solutions come in several varieties, each designed to address specific organizational scenarios and access requirements. Remote access VPNs are designed specifically for users working from outside of the office in a corporate setting and are typically deployed within a company’s data center but can be extended, at the cost of web and application performance, to protect remote users from malware and other threats. Cloud VPNs can be deployed on top of virtual machines in order to cloud-enable traditional VPN technology, taking the hardware capability of a VPN and artificially adding cloud functionality such as greater scalability and endpoint protection, though these solutions may still lack the flexibility to support a remote or hybrid workforce at scale. Personal and mobile VPNs, offered by companies such as ExpressVPN and NordVPN, provide downloadable VPN apps so users can keep data secure on their personal devices, which is useful when browsing insecure Wi-Fi networks.
The protocols that govern VPN tunnels include OpenVPN, IKEv2, and IPsec, each with distinct characteristics and use cases. OpenVPN is known for its flexibility and encryption capabilities, making it popular for various implementations. IKEv2 (Internet Key Exchange version 2) maintains stable connections during network changes such as switching between Wi-Fi and mobile data, providing a better experience for mobile users who frequently transition between network types. IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) provides encryption and authentication protocols designed for secure communication at the network layer. While these protocols aim to secure traffic, their effectiveness is only as strong as the implementation and infrastructure of the VPN service.
The Emergence of Zero Trust Network Access and Zscaler’s Cloud-Native Architecture
What Zero Trust Network Access Actually Represents
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), also referred to as Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP), represents a fundamentally different philosophical approach to security architecture compared to traditional VPN-centric models. Whereas VPNs are built on a foundation of implicit trust within a defined perimeter—you authenticate once and then have broad access to network resources—ZTNA is built on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” As the name explicitly suggests, ZTNA operates on the assumption that nothing and no one should be trusted by default, regardless of their location or previous authentication history. Every single access request must be independently verified, every destination must be identified, every device must have its security posture evaluated, and policies must be continuously enforced on a per-session basis.
This represents a categorical rejection of the perimeter-based security model that dominated enterprise security for decades. In a zero trust model, each user, each device, and each network application forms its own perimeter. Connections are only permitted after continuous verification of access credentials, device status, and access policies, fundamentally changing the trust calculus of network security. The result of implementing this principle is far better security, segmentation, and control compared to traditional network-centric approaches. Rather than thinking about security as defending a castle-and-moat perimeter with a tough exterior but vulnerable interior, ZTNA creates a secure, isolated environment around each private application with least-privilege access only to specific authorized users.
Zscaler as a ZTNA and SASE Solution
Zscaler is not a VPN; rather, it is a cloud-delivered, zero trust network access (ZTNA) service that provides secure access to all private applications without requiring a remote access VPN. More specifically, Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) is a cloud-delivered, zero trust network access service that provides secure access to all private applications, with applications never exposed to the internet and thus remaining completely invisible to unauthorized users. ZPA delivers a zero trust model by using the Zscaler security cloud to deliver scalable remote and local access to enterprise apps while never placing users on the network.
Zscaler operates within a broader architectural framework called Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), which Gartner describes as a way to securely connect users, systems, endpoints to apps and services located anywhere. SASE combines the functionality of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) with comprehensive security services such as secure web gateway (SWG), zero trust network access (ZTNA), cloud access security broker (CASB), and firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS) in a cloud-based platform that enables secure, efficient connectivity between users and applications on any device in any location. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange represents the company’s implementation of this SASE framework, offering a fast, flexible, simple, and secure model for connecting users and devices.
The cloud-native architecture underlying Zscaler represents a significant departure from traditional VPN infrastructure. Rather than requiring on-premises VPN concentrators and gateways that create an “always listening” attack surface, Zscaler uses outbound-only connections from app connectors located at customer premises to the Zscaler cloud. The Zscaler Client Connector is a lightweight application that sits on users’ endpoints and enforces security policies and access controls regardless of device, location, or application. This client-side component works in conjunction with app connectors that provide the secure authenticated interface between a customer’s servers and the ZPA cloud, establishing connections through firewalls to the Zscaler cloud, which facilitates that connection as a reverse connection in order to enable users to access applications without exposing internal infrastructure.
