Shri Vishal Gautam, VP of Engineering & Site Managing Director, India Operations – Zscaler gave a talk on Talk Title: Zero Trust Security on 1 October. Here is the summary of the talk:

Organizations today are undergoing rapid digital transformation, driven by the adoption of cloud services, hybrid work environments, IoT devices, and SaaS applications. This evolution has rendered traditional network security architectures obsolete, exposing critical weaknesses in perimeter-based models built primarily with firewalls and VPNs. These legacy tools, designed for an on-premises world, have failed to keep pace with the agility and sophistication required by modern enterprises and actually increase cyber risk in today’s world.

A Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) has emerged as the solution to these challenges. By fundamentally rethinking security from a “never trust, always verify” perspective, zero trust overcomes the vulnerabilities of traditional architectures, ensuring secure, any-to-any connectivity for users, devices, workloads, IoT/OT systems, and B2B partners. This talk will explore why traditional architectures fall short and how zero trust transforms security to address the modern threat landscape.

Shri Vishal Gautam has been with Zscaler since 2011 and has been instrumental in growing the India operations of Zscaler from a 25 people startup to a 2500+ employee GCC of Zscaler Inc. USA. As VP of Engineering and Site Managing Director, he leads the India Engineering operations and the Bangalore site.

Vishal has been working in the software industry for over 25 years with 15+ years in the cyber security domain. He is based in Bangalore. He also served as a technical advisor to Shield Square, a Bangalore based startup in the space of Bot mitigation that was acquired by Radware in 2019.

Vishal was in the United States for 15 years where he did his Master’s and then later worked in a number of startups before returning to India with his family in 2010.

October 2025