Security & Compliance

  • 7 min read

Netskope vs Zscaler: Which One Suits Your Requirements Better?

Team Zluri

14th August, 2023

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Netskope's CASB solution emphasizes granular policy enforcement based on contextual information such as user, device, location, and activity. Their solution provides a detailed view of cloud usage across the enterprise and can detect and prevent data loss, malware, and other threats in real time. 

Meanwhile, Zscaler's CASB solution focuses on providing a secure web gateway to protect users from internet-borne threats. Their platform includes an integrated CASB functionality allowing your team to gain visibility and control cloud application usage. 

Apart from these, they also offer other key functionalities that you, as a CIO, can look into before choosing the suitable CASM tool for your IT teams. 

To determine which CASB tool is best among the two, it's crucial to thoroughly evaluate each tool's functionalities and assess how well it aligns with your IT team's requirements. 

Let's assume a mid-size company requires a user-friendly CASB tool with integrated CASB capabilities. So which of the two tools do you think will be more apt for this scenario, Netskope or Zscaler?   

Now in this scenario, Zscaler can be a better choice as it caters to mid-sized organizations and offers integrated CASB functionalities, allowing your IT teams to gain visibility and control over cloud app usage. Whereas, Netskope is a better fit for large enterprises, with its advanced capabilities in areas such as granular policy enforcement and real-time threat detection, making it an ideal option for organizations with complex security requirements and large IT teams.

This was just an overview of how functionalities can bring a difference in your decision-making process. However, you cannot decide which tool to choose based solely on one functionality. You need to carefully consider each of their distinctive features to select the best one.

So, let's move on and compare both tools based on different parameters to help you decide which CASB will best meet the requirements of your IT teams.

Comparison Based On Different Parameters: Which CASB Tool Caters To Your IT Team Needs?

Below are a few key parameters based on which we have closely compared the two. This will help you decide, out of these two CASB tools, which offers better functionalities and strengthens your organization's security posture. 

1. Solution Categories

• Netskope is categorized as zero trust networking, SaaS security posture management (SSPM) solutions, and cloud edge security. This tool perfectly fits large businesses with more than 1000 employees.

• On the other hand, Zscaler internet access is categorized as software-defined perimeter (SDP), network sandboxing, and firewall software. This tool is well-suited for both small and mid-market businesses with 51 to 1000 employees.

2. Data Loss Protection (DLP)

• Netskope's data loss protection (DLP) capabilities provide your team with contextual awareness of content being used in the cloud and incorporate machine learning upgrades to make data scanning and classification simpler, faster, and more accurate. Also, real-time alerts are displayed that include user counseling on risky activities and sensitive data movement.
  
  With Netskope DLP, your team can prevent the leakage of sensitive data by restricting unauthorized activity in real-time.
  
  Furthermore, use the CASB API to scan SaaS and IaaS data repositories to protect data that is at rest and with inline CASB solutions, such as NG-SWG and Netskope Intelligent SSE, protect data in motion. Also, API-based insights are fed into CASB inline policies for improved inline enforcement.
  
  Additionally, it includes best practices compliance templates and predefined regulations and supports technologies like optical character recognition (OCR), file and binary fingerprinting, machine learning enhanced classification, and exact data matching. 

• Whereas, Zscaler enables your team to protect your data by accurately categorizing data and risky behaviors using ML and cloud scale. This allows your team to take your data protection to the next level. Also, it provides advanced UEBA, IDM, EDM, OCR, and workflow automation that enables your team to customize data protection as per their requirements.
  
  Further, Zscaler's DLP capabilities help inspect all SSL and internet traffic, offering users quick, reliable protection no matter where they are.
  
  You receive a full security service edge (SSE) by using this enterprise DLP solution that is natively integrated with the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange. This eliminates the expense and complexity of point solutions while providing the following:

  • Identical protection, no matter where your data and users are located.

  • Protection across the internet, SaaS apps, email, endpoint, and cloud posture. 

  • Streamline IT operations and workflows through ML-powered data discovery. 

Additionally, you can locate and control any occurrence of specified data with Zscaler EDM. EDM enables your team to fingerprint sensitive data and enhance detection accuracy while minimizing DLP false positives on everything from employee records to customer personal information and credit card details.

Also, with Zscaler, your team can secure visual data as well. For files like PNGs and JPEGs and images contained in other file types (such as Microsoft Word documents), Zscaler OCR scans images to conduct data classification. Even EDM and IDM functions can be used in tandem with it.

3.Visibility & Control Over Cloud App Data 

• Netskope offers inline visibility for thousands of applications (both managed and unmanaged) in use, including activity, file names, users, and other contextual information. With Netskope Cloud XD, your team gets complete visibility and control over your cloud services. 
  
  Thus, providing the team with a thorough view of your cloud service usage enables you to set customized security policies based on user, application, risk, data, activity, device type, and more.
  
