Zscaler is the newest cybersecurity big to snap up a safe Internet browser expertise supplier. By buying early-stage startup SquareX, the corporate goals to increase enforcement of community and utility entry insurance policies to browsers on each managed and user-owned gadgets.
Singapore-based SquareX, which has a US operation in Palo Alto, Calif., launched its namesake browser extension in late 2023, the yr it was based with $6 million in seed funding. Final yr, SquareX secured a Sequence A spherical of $20 million. The deal, introduced final week, has already closed, although phrases weren’t disclosed.
SquareX is software program that plugs into Chromium-based Internet browsers, notably Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Vivek Ramachandran, SquareX’s founder and CEO, defined in a weblog submit that its browser detection and response (BDR) capabilities can detect and reply to browser‑native threats, resembling malicious extension scripts.
The SquareX browser extension provides “safety groups deep, actionable visibility whereas remaining just about invisible to customers,” Ramachandran famous. “Even with sturdy, safe net gateways, there was nonetheless a spot as to what was taking place contained in the browser. We noticed a chance so as to add real-time menace detection and response immediately into the browser, making SquareX’s in-browser safety a robust extra layer of protection.”
Zscaler plans to combine SquareX as an endpoint to its Zero Belief Alternate, the cloud-native platform that gives gadgets and utility workloads with direct connections slightly than a distributed community.
Internet browsers on computer systems, telephones, and different endpoints have more and more emerged as the first person interface. In line with an Omdia Analysis report, the browser is the endpoint now used for 85% of all work computing actions.
As of final yr, Gartner estimated that 10% of organizations have deployed safe enterprise browsers; by 2028, it forecasts that proportion will rise to 25%. A report revealed final month by the Cloud Safety Alliance (CSA) emphasised that menace actors particularly goal authentication cookies, session tokens, and behaviors inside conventional browsers by refined phishing assaults, credential theft, and script-based exploits.
“A browser-centric enforcement structure empowers safety groups to scrupulously gate entry primarily based on validated identification, constantly confirm system posture, cryptographically bind authentication to phishing-resistant components, and dynamically adapt permissions as contextual threat indicators fluctuate,” wrote the report’s writer, Sunil Gentyala, lead cybersecurity and AI safety engineer at HCLTech.
Dhawal Sharma, Zscaler’s VP of product administration, tells Darkish Studying that the mixing is already underway and needs to be accomplished inside the subsequent few months.
“We’ve been evaluating this firm for the final three months, and we regarded on the integration factors and the scalability of the platform, which we had been pleased with, so the groups are already heads down,” Sharma says.
SquareX’s put in base is comparatively small, with only a few dozen prospects, Sharma acknowledges, however he anticipates fast demand.
Zscaler’s acquisition comes on the heels of CrowdStrike’s settlement final month to purchase Seraphic Safety for $420 million in money. Lots of Zscaler’s rivals have rolled out safe browsers prior to now yr. Amongst them are the discharge of Netskope One’s Enterprise Browser, Examine Level’s Enterprise Browser, and Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma Entry Safe Browser. The latter is a revamped and newly built-in model of the Talon Enterprise Browser (acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2023).
In the meantime, Google and Microsoft have hardened their extensively used browsers with the launch of Google Chrome Premium, a fee-based add-on that gives URL filtering, malware scanning, coverage enforcement, and data-loss prevention controls. In November, Microsoft introduced new safety controls for its Edge for Enterprise browser, now in preview.
Sharma insists aggressive actions didn’t affect Zscaler’s want to amass SquareX.
“We heard from our prospects from a person expertise perspective [that] the browser makes extra sense,” he says. “However we did not wish to blindly go and purchase a browser and simply have a verify field. That is actually extending the platform from a characteristic or a use case in our world.”
Upon releasing its Prisma Browser, Palo Alto Networks described it as one in all its fastest-growing choices. In figures disclosed final August, Palo Alto Networks stated it bought 3 million licenses in the course of the fourth quarter of its 2025 fiscal yr, doubling the put in base to over 6 million.
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