The New Jersey Judiciary (NJJ), or justice system, encompasses the New Jersey Supreme Court docket, 21 county courts, and 535 municipal and different courts. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the NJJ remodeled courtroom techniques to function just about whereas remaining safe. By implementing the Zscaler Zero Belief Alternate, which gives a complete safety service edge (SSE) platform, the group enabled its 10,000 workers to work securely from anyplace and elevated the variety of digital courtrooms from 40 to 400 — in simply six days.
However that wasn’t the one advantage of implementing the cloud safety platform.
With the Zscaler resolution and its zero belief method, NJJ remodeled safety and enterprise operations lengthy after the pandemic waned. Implementing the Zero Belief Alternate dramatically boosted the courtroom system’s safety posture, improved consumer expertise and productiveness, and elevated agility in a number of methods. Because of this, SSE and 0 belief have change into important to NJJ’s strategic roadmap transferring ahead.
Increasing scope from CASB to zero belief
Previous to the pandemic, as a part of its digital transformation initiative, NJJ was in search of a CASB resolution to safe infrastructure and stop shadow IT because the courtroom system started migrating purposes to the cloud, together with Microsoft SaaS purposes and Zoom. Throughout a name with a Gartner analyst to debate utilizing a cloud brokerage service, the analyst urged a zero belief method.
“A zero belief mannequin was very new to us, but it surely made good sense since you assign privileges to units and customers and solely permit entry to the purposes they want,” stated Ron Wildmann, NJJ assistant director of Infrastructure and Technical Companies. “Zero belief permits us to take away all that implied belief [in legacy architectures] and forces us to architect our safety in order that we will solely explicitly belief the issues we would like accessing our purposes.”
The zero belief imaginative and prescient, which encompasses greater than any single level resolution, led NJJ to conduct a proof of idea of the Zscaler Zero Belief Alternate™ and two of its companies: Zscaler Personal Entry™ (ZPA™) and Zscaler Web Entry™ (ZIA™). ZPA gives direct, user-to-application zero belief community entry (ZTNA), and ZIA is a safe internet gateway (SWG) that features inline inspection of all web site visitors, together with SSL decryption, and a collection of AI-powered cloud safety companies primarily based on risk intelligence from the world’s largest safety cloud.
Pandemic drives ZTNA
With the onset of the pandemic, NJJ was compelled to increase its VPN utilization from 2,300 customers to eight,000, which dramatically degraded consumer expertise and elevated VPN-related safety threat. Having simply accomplished a really profitable POC of the Zscaler ZTNA resolution, the group determined to pivot from VPNs. Switching from VPNs to the Zero Belief Alternate and ZPA for distant entry supplied a significantly better consumer expertise with further layers of safety.
The development in consumer expertise and safety for distant customers led NJJ to increase ZPA past distant work to each consumer, even these on-premises. At present, some jury trials are in individual whereas different hearings, akin to these held on weekends, stay distant. The NJJ additionally deployed ZPA Personal Service Edge domestically to offer constant, zero belief entry throughout its dynamic, hybrid work surroundings. It’s now fast and straightforward to modify in-person occasions to digital when wanted — as an illustration, throughout climate occasions akin to snowstorms or flooding.
Wherever the consumer connects, whether or not in a courthouse or elsewhere, ZPA authenticates the consumer and grants or denies entry to digital courtrooms or different personal purposes primarily based on safety checks that NJJ has arrange, akin to multi-factor authentication, machine posture evaluation, and even time of day. (For instance, entry could solely be accessible throughout regular enterprise hours.)
Agility to satisfy enterprise and IT wants extra simply
Alongside ZPA, NJJ additionally rolled out ZIA for quick, safe web and SaaS entry. After deploying ZPA and ZIA, the ZTNA and SWG companies of the Zero Belief Alternate, the group was offered on the worth of an SSE. “Going via the Zero Belief Alternate… you don’t should make use of all of the completely different elements [and] don’t should combine all these little items into one resolution,” famous New Jersey Judiciary CIO Jack McCarthy.
With the Zero Belief Alternate, NJJ can deploy unified, constant safety insurance policies throughout cloud channels and leverage further companies to satisfy wants as they come up. For example, to cut back threat by completely analyzing file downloads, the group activated the Zscaler Superior Sandbox service inside the Zero Belief Alternate. The group can be contemplating implementing Zscaler Information Safety cloud DLP companies.
As well as, after most staff have been despatched residence and the NJJ assist desk staff discovered itself spending hours attempting to diagnose their connectivity points — issue connecting, frequent disconnects, or blurry video convention photographs — the group took benefit of the Zscaler Digital Expertise™ (ZDX™) consumer expertise monitoring service. Activating ZDX took only a click on of a button and saved the IT assist desk hours every week.
“With ZDX, we will say the issue is in your house or in our community or our knowledge heart,” stated McCarthy. “We will shortly… get to the basis of the issue as a substitute of attempting to troubleshoot for hours and hours and hours.”
Embracing an unpredictable future with Zscaler SSE
“With 75% of our workers working remotely, SSE must be a part of our strategic roadmap,” stated McCarthy. “Because of Zscaler, we have been capable of full six months of labor in six days, securing our group throughout the pandemic. Zscaler continues to be a part of this strategic journey as we speak, and sooner or later, giving our workers safe entry to purposes and techniques anyplace, anytime, and on any machine.”
“Zscaler is permitting us to rewrite how we view safety and the way we safe our enterprise,” continued McCarthy. “I believe the times of simply offering further layers on a community and hoping you bought it proper, hoping you’ve got closed the holes, are gone… We’ll have to have our safety exterior of the perimeter as a substitute of inside… [And] be prepared for the unpredictable.”
To study extra concerning the New Jersey Judiciary’s zero belief transformation, learn this text in Authorities Know-how, or watch this video.
For extra info, go to Zscaler, which lately acquired the 2022 Gartner® Peer Insights(™) Buyer Prospects’ Selection distinction within the “Voice of the Buyer” report for Safety Service Edge (SSE).
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