Which aspect of Zscaler's offering helps reduce the overall attack surface?

Controlled access to applications and URLs significantly contributes to reducing the overall attack surface by limiting what users can access based on their roles and security policies. By implementing a zero-trust model, Zscaler allows organizations to enforce granular access controls, ensuring that users can only interact with the applications and resources they are authorized to use. This approach minimizes potential points of exploitation for attackers, as unauthorized users are blocked from accessing sensitive or critical systems.

In this context, controlled access creates barriers against lateral movement within the network and minimizes exposure to malicious actors. It essentially compartmentalizes and secures access, which is a foundational strategy for enhancing an organization's security posture in a cloud environment.

While automated user training sessions, increased user privileges, and periodic security audits play important roles in a comprehensive security strategy, they do not directly contribute to minimizing the attack surface in the same way that controlled access does. User training helps improve human factors in security, increased privileges can inadvertently expand the attack surface, and audits assess and help improve security but do not actively limit exposure in real-time.