From my perspective, the biggest challenge is governance. It’ s about understanding how AI agents are being used and making sure you have the right controls in place over what they can access and what they’ re allowed to do. We’ re only at the beginning of this journey, and the number of AI agents will increase dramatically. As their capabilities continue to grow, managing them securely will become even more important.

We’ ve already seen how quickly the technology evolves. If you compare the first versions of ChatGPT with the models available today, the difference is remarkable. Their capabilities have advanced at an incredible speed.

For me, it all comes back to the fundamentals of cybersecurity. You need visibility and you need to understand exactly what’ s in your infrastructure, which is at the heart of a Zero Trust approach. Deploying ZPA has helped us significantly because if you want to avoid open access policies, you first need a clear understanding of your environment so you can define the right policies.

The same principle applies to AI. You need visibility into how AI is being used across the organisation, including any Shadow AI, so you can put the right governance and security controls in place.

How does Zero Trust help you ultimately?

In the past, security was built around the network perimeter. The focus was on network detection, firewalls and controlling access to the network itself. But over time, the number of endpoints and access points increased significantly, making that approach much harder to manage.

Zero Trust takes a different approach. It’ s about reducing the attack surface by minimising the number of entry points into the organisation’ s infrastructure. We’ ve redesigned our network architecture so that user segments are separated from the underlying infrastructure. We still have our data centres and cloud environments, but the overall attack surface is much smaller, making it easier to protect.

You were one of the first customers who implemented zero trust. What prompted you to move so early?

One of the things I’ ve really appreciated is seeing how the product has evolved. We deployed it early and moved quite quickly, so we were able to have ongoing discussions about what could be improved. Zscaler has always been very open to feedback and willing to work closely with us to develop the platform.

One of the biggest improvements has been the integration of AirGap. I can definitely see the benefits it brings. I also like the direction Zscaler has taken with the branch connectors, and the continuous improvements have made the solution work even better for us.

One of our priorities this year is upgrading our traditional branch connectors to the US version of Zero Trust Branch.

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