Zscaler (ZS) Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026 summary

Product and technology strategy

• Emphasizes the importance of true proxy architecture for effective cybersecurity, enabling inspection and policy enforcement at critical points in data flow.

• Highlights the challenge and necessity of adapting proxy architectures for agent-based and AI-driven environments, requiring new inspection methods and context-aware analysis.

• AI communications introduce unique risks, such as model poisoning and context-based data leakage, demanding specialized inspection engines.

• Launched Agentic SOC, leveraging 750 billion daily signals and agent frameworks to automate detection, investigation, and response, integrating endpoint and network data.

• Claims a strong endpoint presence, combining network and endpoint vantage points to provide comprehensive threat detection and response.

Customer engagement and market trends

• Customer conversations have intensified post-Mythos, with increased awareness of vulnerabilities and the need for more than traditional patching.

• Focus on reducing attack surfaces and preventing lateral movement within networks, with zero trust architecture as a key solution.

• AI and agentic security are driving new product cycles and customer engagement, expanding beyond core networking to manufacturing, branches, and AI-specific use cases.

• Only 25% penetration in the target enterprise market, leaving significant room for growth, especially with new applications and AI-driven needs.

• Application proliferation, especially with AI, is expected to drive demand for protection of internally developed and AI-integrated applications.

Internal AI adoption and innovation

• Internal initiatives focus on pairing employees with AI to boost productivity, with early success in customer support, go-to-market, and back-office functions.

• Engineering processes are evolving with AI, though deployment still requires human oversight.

• Recent launch of Agentic SOC reflects a shift to agent-first security operations, leveraging both acquired and internally developed agent technologies.

• Internal use of AI has enabled non-developers to build critical applications, increasing the need for robust internal security measures.