“AI is only as powerful as the data used to train it.” This fundamental truth, articulated by Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry, serves as an important lens for security leaders to view the rapidly evolving threat landscape. The conversation around artificial intelligence has moved from theoretical innovation to immediate agent risk, forcing companies to reevaluate traditional defenses built on boundary models. The ability to collect, process, and leverage vast amounts of security data has become a key factor in determining who wins an asymmetric war between attackers and defenders.
Chaudhry spoke with CNBC's John Fort on “Closing Bell Overtime” about the pressing challenges posed by generative AI and the strategic shifts needed to protect the modern decentralized enterprise. Discussion centered on the accelerating pace of cyberattacks, Zscaler's selective M&A strategy, and the company's structural advantages from its large-scale, integrated cloud platform.
The CEO acknowledged that AI is more than just a defensive tool. It serves as an accelerator for malicious attackers. AI has democratized sophisticated cyberattacks, creating a “franchise effect” that allows even inexperienced thieves to quickly deploy complex tools. Chaudhry noted that this trend is rapidly escalating, saying, “AI is accelerating the franchise attacks you talked about, because with AI you can build tools faster.” The ability of AI to quickly identify and exploit vulnerabilities, especially in exposed assets such as firewalls and VPNs, means that traditional, slow-paced security operations are fundamentally obsolete.
In response to this acceleration, Zscaler is focused on incorporating AI across its security solution stack, aiming to move beyond simple detection to autonomous defense. This approach requires both internal innovation and strategic acquisitions. Chaudhry acknowledged Zscaler's curious and highly selective approach to M&A, seeking out companies with “true innovation.” Last year, Zscaler acquired a company specializing in red teaming technology designed to identify vulnerabilities in AI models and applications, and agent security operations focused on detecting potential breaches within large data sets.
The emergence of autonomous AI agents that can operate independently within enterprise environments poses governance challenges that go beyond traditional user access controls. If an agent becomes rogue, whether through malicious intent or misconfiguration, security systems must be able to track its behavior and immediately limit its blast radius. Zscaler combines a zero trust security exchange architecture with AI to track agents and quickly determine if they are engaging in suspicious activity.
The key challenge remains the speed of enterprise adoption. Technology is rapidly evolving, but organizations must react fast enough to embrace these new defense mechanisms.
Chaudhry sharply criticized the current overuse of the term “platform” in the security industry, noting that the term has become “meaningless.” He pointed out that many vendors are simply acquiring a collection of disparate points products and trying to sell them under the banner of a single platform. This approach inevitably creates integration friction and fragments security coverage for customers.
In contrast, Zscaler's strategic position relies on a comprehensive, natively integrated platform. While this integration is essential, it is the sheer volume and quality of data flowing through those platforms that creates an insurmountable competitive moat in the AI era. The predictive power of a security cloud depends entirely on the data used to train the model. Zscaler processes over 5 trillion transactions every day. “That means the model can be trained to detect them intelligently,” Chaudhry said. This vast stream of real-time data, including user behavior, traffic patterns, and threat intelligence, allows Zscaler's AI models to achieve a level of sophistication and rapid learning that cannot be replicated by fragmented security solutions. The combination of a truly comprehensive integration platform and unparalleled data scale allows Zscaler to protect customers more effectively than most other vendors on the market.
