February 04, 2025
Jay Chaudhry – CEO – Zscaler
Protecting Your Business And Yourself From AI Enabled Cyber Threats , Jay Chaudhry – CEO Zscaler
Listen on:
There is a good chance that a cyberattack is happening while you are reading this or watching a Reboot Chronicles show episode. From phishing email attacks and ransomware threats to malware penetrating old security systems – bad actors are constantly looking for the next way to break through cybersecurity systems. These attacks can impact any of us personally, from identity theft to financial ruin – and they are costing corporations and governments (aka tax payers) billions of dollars every year.
With massive threats evolving faster than ever, Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and CEO of industry leader Zscaler, joins us for this action packed episode of The Reboot Chronicles – with advice on how companies can safeguard their future. Approaching $3B in annual revenue, Zscaler is one of the fastest growing cyber companies on the planet and is deployed by 45% of the Fortune 500. Listen in as Dean and Jay unpack critical strategies businesses need to thrive in an AI /Cloud era, as threats get more sophisticated and demands more critical.
From Firewalls To Zero Trust
For decades, cybersecurity was built on the concept of the “castle and moat”, where firewalls acted as a moat around the castle that is corporate networks. Jay notes that while the internet has evolved, with things like commerce growing massively and connectivity as a whole also growing massively, many companies are still using the old castle and moat model. “The core security paradigm is still based on firewalls,” Jay says, and Zscaler comes in to shift this paradigm with their Zero Trust Exchange system. To save a slew of technical talk (although you can read about it here for those curious), Jay explains it as an old-fashioned phone switchboard. “You come to us, we say, who are you? Where are you going? And if you are allowed, we connect you and you only.” A level of tedium that might seem annoying if you just need to check something that’d take less than a minute, but worth it when it saves your data from being stolen and your company loses billions of dollars.
The Double-Edge Sword Of AI
When it comes to how AI has affected the cybersecurity landscape, it comes with its ups and downs. On the negative side of things, AI has allowed bad actors to use various tools to gather larger swathes of data about a given company and lay it out in a nice format that allows those actors to figure out more ways to break through quicker than ever before. Even using AI to aid in classic Phishing scams to mimic CEO language in e-mails. On the more positive side, AI has allowed companies like Zscaler to do a similar thing; they can use AI to also parse huge swathes of data but then use it to find potential holes or weak areas in a given company. Also on a positive note, this is what allows Zscaler to be a Zero Trust security company. They have to check several boxes quickly before anyone can access what they need, and then they have to do this millions of times a day for millions of people. Jay says they are “able to comb through all of that data to find a needle in a haystack.” A haystack that is so large it would be near impossible for a human team to do.
A Future Where Cybersecurity Is A Utility
Looking ahead in the coming years, Jay sees cybersecurity being closer to a utility like electricity or water than what it is currently. With how fast AI, the cloud, and technology as a whole are growing, we will need a better way to scale security and even the adaptability of that security. Jay equates it to the evolution of home electricity, “ When I started Zscaler, I was thinking of power generators. We loved them because they were much better than anything before them, and then power utilities came.” Just like how we loved Firewalls for the past decade because they were much better than anything before them, now we have Zero Trust Exchange securities, “it is a natural progression.
