Security, scale and savings: How zero trust boosts defences while driving business transformation

HARDLY a week passes without yet another headline about a cyber attack that results in data being stolen, services being disrupted or money being siphoned off by cyber criminals.

As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, traditional perimeter-based security models are falling short.

Attackers are no longer just battering down firewalls. They are slipping in through weak points that sit outside the network perimeter, such as third-party vendors, suppliers and partners.

The growing complexity of these attacks means that it is insufficient to focus solely on securing the network’s outer boundaries.

Instead, a more proactive approach is required – one that assumes every user, device and application could potentially be compromised.

This is the principle behind a zero trust model, where every access attempt to any digital asset, such as a network, folder or file, must be verified, no matter where it originates.

Even if a hacker has penetrated a firewall, they will find it harder to freely move around a corporate network: There are “doors” that have to be unlocked at each turn, explains Sanjay Yadave, vice-president and managing director for Greater Asia at cloud enterprise security provider Zscaler.

While zero trust is an ongoing process that requires patience to deploy – often over several years – the technology required to get started is not new. Indeed, many people overestimate its complexity, he says.

Large organisations across industries – from hospitality to fast-moving consumer goods – have begun their zero trust journey in a matter of weeks, showing that even small first steps can bring real impact.

Regionally, Cebu Pacific Air turned to Zscaler to quickly set up a secure, remote-friendly workplace for its 39,000 employees.

Within just two weeks, it replaced the airline’s legacy security infrastructure with a zero trust environment that not only improved user satisfaction by 90 per cent, but also helped prevent over 230 million security breaches in a single quarter.

The consumer goods giant Unilever also enabled secure remote access for employees across 190 countries through Zscaler, safeguarding over three billion transactions a week.

In just two months, Zscaler processed 220TB of Unilever’s data while maintaining 99.9 per cent uptime – showing how zero trust can scale securely across a global workforce.

Other organisations have also leaned on zero trust to support cloud migration efforts, especially as data moves out of private data centres and into public cloud infrastructure.

“In the case of a large oil and gas company, we were able to speed up their migration by six months,” adds Yadave. “That actually delivered about US$7.9 million in savings over a three-year period.”

What does require time, he notes, is sorting out the culture shift and change management. In other words, the people and processes need to work with the new security environment.

More than just defence

Zero trust cannot be viewed as purely a security fix, says Yadave. While it is fundamentally a security approach, it can also serve as a catalyst for broader transformation efforts, contributing to tangible business outcomes, including revenue growth.

“What the conversation at the board level is about today is driving business transformation,” he notes. “And that’s where security needs to be much more closely woven into the business mindset.”

More than making defences more resilient, zero trust brings business benefits by modernising many business processes.

In the Philippines, a retailer deployed Zscaler’s zero trust solutions to revamp its network of point-of-sale systems, with the initial goal of reducing cyber risks and maintenance burdens.

The deployment streamlined operations – cutting troubleshooting time from three hours to just 15 minutes – and also offered management clearer visibility into store-level transactions.

This helped address “grey” sales that had previously led to revenue leakage, ultimately saving the company US$5 million a month, says Yadave.

Zero trust can also support broader enterprise goals such as environmental sustainability.

In the case of Cebu Pacific Air, Zscaler’s cloud-native architecture reduced the airline’s reliance on physical servers and data centres, shrinking its IT carbon footprint. As the platform is powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, it also contributes to the airline’s wider ambition of achieving net-zero emissions.

The deployment illustrates how a zero trust approach can drive long-term value – not only by strengthening cyber security, but also by modernising infrastructure and advancing business priorities like growth and sustainability.

“Many organisations in this region are trying to leapfrog technology generation to become more competitive in their market, or potentially to expand into new markets across Asia Pacific or around Asean,” says Yadave.

“Zscaler is able to align with those business transformation initiatives and give them a platform that supports that transformation journey.”