The Fundamental Architectural Differences Between VPNs and Zscaler
Network-Centric Versus Application-Centric Access Models
The most fundamental difference between traditional VPNs and Zscaler’s ZTNA approach lies in the philosophical orientation of security architecture. VPNs are inherently network-centric—they are designed to give users access to a network, with the assumption that users who have network access should be able to access all resources on that network to which they have not been explicitly denied access. This means that when a user connects to a corporate VPN, they are placed on the corporate network and can theoretically access any resource on that network (subject to firewall rules and access control lists) as long as their credentials have been accepted by the VPN system.
Zscaler, by contrast, is fundamentally application-centric. Rather than connecting users to a network, Zscaler connects users directly to specific, named applications. While VPNs connect users to a network, ZTNA creates secure segments of one between individual devices and apps, meaning only authorized users have access to specific private applications with no network access—meaning no lateral movement. This architectural distinction has profound security implications. When a user is connected to a VPN and placed on the corporate network, an attacker who compromises that user’s credentials or device can potentially move laterally through the network to compromise other systems and access data that the user should not have access to. With Zscaler’s application-centric model, a compromised user can only access the specific applications they have been authorized to access, eliminating the opportunity for lateral movement to other systems.
Identity, Device, and Continuous Verification
Traditional VPNs rely on a single authentication event to grant access. A user provides credentials, the VPN system validates those credentials, and assuming they are correct, the user is authenticated and connected to the network. At that point, in many VPN implementations, the authentication state is essentially static—the VPN does not continuously re-evaluate whether the user still has the right to access the network based on changed circumstances. This represents a critical vulnerability in modern threat scenarios where attackers may have stolen credentials or compromised devices, and where user risk profiles may change dynamically based on behavior, device posture, or other contextual factors.
Zscaler’s approach fundamentally rejects this static authentication model. With traditional VPN systems, users are authenticated once and then placed on the network where they can access everything. With zero trust, by contrast, users and devices are continuously validated and only granted access to specific, authorized applications. Every access request triggers an evaluation of multiple factors: the identity of the user (verified through integration with identity providers), the security posture of the device from which the request originates, the location and network context of the request, the time of the request, the user’s behavioral patterns and any anomalies, and numerous other contextual factors. Policy is then enforced on a per-session basis, meaning that each connection is independently evaluated against security policies in real-time.
This continuous verification approach enables organizations to implement the principle of least privilege, which is fundamental to zero trust architecture. Least privilege means that users and devices are granted only the minimum necessary access required for them to perform their job functions. A mobile developer needs access to different applications and systems than a web app developer, and both need access to different systems than a finance user. By continuously verifying user identity and device posture and applying context-aware policies, Zscaler ensures that users only have access to what they need, when they need it, and that access can be immediately revoked if risk factors change or if suspicious behavior is detected.
Network Visibility and Lateral Movement Prevention
A critical distinction between VPN and Zscaler approaches relates to what can be seen and accessed within the network. With traditional VPNs, once a user authenticates and connects to the network, they have access to all network resources to which they have not been explicitly denied access. From a security perspective, this creates an enormous problem: if an attacker compromises a user’s credentials or gains control of a user’s device, they have essentially the same network access as the legitimate user would have, potentially allowing them to move laterally through the network to compromise other systems, escalate privileges, and access sensitive data. Lateral movement is a well-documented attack technique where, after gaining initial access to a network, attackers use stolen credentials or other methods of privilege escalation to move through the network to locate sensitive data and compromise additional systems.
