Zscaler Cyberthreat Protection vs Zscaler Internet Access: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

Zscaler Cyberthreat Protection

Mid-market and enterprise security teams treating network perimeter enforcement as obsolete will get the most from Zscaler Cyberthreat Protection, particularly those shipping user and device traffic through a zero trust architecture where traditional firewalls fail. Its full TLS/SSL inspection at scale, paired with AI-powered threat detection and DNS security, anchors strong coverage across ID.RA Risk Assessment and DE.CM Continuous Monitoring. Skip this if your organization still relies heavily on on-premises infrastructure or needs mature incident response and recovery workflows; Zscaler prioritizes prevention and detection over the Response and Recovery functions in NIST CSF 2.0.

Zscaler Internet Access

Mid-market and enterprise security teams replacing on-premise web gateways will find Zscaler Internet Access worth the migration effort because it actually inspects encrypted traffic at scale without killing performance, something most cloud SSE platforms struggle with. The platform covers DE.CM and DE.AE through continuous monitoring and AI-powered threat detection across DNS, URLs, and files, giving you visibility into what your old gateway missed. Skip this if your organization needs deep integration with on-prem infrastructure or runs custom legacy applications that depend on transparent proxy architecture; Zscaler's cloud-first design optimizes for modern SaaS and internet access, not hybrid networks.