Hey everyone! 👋 I’ve been lurking here for a bit, but this is my first post. I’m a project manager at a small but growing SaaS company, and we’ve been fully remote since day one. About six months ago, our IT team rolled out Zscaler across the company to replace our old VPN setup.
I’m not from a networking background at all, so a lot of the deeper tech stuff goes over my head. But from my team’s perspective—using Asana, Notion, Slack, and a ton of other web apps all day—I’ve noticed some clear ups and downs.
On the plus side, the user experience is mostly seamless. We don’t have to think about connecting to a VPN anymore to access internal tools, which is great for onboarding new team members. Everything just works from anywhere, which feels like magic compared to the old way.
But I’ve also run into some weird headaches. Sometimes, specific web apps (like a reporting dashboard we use) will load really slowly or time out, and IT tells me it’s a “Zscaler policy thing.” Also, I occasionally get blocked from accessing what feels like a totally normal, non-dangerous website for research, and have to put in a request to get it unblocked. It can feel a bit restrictive.
I’m really curious to hear from others who’ve been using it in production for a similar amount of time. What are your biggest pros and cons from an end-user and productivity standpoint? Does the “always-on” security get less intrusive over time, or do you just adapt to the occasional block?
Thx!