Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Scores 98.85% in NSS Labs SSE Test

NSS Labs released the results of its Security Service Edge (SSE) Threat Protection evaluation for the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange (ZTE). The test reported overall Security Effectiveness of 98.85% and described an approach intended to measure how well an SSE offering handles threats under an updated methodology.

NSS Labs said the evaluation used an early preview of an SSE Threat Protection Methodology update labeled v3.0. The company described the update as more demanding than prior SSE tests and said it included latency testing as part of the updated methodology.

The v3.0 methodology shifted SSE testing from a tunnel-based approach to an agent-based approach. NSS Labs also said it used adversarial testing in which vendors did not receive the specific attacks, tactics, or techniques in advance. In the results, ZTE posted an overall Security Effectiveness of 98.85%, an exploit block rate of 99.05% (311 of 317), and malware block rate of 98.65% (4,807 of 4,873).

Across categories, NSS Labs reported that ZTE blocked 100% of exploits rated Critical, High, and Medium, and 98.26% of those rated Low, for an overall exploit block rate of 99.05%. The test also reported resistance to evasion techniques, including 100% resistance across 583 tested evasion techniques spanning 15 categories. NSS Labs said ZTE incorrectly blocked 15 of 4,098 legitimate samples (0.4%), and it reported false positive accuracy of 99.63%.

“The only way to know whether an SSE offering works is to test it, and our updated methodology raises the bar on resisting evasions,” said Vikram Phatak, CEO of NSS Labs. “Zscaler’s strong results should give enterprises real confidence in the platform.” NSS Labs said Zscaler’s Zero Trust Exchange version 6.2r.2604.0.0_prod.54.f985a37bc_114 was tested using the recommended or default configuration consistent with “Secure-by-Default” principles.

The original article was written by Decision Insights Editorial.