You are listening to C-Suite Perspectives, a podcast by the Conference Board. Welcome to C-Suite Perspectives, a signature series by the Conference Board. I'm David Young, the president of the Committee for Economic Development, the public policy center of the Conference Board and guest host of today's episode. In today's conversation, we'll discuss leadership in challenging times, where we feature the outstanding CEOs who are the recipients of CED's distinguished leadership awards for corporate citizenship and business stewardship. Today I have the distinct privilege of speaking with one of our 2025 honorees, Jay Chaudhry. Jay is the CEO, chairman, and the founder of Zscaler, the leader in cloud security. Under Jay's leadership, Zscaler is committed to teamwork, open communication, passion, innovation, and customer obsession. And just how they do all of that is what we'll be discussing today. Jay, welcome. We are so pleased to have you joining us.
David, thank you. I'm excited to be here. Privilege.
So Jay, you have a remarkable life story. I've read up over the last few weeks about your life and not only do you have a remarkable life story, you are an industry innovator and entrepreneur. And along the way, you've founded several security software startups. I'd be so curious for you to share just more about your journey. Tell us about your life, your career, how you ended up where you are now. Did you ever think this is where you would be at this stage in life? And what are some of the core values that are key to being a successful leader?
David, yes, coming from where I was born and raised to where I am today, often I wonder if my life is real or I'm simply dreaming. I never thought of entrepreneurship till I came to the US. I probably didn't even know what entrepreneurship was. But I think I am here because of a combination of luck, hard work, great teams and great mentors and perhaps great timing. You bring all those things together, the magic happens and this magic happens more in America than any other country. You can do all kinds of wonders in America. So I'm very thankful to America. So giving a little bit more, you asked me the journey. Short version, I was born and raised in a tiny village in the foothill of the Himalayas in northern India. Small town, no roads. The elementary school was about four kilometers away. We got electricity after I finished my eighth grade, running water after I finished my 10th grade. And I recall my sister and I will fight who is going to clean the kerosene lamp that we used to study. But I was a good student. My parents encouraged me to study hard because they never got a chance to go to school. So as a good student, India had a great education system almost free of charge. I got into IITs. Then I realized, wow, this world is very different than my little village. And with hard work I did well and came to the US to do my masters like many other students and then got hired by multiple companies one after another and that's what took me to the next level. So very fortunate about the journey and I'm thankful to all the companies and all the mentors who helped me along the way.
And Jay, some of the core values that when you reflect back on your time, some of the core values that you think have been important and central to kind of defining you as a person and as a leader. What stands out when you reflect on that?
So, three things I learned from my parents who were small-scale farmers. Honesty, integrity and hard work. Those have been the core principles for me, my family, and I worked hard to make sure they get imparted to my kids as well.
Incredible. So Jay, Zscaler is really raising the bar for a strong defense against sophisticated cyber threats while also delivering greater efficiency to your clients. When you look at this environment we're now working in and living in, how have cyber threats evolved and how are they impacting businesses today? And from your unique perspective, how do you think businesses can improve the efficiency of their cyber security other than working more closely with Zscaler?
Sure. So first of all, when I started Zscaler, my notion was pretty simple. More and more applications will move to the cloud. More and more users will become mobile. If that's the online world we live in, the bad guys will go where the action is. They want to get rich without working hard. So it's natural to see that more and more online threats will happen. So our goal was to make sure we can help business that's done digitally, that's done online. And that's for a simple premise. And today everything has shifted online. Essentially a recent survey of CEOs said that 74% of CEOs view cyber risk as the number one business risk. And that's why we all have to worry about it. We are seeing too many ransomware attacks, too many phishing attacks that are bringing businesses down. So for me Zscaler is not even just a business, it has become a mission because some 45% of Fortune 500 companies they depend upon Zscaler to keep them safe. So it's a challenge. It's a race with bad guys and we are very competitive. We want to win that race. So Zscaler customers are actually in my view safer than customers who aren't embracing us. And that's because we brought a new zero trust architecture. The other vendors have this old architecture. It's called castle and moat built using firewalls and VPNs. That's a 30-year-old technology. I like to say before cannons and aircrafts were invented, the moats around the castles were great, but now they're useless. That's why enterprises who are embracing zero trust architecture where you trust no one. You basically connect a person to a specific application, period. And that's the technology, that's the architecture we pioneered. And we are proud to drive innovations to keep not only businesses safe, to keep countries safe. The future wars will be all dependent upon cyber technologies and cyber innovations alike and we are busy innovating.
Interesting. Jay, we'll come to what you've just mentioned, the zero trust architecture in a moment, but I want to pick up on the statistic that you just gave, 74% of CEOs think and realize that cyber security and cyber risk is a major issue. Do you think there is realization amongst the CEOs that you're interacting with of the severity of cyber risks today or it's just this word and this terminology that just keeps floating around there?
So if you compare today versus 5 years ago, there's a day and night difference in CEOs recognizing how critical cyber security is and that's equally true for board of directors as well. What's not clear to many CEOs and many board of directors what could be done for better cyber protection. That's the message we're trying to get out there. You know, I was asked by the board of directors of a very large bank out of Asia and I was presenting the board and this board member said, 'Jay, you're sitting in Silicon Valley running one of the largest cloud security companies and you're dealing with some of the largest companies who have all the money, all the know-how and access to the best technologies.' And I still read in papers how many of these large companies are getting breached? If that's happening to them, what hope do I have? Wow, I had never thought of a question like this. It took me about 20 seconds to think through. My answer was what she said was true. But the issue is not access to technology or money. The issue is inertia. Hackers have no inertia. Larger the corporation, the bigger the inertia. I think we need to adapt our large enterprises more quickly to the adopting to the evolving threats and technology and that's one of the big things we are trying to do.
Jay, you mentioned earlier the zero trust architecture and Zscaler's zero trust exchange cloud security platform has I believe more than half a trillion daily transactions. More than half a trillion, I was thinking about this earlier just trying to wrap my mind around this. And we've been kind of talking around the role and impact of AI but and AI playing a larger and larger role in the processing of that data and more half a trillion daily transactions. How do you think artificial intelligence is affecting business and society at large? And can you tell us a little bit more about Zscaler's approach to AI? And what are some of the important considerations around its use?
