Zscaler announced plans to acquire Symmetry Systems, a company focused on identity mapping and data access for AI security. The acquisition is designed to strengthen Zscaler’s Zero Trust platform with foundational visibility into how AI agents, applications, identities, and enterprise data interact across organizations.
Symmetry Systems developed an “access graph” technology that ingests enterprise-wide access logs from SaaS applications, cloud environments, data stores, and AI systems. The platform uses AI to correlate those interactions into a unified map showing which identities are accessing specific data and systems, along with how those interactions occur.
Zscaler said the technology will integrate with its Zero Trust Exchange platform to help enterprises govern communication between AI agents, applications, and data sources at scale. The company believes traditional identity and directory-based security approaches are insufficient for AI environments because AI agents operate independently, use temporary identities, inherit permissions, and interact dynamically across systems.
The acquisition aims to provide organizations with greater visibility into AI-driven activity, allowing security teams to understand what data AI agents access, why they accessed it, and which systems they interacted with. Zscaler said the combined offering will enable automated policy enforcement and anomaly detection when risky or unauthorized behavior occurs.
The combined capabilities are expected to support several new security functions for enterprises deploying AI systems, including:
- Visibility into what AI agents can access and what they have already accessed.
- Least-privilege access policy creation for human and non-human identities.
- Full data lineage tracing across AI agents, sub-agents, and connected tools.
- Real-time anomaly detection with automated Zero Trust responses.
- Rapid blast-radius analysis if an identity or AI agent becomes compromised.
Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and CEO of Zscaler, said the acquisition addresses the growing challenge of securing millions of autonomous AI agents operating across enterprises.
KEY QUOTES:
“As enterprises rapidly adopt AI, the old playbook for governing access built around users and directories cannot scale to millions of AI agents. With Symmetry Systems, we are adding the access graph that maps how every identity, application, and data source connects across the enterprise. This foundational visibility is what Zscaler’s Zero Trust Exchange will use to govern agent-to-application and agent-to-agent communication at scale, giving customers the actionable control they need to safely embrace AI.”
Jay Chaudhry, Chairman and CEO, Zscaler
“Symmetry Systems’ mission is deep security research that earns real customer love. Zscaler is an inspiration on both counts. We believe the dominant security platforms of the AI era will govern how information flows between identities across zero-trust networks. As AI disintermediates applications, endpoints, and traditional network boundaries, identities and data become the new control plane for enterprise security. In this world, legacy security models centered on endpoints, applications, or perimeter networks increasingly operate at the wrong layer of abstraction. Together, Symmetry Systems and Zscaler are building the information flow network for the age of AI.”
Mohit Tiwari, CEO, Symmetry Systems