Zscaler’s architecture is explicitly designed to prevent lateral movement. Because users never have direct access to the network—they only have direct access to specific applications to which they have been granted authorization—lateral movement becomes impossible. The network itself is never exposed to the user. Instead, users are connected directly to apps, not to networks, which effectively eliminates lateral movement and reduces the opportunity for ransomware to spread. Even if an attacker compromises a user’s credentials or device, they can only access the specific applications the user is authorized to access. They cannot use the compromised access point to discover other systems on the network or move to compromise additional resources.
Application Invisibility and Internet-Facing Attack Surface
A particularly elegant advantage of Zscaler’s architecture is that applications are never exposed to the internet. With traditional VPN approaches, the VPN concentrators or gateways must have publicly routable IP addresses so that remote users can connect to them from anywhere on the internet. These VPN devices become attack targets because adversaries know where they are and can attempt to exploit vulnerabilities to gain access to the network. By contrast, Zscaler uses inside-out connections where app connectors at customer premises initiate outbound connections to the Zscaler cloud, rather than listening for inbound connections. This means that applications are essentially invisible to the internet—no public IP addresses are exposed, no inbound firewall ports are open, and attackers cannot discover or directly target applications.
This architectural difference has profound implications for security. Traditional VPNs expose IP addresses on the public internet, providing an attack surface through which they can be compromised. VPN concentrators and gateways are well-known attack targets, with vulnerabilities regularly discovered and exploited. By eliminating this attack surface entirely and using outbound-only connections, Zscaler reduces the risk of targeted attacks against remote access infrastructure. Applications remain hidden behind the Zscaler cloud, accessible only to users who have been properly authenticated and authorized, and invisible to potential attackers scanning the internet for targets.
Performance, Scalability, and User Experience Implications
The Backhauling Problem and Direct-to-Application Connectivity
One of the most immediately noticeable differences between VPNs and Zscaler from a user perspective relates to performance and latency. Traditional VPNs, especially those designed for centralized on-premises data centers, often require users’ traffic to be backhauled through the corporate data center, even when users are accessing cloud applications or services that may be geographically closer to them than the corporate data center is. A user in Seattle accessing a SaaS application hosted on servers in North Virginia might have their traffic routed first through a corporate data center in Dallas before being sent to the SaaS application, adding unnecessary latency and consuming precious network bandwidth at the data center. This backhauling effect was an acceptable trade-off when most applications were on-premises and the majority of user traffic was destined for those on-premises applications. In a cloud-first, SaaS-dominated world, however, backhauling creates unnecessary performance degradation.
Zscaler’s architecture eliminates this backhauling problem by enabling users to connect directly to applications through the closest of more than 150 global points of presence distributed worldwide. Rather than routing all user traffic through a corporate data center, Zscaler routes user traffic through the nearest edge location, optimizing latency and network performance. Users accessing cloud applications connect directly to those applications through Zscaler’s global infrastructure, avoiding the round-trip through corporate data centers that characterize VPN-based approaches. This direct-to-application connectivity translates directly into measurable performance improvements for end users. One large healthcare organization that transitioned from VPN to Zscaler Private Access reported that while everyone tolerated VPN, no one actually loved VPN, whereas with Zscaler, user satisfaction shot through the roof thanks to faster and easier access to applications, with users giving rave reviews with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5.0 compared to 3.0 for VPN.
Real-world case studies substantiate these performance claims. The State of Oklahoma consolidates access for over 100 agencies through Zscaler Private Access, with one CISO reporting that access to private applications was up to six times faster than it was with VPN. Guaranteed Rate, a financial services company with 6,000 employees across 500 branches, reported that ZTNA made access to applications snappier for users since they did not have to backhaul traffic to data centers, achieving 2-3x faster access to apps compared to their previous VPN infrastructure. Cebu Pacific Air boosted user satisfaction by 90% over legacy VPN by eliminating backhauling and improving connection speeds. These are not marginal improvements—they represent substantial enhancements in user experience that translate into increased productivity and employee satisfaction.
