Zscaler Exams

The Shift to Zero Trust Security

When Zscaler launched in 2007, the company placed a massive bet: the traditional corporate network perimeter would eventually disappear. Rather than building hardware firewalls to protect physical data centers, they built a cloud-native platform to inspect traffic and enforce access policies directly between users and applications.

That bet paid off. Today, Zscaler operates the largest inline security cloud in the world. Its Zero Trust Exchange processes over 500 billion transactions daily and serves more than 45 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

For network engineers and security administrators, this market dominance signals a major shift. Enterprises are actively replacing legacy VPNs and inbound gateway appliances with Security Service Edge (SSE) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architectures. Knowing how to route and secure traffic in a zero-trust model is now a baseline requirement for modern infrastructure roles.

The ZDTA Certification

To validate these specific skills, the company offers the ZDTA: Zscaler Digital Transformation Administrator certification. This credential targets security professionals responsible for the day-to-day configuration and management of the Zscaler platform.

Unlike broader security certifications that focus on theory, the ZDTA tests your mechanical understanding of how zero-trust policies actually function in production. It proves you can configure secure access for internal applications without backhauling traffic to a central data center. It also demonstrates your ability to manage internet access policies, protect sensitive data, and troubleshoot connectivity issues for a remote workforce.

What to Expect on the ZDTA Exam

The ZDTA is an online-proctored exam consisting of 50 multiple-choice questions. You have 90 minutes to complete the test, and you must score at least 70 percent to pass.

The questions focus heavily on the core components of the Zscaler ecosystem, particularly Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). You will need to know how to set up app segments to enforce the principle of least privilege. Instead of granting network-wide access, the exam tests your ability to restrict users to specific domains, IP ranges, and network ports based on their identity and context.

You should also understand traffic forwarding methods. The exam expects you to know which forwarding techniques provide the most consistent results across complex environments, especially when you cannot rely on local proxy settings on user machines.

Cloud performance routing is another major testing area. For example, you will encounter questions about distributed DNS resolution and how Zscaler routes traffic to the nearest Microsoft 365 data center to minimize latency. The exam requires you to know not just what these features do, but why they matter for user experience and network performance.

Career Value for Infrastructure Roles

Security administrators with verifiable Zscaler experience hold a distinct advantage in the current hiring market. As organizations consolidate their security stacks and move away from fragmented point products, they look for engineers who can manage unified cloud security platforms.

Holding the ZDTA: Zscaler Digital Transformation Administrator credential signals to hiring managers that you can handle this transition. It separates candidates who only know traditional perimeter defense from those who understand modern, identity-driven access.

The real value of this credential extends beyond knowing which buttons to click in an administrative console. Passing the ZDTA proves you understand how to protect corporate assets when users work from anywhere, applications live in the cloud, and the traditional network boundary no longer exists.