Zscaler launches asset exposure tool to tackle cyber risks

Zscaler has announced the release of Zscaler Asset Exposure Management, designed to enhance how organisations handle asset risk, commonly referred to as Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management (CAASM).

This new solution forms a crucial component of Zscaler's broader Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) offerings by integrating and correlating data from numerous sources. This provides organisations with an exact asset inventory and visibility into security gaps aimed at reducing cyber risk.

Organisations frequently encounter difficulties in maintaining an accurate overview of their assets, often resulting in IT and security teams spending considerable time tracking assets via spreadsheets. This method complicates the assessment of risks posed by assets and the prioritisation of remediation efforts, a particular concern in regulated sectors like healthcare and financial services due to potential non-compliance penalties.

Zscaler Asset Exposure Management utilises Zscaler's Data Fabric for Security to merge and relate data from various sources, including its cloud security platform. This enables a comprehensive and accurate inventory of assets and corresponding risks. The Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange platform processes over 500 billion security transactions daily, providing a thorough view of customer assets and their risks. More than 50 million devices leverage Zscaler agents for telemetry, enhancing visibility into assets functioning in branches and factories via the Zero Trust Branch and offering insights into multi-cloud environment workloads through the Zero Trust Cloud solution.

Through Zscaler Asset Exposure Management, organisations can compile an accurate asset inventory by consolidating and deduplicating data from numerous sources, identifying security measure gaps, improving data accuracy by automatically updating Configuration Management Databases (CMDB), and resolving system data discrepancies. It also facilitates risk mitigation by initiating automated remediation workflows and policy changes to curtail access for users linked to risky assets, thus immediately reducing enterprise risk.

According to Mike Melo, CISO of LifeLabs, "Managing the security stack on our endpoints has been a labor-intensive task for our team. Previous CAASM tools lacked the policy management features we needed to pinpoint risky or non-compliant assets. With this new software, we expect to save hundreds of hours of manual work, and because it's built on the Zscaler Data Fabric for Security, which is already serving our exposure management programme, we'll see value in just a week, with no extra effort required."

Adam Geller, Chief Product Officer at Zscaler, stated, "Companies have struggled for decades with the fundamental question of how many assets they actually have and what risk they pose to the business. The unmatched data set of 500 billion daily transactions from the Zscaler platform, combined with data from third-party sources, provides our customers with a unique advantage in identifying asset risk. By aggregating and synthesising this data for additional context, we deliver more complete insights and empower our customers to make better decisions."

Michelle Abraham, Senior Research Director, Security and Trust at IDC commented, "Zscaler is integrating its own unique telemetry alongside the data aggregated from third-party sources. The Data Fabric for Security's ability to synthesise, normalise, and enrich this data brings depth to asset visibility and security insights providing Zscaler with a foundational product for improving organisational cyber hygiene."