Scalability and Resource Efficiency
VPN infrastructure has fundamental scalability limitations that become increasingly problematic as organizations grow or attempt to support large numbers of remote workers. Scaling a VPN infrastructure often involves adding more VPN servers, which can be costly and complex to manage and effectively extends the attack surface since these devices have active “listeners” for new connections, making them targets for threat actors. Each additional VPN server requires hardware procurement, software licensing, configuration, security patching, and ongoing maintenance. Organizations that experience sudden spikes in remote worker demand—such as occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic—may find that their VPN infrastructure is inadequate to meet demand, requiring emergency hardware deployments and significant capital expenditures with short implementation timelines.
Zscaler’s cloud-native architecture, by contrast, scales elastically to handle massive traffic spikes without requiring organizations to procure additional hardware. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform processes around 160 billion requests on a daily basis across 150 data centers around the world, with this number doubling approximately every 20 months. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when organizations suddenly faced an unprecedented surge in remote workers, Zscaler customer who hosted a company-wide global video webcast for over 70,000 employees did so without difficulty, with the security cloud easily covering the traffic spike by elastically ramping up resources. A legacy hardware solution with limited bandwidth might not have handled such a dramatic increase, but Zscaler’s distributed cloud architecture simply provisioned additional capacity automatically to handle the demand.
This scalability advantage extends beyond sudden traffic spikes to include the fundamental challenge of supporting growing organizations. Highly scalable ZTNA solutions with granular access controls and micro-segmentation capabilities can easily accommodate growth in users, devices, and applications without compromising security. The solution can scale efficiently to handle large-scale deployments without the operational overhead and capital expenditure requirements that come with traditional VPN infrastructure.
Security Model Comparison: The Trust Continuum
The Attack Surface Reduction Principle
One of the core benefits of zero trust architecture, as implemented by Zscaler, is the dramatic reduction in attack surface compared to traditional perimeter-based security models. The traditional firewall-centric approach to security creates a well-defined perimeter and focuses defensive resources on that perimeter while implicitly trusting everything inside the perimeter. This approach assumes that access requests from outside the network perimeter cannot be trusted but that anything from inside is trustworthy. However, attackers regularly bypass perimeter defenses, and this approach fails to account for the reality that threats are often already inside the network and that compromised internal users can move laterally to compromise additional systems and data.
Zscaler’s zero trust approach eliminates this assumption of implicit internal trust by removing the concept of a network perimeter entirely. Rather than focusing on defending the perimeter, zero trust focuses on entities and their relationships to specific resources. Users are connected directly to applications, not to networks. Applications are invisible to the internet rather than exposed behind static IP addresses. There is no intermediate network that lateral movement can exploit. By making applications invisible, hiding them behind the Zscaler Exchange, Zscaler removes entry points for attackers. Organizations deploying zero trust ZTNA with Zscaler minimize their attack surface to the point where attackers cannot discover applications or network infrastructure to target. They cannot scan for open ports. They cannot exploit vulnerable services listening for inbound connections. The attack surface simply does not exist in the way that it does with traditional perimeter-based approaches.
Threat Prevention and Detection Capabilities
While VPNs primarily focus on encrypting data in transit between the user and the VPN endpoint, they lack comprehensive built-in threat prevention and detection capabilities. VPNs are designed to create secure tunnels but are not designed to inspect traffic for malware, analyze content for data loss prevention, detect anomalous behavior, or provide advanced threat intelligence. These capabilities must typically be added as separate, bolt-on security products, creating management complexity and potential security gaps between different security tools.
Zscaler’s architecture, by contrast, integrates comprehensive threat prevention, data protection, and detection capabilities into the platform itself. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform provides real-time threat correlation, using AI and machine learning to identify sophisticated threats such as zero-day attacks. The platform conducts full inline inspection of all traffic, including encrypted traffic, at scale. Zscaler processes more than three trillion logs from customers’ IT estates every week and uses them to train its defensive AI systems. With data-protection, Zscaler scans inline traffic for Data Loss Prevention, blocking sensitive data from leaving the organization while also monitoring traffic out of band using Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and API scanning.