  Furthermore, Netskope CASB examines and decodes the modern cloud language (i.e., JSON, APIs, Protobuf), allowing your teams to identify sensitive data, user activities, and related threats in real-time. It improves ATP (advanced threat protection) engines to mitigate cloud-enabled threats and malware, including in-depth analysis of files to prevent and detect risky activities.

• Meanwhile, Zscaler gives visibility into compliance and mitigates violations across SaaS applications and cloud service providers, ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. Further, consolidated ease of use, improved intelligence, and the ability to enable audits are delivered via integrated visibility and comprehensive reporting across all SaaS apps and IaaS platforms.
  
  Also, to prevent hostile internal risks like intellectual property theft and unintentional or dangerous file sharing, data protection measures are systematically applied across all cloud apps.
  
  It doesn't stop here; Zscaler offers a high-performance forward proxy and SSL inspection with essential real-time protections.

  • Discover shadow IT and critical SaaS applications across a comprehensive cloud application database.

  • DPL measures prevent uploads of crucial data to sanctioned and even unsanctioned applications.

  • To combat both known and new malware, real-time advanced threat protection uses a cloud sandbox powered by machine learning.

  • For BYOD, Cloud Browser Isolation transmits sessions as pixels to stop data leaking without the hassle of a reverse proxy.

Additionally, its API integrations automatically strengthen security by scanning SaaS apps, cloud platforms, and their contents.

• Sensitive data is recognized by predefined and adaptable DLP dictionaries in SaaS and public clouds like AWS.

• In accordance with policy, collaboration management capability searches apps for dangerous file shares and revokes them.

• Data at rest is scanned by cloud sandbox technology to detect and eliminate ransomware and zero-day malware.

• To automatically fix problems, SSPM, CSPM, and CIEM assess SaaS and IaaS configurations and permissions.

After closely comparing the two, you might know which tool will be better for your IT team's requirements. Although you shouldn't end your search here, that's because other efficient tools are available in the market. One such platform is Zluri which offers excellent functionalities to secure your organization's SaaS stack and can be a better alternative to Netskope and Zscaler. 

So, What is Zluri? What unique features does it offer? Here's a quick brief.

Zluri: Securing Your Organization’s SaaS Stack  

Zluri is an intelligent Cloud-based platform that allows your IT team to identify, track, and manage your organization's complete SaaS landscape. How does it do that? It uses 5 discovery methods, i.e., SSO or IDP, finance & expense management systems, direct integrations, browser extensions (optional), and desktop agents (optional), allowing your team to discover all the SaaS applications used in your organization. 

Once all the applications are identified, Zluri enables your IT team to inspect each application thoroughly, providing details related to events, shared data, compliance, and security probes. This will help your team meet compliance standards while also fulfilling security objectives.

From where will all these details be visible? Your team can follow these few steps. 

• Step 1: On Zluri's main interface, click on applications; it will display all applications that are categorized under managed, unmanaged, restricted, and need reviews.

  

  

• Step 2: Click the application that your team wants more information about. All the related details will be displayed, including how many active users are using the app, the IT owner of the app, risk level, which departments are using the app, and more.

  

  

• Step 3: To get in-depth detail, click on the security & compliance tab; it will display 4 tabs events, data shared, compliance, and security probes.

By clicking on the events tab, your team can view all events related to the applications. Zluri fetches this information from multiple authentic online sources, including critical updates, data breaches, security vulnerabilities, and other news associated with the application.

The score will vary depending on the event's impact; if the event has a high-security impact, the score will be low, and vice versa. For instance, due to X application's multiple security breaches, the score will be low.

Moving ahead, in data shared, your team can view who has read-only, modify, and delete access. If any user has read-only access, the threat level is comparatively low compared to users having to modify and delete access. Also, the more sensitive the data that an app accesses, the higher the threat level. 

For example, an app with access to Google Drive and the ability to delete files would be considered a high threat.

Furthermore, in the compliance tab, your team will be able to view which compliance standard the application adheres to. This lets your team ensure the application meets your company's compliance regulations. Moreover, Zluri's risk scoring system considers the number of compliance standards that an app complies with is taken into account. The higher the number of compliance standards, the higher will be score, and the lower the number of compliance standards, the lower will be the score. 

Lastly, in the security probes tab, your team can get a view of technical scanning, which is conducted every once a month. 

Zluri doesn't stop here; it utilizes secure encryption algorithms; Zluri places a high priority on the protection of your crucial data. Additionally, it gives your team access to a thorough log of important activities that can be audited, allowing you to keep tabs on all actions that pertain to the security of your app.

Also, unless a request for removal is made, all collected data, including usage statistics for SaaS applications, is kept forever. Zluri backs up all data for 60 days and keeps it in an encrypted form to ensure that it is always accessible.

Not only this, it also provides your team with a view of critical applications with high-risk scores and threat levels. It straight away sends your team alerts if your employee tries to access these critical applications, preventing data breaches. 

So what are you waiting for? Book a demo now and see for yourself how Zluri secures your organization's SaaS stack. 

About the author

Team Zluri

Team Zluri