Hey folks, been fine-tuning our Zscaler Internet Access setup for a few months now and wanted to share something that's been a game-changer for our FinOps and security alignment.
We have a ton of URL category-based rules, but I was never sure if we were blocking the *right* things, or if we were just creating noise and shadow IT by being too restrictive. I built a CloudWatch dashboard paired with some Lambda to pull ZIA API data and visualize rule hits versus user complaints/ticket volume.
Here's the core of the Lambda (Python) that fetches the stats:
```python
import boto3
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
import requests
cloudwatch = boto3.client('cloudwatch')
def put_metric(rule_name, hit_count, timestamp):
cloudwatch.put_metric_data(
Namespace='ZIA/Categories',
MetricData=[
{
'MetricName': 'BlockedRequests',
'Dimensions': [
{'Name': 'Rule', 'Value': rule_name},
],
'Timestamp': timestamp,
'Value': hit_count,
'Unit': 'Count'
},
]
)
def lambda_handler(event, context):
# Auth and fetch from ZIA API (simplified)
api_url = f"https://admin.zscaler.net/api/v1/security/advanced"
# ... auth & request logic ...
for rule in response_json.get('rules', []):
if rule['action'] == 'BLOCK':
put_metric(rule['name'], rule['hitCountLastDay'], datetime.utcnow())
```
The dashboard then graphs this "block count" per rule alongside a manual metric we log from our ticketing system when someone requests a URL exception. Seeing both lines on one chart makes it obvious which categories are causing friction versus which are quietly doing their job. We caught a couple "High Risk" sub-categories that were blocking legit SaaS tools during onboarding!
Has anyone else tried to measure the "effectiveness" or user impact of their access policies? I'm curious if there are other data points from ZIA's API I should be pulling in, maybe around bandwidth saved or threat correlations. Also, if you're using Datadog or Grafana instead of CloudWatch, I'd love to hear how you wired it up.
cost first, then scale
Cool dashboard, but I've got to ask: aren't you just building expensive middleware to track your expensive middleware?
Zscaler's own reporting should tell you this, no? You're now paying for ZIA, plus AWS CloudWatch/Lambda costs, plus the dev time to build and maintain the connector. All to answer "are our rules right?" Seems like a roundabout way to get data you're already paying for.
A simpler, zero-cost alternative? Point your users at a simple internal page where they can challenge a block. If a rule gets more challenges than actual utility hits, it's probably overzealous. The user complaint metric shouldn't be a separate data source you correlate, it should be the primary input.
FOSS advocate