Zscaler’s ThreatLabz research organization actively monitors emerging threats and threat intelligence is continuously fed back into the platform to protect all customers. During 2020, for example, Zscaler identified and stopped 6.6 billion threats hidden inside encrypted traffic, a 260 percent increase from 2019. The platform blocked 193 million phishing attempts over encrypted channels from January to October 2020. It discovered that 30 percent of encrypted attacks were delivered via cloud services such as AWS, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box, highlighting the importance of protecting access to cloud applications. This intelligence, derived from analyzing traffic patterns across thousands of organizations, is immediately available to all Zscaler customers through the cloud effect principle—once a new threat is detected on the Zscaler cloud, all customers are instantly protected against it.
Implementation, Transition, and Operational Considerations
The Phased Transition from VPN to Zero Trust
While the security and performance advantages of Zscaler and ZTNA are compelling, transitioning from legacy VPN infrastructure to a zero trust architecture is not a trivial undertaking, particularly for large, established organizations with complex network architectures and numerous applications and user roles. Implementing ZTNA requires careful planning, particularly in large and established networks, to understand network architecture, user roles, and application dependencies, ensuring that the transition occurs smoothly without disrupting business operations.
Zscaler works with organizations using a phased approach to adopting ZTNA that allows customers to ramp up quickly while significantly reducing IT costs. Zscaler’s team has a thorough understanding of network architecture, user roles, and application dependencies, enabling quick implementation and realization of time-to-value. The platform’s architecture and deployment generally requires no hardware—only a small software agent called the Client Connector deployed on endpoints to route traffic to the global security cloud, which substantially reduces the implementation complexity and capital expenditure compared to traditional VPN replacements that would require new hardware appliances.
Transitioning from a traditional network architecture to a zero trust model may require changes in infrastructure, policies, and user access procedures, all of which require time and resources to adapt. However, Zscaler works with customers using a phased approach to adopting ZTNA across many organizations globally and across various industries. Due to Zscaler’s expertise in ZTNA and the technical advantages of the platform, Zscaler can often get customers up and running in just days or weeks rather than the months or years that might be required for other security transformations.
Policy Development and Least-Privilege Access
One of the fundamental differences between VPN and zero trust security models relates to the complexity of policy development and enforcement. With traditional VPNs, the access model is relatively simple: users are authenticated, connected to the network, and then have broad access to all resources except those explicitly denied through firewall rules and access control lists. This simplicity comes at a security cost—users often have much more access than they actually need for their job functions, creating risk if their accounts are compromised.
Implementing zero trust requires a more granular and comprehensive approach to policy development. To implement the principle of least privilege, organizations must build profiles for everyone specifying exactly which applications they need access to and under what circumstances. A mobile developer needs access to different systems than a web app developer, and both need access to different systems than a finance user or an IT administrator. Marketing team members need access to different applications than salespeople. The number and specificity of policies can grow quite complex as organizations account for all the different user roles and access requirements within the organization.
However, this apparent complexity, when managed properly through Zscaler’s tools and processes, actually represents a significant improvement in security posture and operational efficiency. Zero trust is a balancing act between the amount of risk an organization is willing to accept and the effort needed to build and enforce policies. Organizations must thoughtfully ask hard questions: How much access is sufficient? What policies do they need for different departments? How many different policies do they need for each group’s different access needs? How much risk can they tolerate? How much management overhead are they willing to take on to achieve that level of risk? These questions force organizations to think deeply about their security needs and design access policies that actually reflect business requirements rather than defaulting to broad network access.
A Journey Rather Than a Destination
Implementing zero trust is not a one-time project with a defined endpoint; rather, it is an ongoing journey of continuous refinement and improvement. Organizations that transition to Zscaler’s zero trust architecture often start by granting first-generation zero trust users somewhat greater access than they would ideally like, recognizing that even with broader initial access, the security posture is substantially better than that of VPN-based access. Over time, using application analytics capabilities to understand which users are accessing which applications and which applications generate the most traffic, organizations can narrow user access and continue to refine policies to achieve tighter least-privilege enforcement.
