Here in Australia, we assist our civil service and military employees with preparing for their futures by putting the strength of our federal government to work managing their pension plans. Our agency, the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation (CSC) helps over 700,000 government employees plan and execute their retirement fund investments. It’s been our charter for over 100 years.
As we’re always striving to deliver innovative products and services, we needed to address legacy cybersecurity technologies that were holding us back. So, we began partnering with Zscaler as a vital part of our cloud-enabled digital transformation, which significantly boosted business user productivity, enterprise morale, information security, and IT efficiency.
I’d like to share a few of the insights we’ve gained and the benefits we’ve realized during our zero trust journey and adoption of the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange so you can put them to work for your organization.
Boost 1: Business Productivity
At CSC, we have several business-critical custom applications that were built in-house over a decade ago. They’re running on older technology, and they break a lot. Although we’re rapidly modernizing and transforming our enterprise, these legacy applications remain vital to fulfilling our mission for now.
Prior to Zscaler, one of the applications actually required as much as 15 minutes to load. Business users would start work in the morning by opening the application and then walking away to make coffee or read the paper. Every time there was an issue with the application, it added another 15 minutes. Of course, this was terrible for productivity.
Immediately after installing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA), the wait time for this application plunged to less than five minutes—an improvement of nearly 70%. We have easily gained an hour, or more, of productivity per user, per day. Best of all, the new access process was swift and seamless.
Boost 2: Enterprise Morale
Hand-in-hand with the performance improvements, our enterprise job satisfaction shot up.
For business users, we removed multiple points of friction. For example, before adopting Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA), our investment managers had to wait weeks for a website to be unblocked before they could make trades. With Zscaler, we can quickly grant access to external websites, so our investment managers can focus on building wealth.
At the help desk, our staff is encountering fewer frustrated users, and the number of help desk tickets noticeably diminished. Furthermore, time spent on help tickets has been reduced by at least 30%. When users do have an issue, our help desk staff can quickly pinpoint the issue, thanks to Zscaler Digital Experience (ZDX).
All this has had a palpable effect on morale. Everyone is enjoying their work more now. They can get into the “zone” that leads to a greater sense of satisfaction and accomplishment at the end of the day.
Boost 3: Secure Access
Before Zscaler, when our investment managers were unable to quickly access the websites they needed to make time-sensitive trades, our security posture was also impacted. As a workaround, investment managers would connect to insecure networks at coffee shops using their personal devices. This approach completely bypassed our security systems.
Now that we’re quickly granting access to our investment managers and all our users, people no longer need insecure workarounds. Every connection is inspected, regardless of user, endpoint application, or encryption, thanks to the security innovations engineered into the platform’s core.
Boost 4: Simplicity and Savings
Prior to Zscaler, we experienced the typical complexity and cost from maintaining multiple hardware-based security products, with less security than is available in the Zero Trust Exchange. Since deploying the Advanced Cloud Firewall we have reduced our firewall infrastructure, management, and licensing complexity by over 90%, freeing up our team and budget resources for more interesting and strategic projects.
What’s more, our legacy infrastructure inadequately blocked advanced threats. By adopting Zscaler Advanced Cloud Sandbox, which is currently blocking over seven million threats per month worldwide, we’re stopping patient-zero infections with Zscaler’s artificial intelligence (AI)-based analytics and quarantines.
Overall, it adds up to spending a lot less on budget while achieving significantly improved risk mitigation and security infrastructure. Our return on investment is close to A$200,000 every year.
Boost 5: Exceptional IT Partnerships
In addition to our exceptional partnership with Zscaler, we also developed a close, collaborative relationship with a local IT service provider. Through the Zscaler partnership network, we were introduced to A23.
The staff at A23 has been amazing. They helped us establish effective and efficient access policies rapidly that made for a smooth deployment.
Looking forward, we plan to expand our Zero Trust Exchange deployment to continue enabling our digital transformation. By providing us with a comprehensive security ecosystem, Zscaler has been a real breath of fresh air.
To learn more, I invite you to read the accompanying case study and watch the short video about our partnership with Zscaler, which highlights how the Zero Trust Exchange has provided us with faster and more secure access to our applications for remote users.
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