As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes an integral part of business operations, organizations are encountering a new frontier of security challenges. From safeguarding proprietary data to ensuring regulatory compliance, the hurdles associated with adopting AI technologies are significant. This week at ZenithLive 2025 in Vegas, Zscaler unveiled new AI innovations designed to help secure and enable business transformation.
These advancements empower enterprises to harness AI securely and at scale, offering solutions that not only stop cyberattacks but also protect sensitive data in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Zscaler’s AI-driven platform processes over 500 trillion security signals daily, leveraging the world’s largest inline security cloud to deliver highly accurate threat detection and automated security.
AI-Driven Data Security Classification: Going Beyond Traditional Models
Data security is a growing concern for enterprises adopting AI tools, as sensitive information is increasingly vulnerable to attacks or leaks. Zscaler’s new AI-powered data security classification is designed to meet this need head-on. This innovative solution takes data classification to the next level, utilizing human-like intuition to identify sensitive content across more than 200 categories.
Traditional methods rely heavily on regex-based signature detection, which can miss emerging or unexpected data vulnerabilities. Zscaler’s AI engine, however, is capable of identifying these subtle, often hidden, threats with far greater precision. This means that organizations can now achieve a granular data security posture assessment in a fraction of the time previously required. As businesses expand their use of AI tools and data sources, the ability to classify sensitive content quickly and accurately is a game-changer, allowing them to stay ahead of potential security risks.
Enhanced Generative AI Protections: Safeguarding Sensitive Data in AI-Powered Workflows
Generative AI tools are great but they brings their own set of risks. Take Microsoft CoPilot for example and the risk that users might unwittingly expose sensitive business data. I was glad to see Zscaler announce enhanced generative AI protections at ZenithLive this week, which are designed to provide greater visibility and control over these applications.
Through advanced prompt classification and inspection, Zscaler allows organizations to block prompts that violate internal policies or risk exposing sensitive data. This might happen when a user attempts to share something that is determined to be a risk, and the system will immediately alert the user and prohibit the ability to share.
It was also good to see that the Zscaler solution integrates with existing Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities, ensuring compliance and protecting business-critical information across AI-powered workflows. In a world where businesses are increasingly dependent on AI to drive productivity, ensuring that generative AI applications align with security policies is essential for maintaining data integrity.
AI-Powered Segmentation: Simplifying Security and Application Management
Another key innovation unveiled by Zscaler this week is AI-powered segmentation, what they are calling a “first-of-its-kind solution” that automates user-to-application segmentation. This capability enables organizations to streamline the management of applications and accelerate security workflows, all while embedding user identity into the process.
By automating segmentation, Zscaler significantly enhances an organization’s ability to improve its security posture quickly and efficiently. Traditionally, segmentation has been a complex and manual process, requiring significant time and resources. With this new AI-powered automation engine, businesses can now segment their networks with much more precision and speed, leading to a more secure and optimized IT environment.
AI-Powered Network Intelligence: Ensuring Seamless Performance
In addition to securing data and applications, Zscaler has introduced AI-powered network intelligence via its Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX) platform. This innovation is exciting, and something that will no doubt be a game-changer for network operations teams, as it enables them to instantly benchmark and visualize internet and regional ISP performance.
ZDX utilizes AI to correlate last-mile and intermediate ISP outages with multi-path flow analysis, ensuring that connections to Zscaler data centers and applications are always optimized for both performance and reliability. Network operations teams can proactively detect, isolate, and analyze disruptive trends, such as packet loss affecting users, enabling them to reroute traffic and address issues before they impact business operations.
Not only does this enhance the overall user experience, but it also provides cost-saving opportunities by offering better visibility into ISP performance, which can be leveraged for improved ISP negotiations. In today’s interconnected world, where downtime can lead to significant revenue losses, Zscaler’s network intelligence tools are impressive, ensuring that businesses can deliver a seamless, high-performance experience for their users, regardless of where they are working.
Accelerating AI-Driven Innovation with Confidence
The key takeaway from Zscaler’s AI innovations announced this week at ZenithLive is clear: businesses can now adopt and scale AI technologies securely, without compromising their security posture. As Adam Geller, Chief Product Officer at Zscaler, said during his keynote, “Zscaler is redesigning the boundaries of enterprise security by advancing AI-driven innovations that address the complex challenges of today’s digital age.”
By providing advanced capabilities like AI-driven threat detection, automated segmentation, and AI-powered network intelligence, Zscaler is empowering organizations to embrace the transformative power of AI with confidence and precision. These innovations don’t just neutralize emerging threats; they accelerate business innovation and enable frictionless collaboration in a secure environment.
A Future-Proof Solution for a Digital-First World
As AI continues to shape the future of business, solutions like those announced this week by Zscaler are becoming indispensable for organizations looking to stay competitive while maintaining the highest standards of security. Whether it’s ensuring data confidentiality, managing generative AI applications, or optimizing network performance, Zscaler’s latest innovations offer the tools enterprises need to thrive in a digital-first world.
I’ll admit to bias, as I’m admittedly a fan of Jay Chaudhry, his down-to-earth philosophy, and the impressive team he has built at Zscaler, including CSO Deepen Desai and the previously mentioned Adam Geller, along with Phil Tee (Head of AI Innovations) and Nathan H. (Howe) (GVP of Innovation) who I had the chance to spend some time with this week and who literally blew my mind with some of the things they’re working on. Supported by CMO Joyce Kim, Global Comms Director Pavel Radda, Josh DeButts (head of AR) and their teams, the only thing I believe that Zscaler could do any better than they are already doing is to more broadly tell their story to the market — which is precisely why the analyst community is so important to them. They know we’ll ask the hard questions, provide insights based on our research, experiences, and work with other customers and tell them the unvarnished truth.
The company’s commitment to R&D and innovation and the current suite of Zscaler’s AI-powered security solutions are not just about responding to threats; they are about proactively empowering businesses to embrace AI while maintaining security, compliance, and operational efficiency. The future of enterprise security is (and must be) intelligent, automated, and built for the digital age.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
Read more of my coverage here:
Securing Generative AI: The New Threat Landscape Demands a New Approach — Insights from IBM and AWS
Why Cybersecurity Must Be a Capital Delivery Imperative
Mitel Secures JITC Certification for OpenScape Voice: A Major Win in Secure Communications