One organization in the healthcare sector that transitioned from VPN to ZTNA initially allowed access to *.company.com (all subdomains of their company domain), then used Zscaler’s application analytics capabilities to see which specific applications were accessed and how frequently, then progressively narrowed that access to only the specific applications users actually needed. Through this iterative refinement process, the organization achieved a much tighter security posture than would have been possible with VPN-based network access, and the process actually became easier over time as both the organization and its users became more comfortable with the zero trust model.
Real-World Deployment and Results
Customer Success Across Industries
Organizations across diverse industries and geographies have successfully transitioned from VPN to Zscaler Private Access, in many cases achieving dramatic improvements in security, performance, and operational efficiency. Baker & Baker, an international business services company, replaced hardware-based VPNs with ZTNA through Zscaler and achieved approximately 70% savings on hardware, updates, and licensing costs versus their previous VPN system while also improving overall protection with security improvements up to 90%. This represents a compelling economic case for the transition, with significant cost savings combined with improved security.
United Airlines, with 80,000+ employees across 350+ locations worldwide, rapidly transitioned away from firewalls and VPNs to zero trust cloud security with Zscaler in just six months, with leadership commenting that “We were able to rapidly transition away from firewalls and VPNs to zero trust cloud security in just six months.” The airline was able to detect and block evolving threats with Zscaler and subsequently expanded the deployment to protect their entire workforce. This rapid transition timeline demonstrates that even large, complex organizations with significant existing infrastructure can successfully and quickly move to zero trust architectures.
NOV, an international oilfield services company, secures access for 27,000 employees across 60 countries with Zscaler, leveraging the global nature of the platform to provide consistent security across distributed operations. The company reports that “Our secure digital transformation has … saved millions of dollars, improved user productivity, and reduced our cyber risk.” This case exemplifies how Zscaler enables global organizations to achieve consistent security policies and visibility across geographically dispersed workforces and operations.
Cebu Pacific Air, a major airline based in the Philippines, replaced its legacy VPN with Zscaler Private Access, with leadership commenting that “Employees can continue to work productively without hampering their ability to connect to the resources they need, without compromising security.” The organization boosted user satisfaction by 90% over their previous VPN implementation while simultaneously improving security. The shift to Zscaler allowed the organization to eliminate backhauling through centralized data centers and provide faster, more direct access to applications while improving the overall security posture.
The State of Oklahoma consolidated access for over 100 state agencies through Zscaler, representing one of the largest zero trust deployments in government. One CISO reported that “Access to private applications was up to six times faster than it was with VPN,” demonstrating the dramatic performance improvements possible with zero trust architecture compared to traditional VPN approaches. This large-scale government deployment also highlights how ZTNA can support complex organizational structures with numerous independent entities that need secure access to applications while maintaining strong security controls.
Financial and Operational Benefits
The transition from VPN to Zscaler-based zero trust architecture typically delivers substantial financial and operational benefits beyond the security improvements. Organizations report reductions in IT overhead and complexity as they replace multiple point products and appliances with a unified cloud-native platform. Rather than managing separate firewall appliances, VPN concentrators, Intrusion Prevention Systems, Data Loss Prevention gateways, and numerous other security tools, organizations can consolidate these functions into the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform, simplifying management and reducing the number of vendors and licensing agreements IT teams must manage.
Capital expenditure requirements are also reduced significantly. Rather than purchasing expensive VPN hardware appliances, organizations deploy lightweight software agents on endpoints and app connectors at their premises. The Zscaler cloud service handles the heavy lifting of traffic inspection, threat detection, and policy enforcement. This shift from capital-intensive on-premises hardware to subscription-based cloud services also improves financial predictability and reduces the risk of technology obsolescence.
Operational expenditure is similarly reduced. Organizations no longer need to employ dedicated staff to manage, patch, and maintain VPN infrastructure. They no longer need to perform emergency hardware deployments when VPN capacity is exceeded. The Zscaler platform automatically scales to handle demand without organizational intervention. Security updates and threat intelligence are automatically deployed across the entire customer base without requiring customer action. Gartner estimates that organizations transitioning to SASE, with Zscaler being a leader in the SASE market, can reduce IT costs and complexity while improving security and user experience.
Zscaler’s Recognition and Market Position
Industry Analyst Recognition
Zscaler’s positioning and leadership in zero trust security has been extensively validated by independent industry analysts. Zscaler has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Security Service Edge (SSE) for four consecutive years, with the 2025 Magic Quadrant specifically noting that Zscaler set the bar by excelling beyond all other vendors and being placed highest on the “Ability to Execute” axis. This leadership recognition reflects Zscaler’s technical capabilities, product roadmap, execution ability, and customer satisfaction, as validated by the independent analysis of Gartner’s expert research team.
Zscaler has also been recognized by Forrester as a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Secure Access Service Edge Solutions for Q3 2025. This recognition from multiple independent analyst firms validates that Zscaler is not merely a vendor making claims about zero trust architecture but is instead demonstrating actual leadership in delivering SASE and zero trust solutions that customers recognize as highly valuable.
Customer Endorsement and Satisfaction
Beyond analyst recognition, Zscaler’s true measure of success is reflected in the value customers derive from the platform and the trust they place in the service as they progress through digital transformation journeys. Zscaler protects approximately 47 million users across nearly 8,700 customers globally and processes more than 500 billion daily transactions through the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange. Approximately 40% of Global 2000 companies use Zscaler for their zero trust security and remote access. With 1,000+ reviews for Zscaler SSE on Gartner Peer Insights, averaging a score of 4.65 out of 5, Zscaler consistently receives positive customer feedback and satisfaction ratings.
Zscaler’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) consistently exceeds 70, substantially outperforming the average of 30 for SaaS organizations. An NPS above 70 is considered world-class, indicating that the vast majority of customers are willing to recommend Zscaler to peers and colleagues. This customer satisfaction and advocacy is perhaps the strongest indicator that Zscaler delivers value that meets or exceeds customer expectations.
Zscaler: Beyond the VPN Label
The question “Is Zscaler a VPN?” can be answered definitively with a clear and emphatic “No.” While both VPNs and Zscaler aim to provide secure remote access to organizational resources, they approach this problem through fundamentally different architectures, philosophies, and implementation mechanisms. VPNs connect users to networks through encrypted tunnels that place users on the network after a single authentication event, granting broad network access with implicit trust in authenticated users. Zscaler implements Zero Trust Network Access through a cloud-native platform that connects users directly to specific applications, continuously verifies identity and device posture, never places users on the network, keeps applications invisible to the internet, and eliminates lateral movement opportunities.
From a security perspective, the differences are profound and consequential. VPNs expose infrastructure to the internet and create opportunities for lateral movement that can result in widespread compromise. Zscaler hides infrastructure behind the cloud, prevents lateral movement through application-centric segmentation, and provides comprehensive threat protection integrated into the platform itself. From a performance perspective, VPNs often require backhauling traffic through data centers, creating latency that degrades user experience. Zscaler enables direct-to-application connectivity through globally distributed edge locations, dramatically improving performance. From a scalability perspective, VPNs require costly hardware deployments to scale while Zscaler scales elastically in the cloud without organizational intervention.
The evidence from industry analysts, case studies across diverse industries, and customer satisfaction metrics all point to the same conclusion: Zscaler represents a fundamental evolution beyond VPN-based remote access, delivering superior security, performance, and operational efficiency for organizations seeking to secure hybrid and distributed workforces in a cloud-first, threat-rich computing environment. Organizations considering whether to deploy Zscaler should not think of it as a “VPN replacement” but rather as a categorical reimagining of how secure remote access should be architected in the modern cloud computing era—one built not on implicit trust and network-centric access but on continuous verification, application-centric connectivity, and zero trust principles that acknowledge that threats can be anywhere and that nothing should be trusted by default.
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