Transcript
Zscaler products and the Zero Trust industry. We're breaking down the latest community updates, product advancements, and essential tech news in one 15 minute episode. That's the challenge. 15 minutes. It never happens on this show. It's like the gong show that never gongs. I'm joined with my, I don't know where he's at. I'm pointing up because that's where he's at on my screen. I'm joined by my co-host Huxley Dunsony. How you doing, buddy? I'm good. I'm good. Glad to be back with you. Yeah, of course. I feel like we need to be more consistent with these. And then we got a really cool guest and she's been on the show before, back in the first iteration of Zscaler Pulse. The prehistoric Pulse. The prehistoric Pulse. It no longer has a pulse. We've got Katie Schmidt with our certifications team. How you doing, Katie? I'm good. Thanks for having me back. It has been a while. It has been. It has been. And I'm sorry. I apologize for my hair. It's raining and I picked up my daughter from school and I got drenched. Yeah. Well, we will find a way to suffer having to look at your hair for 15 minutes. It's going to be hard, but we'll find a way. I wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy. I haven't had that problem in a while. Those flowing locks of yours? What are you talking about? I'm envious of people who don't have to spend hours on hair or however long. Yeah. Well, you woke up like that, right, Katie? Of course. Yes. Of course. Of course. Well done. Well done. So, Katie, I know there's a bunch of things within our Zscaler Academy, specifically certifications, right? And we also have Zenith Live coming up in June, right? And I know that's a big event for certifications and training and academy, as well as for our community, right? It's a big thing for the entire company, but for a community and academy, it is one of our best ways to get in front of you all, right? And get face-to-face and shake your hands and get to know you and teach you and get you learned up. So, what are some of the cool things that ZDTA refreshed, right? Yeah, we've actually had a lot going on. And right now we definitely are pivoted and full on Zenith Live preparation mode as we get ready to come into our biggest customer conferences of the year. But leading up to that, we've done some programmatic improvements and tried to give the customers and partners and folks more of what they want. We've listened to feedback. The ZDTA exam is almost three years old. It'll be three years old in September. Has it been that long? I know. Oh my goodness gracious. I remember when it came out, I was like, this is cool. Yeah. So, it'll be three coming in September, but we are always maintenancing, trying to improve upon things. And we took a lot of the feedback that we've received from customers and partners. And we did a new iteration of ZDTA, well, ZDTA also, ZDTA. And we refreshed that, launched it in February. We've had really great feedback on that, just that we've taken the tests to the next level, that the certification exam really reflects more of what goes on in the field and not just those tests you take that are basic knowledge-based, like, hey, do you remember where this is or how to do that? But really application and like things that are going on in the field and are relevant to our customers and partners. So, the feedback has been very well received. We are now, just this last week, actually, refreshed ZDTE as well. So, that has launched. And hopefully, we'll reflect a lot of those same improvements that have been seen in ZDTA. And I'd be remiss. I've got tons of questions. Okay. And I'd be remiss. I've got to tell you, one of the coolest things that we've done for our customers and partners of late is that we now have our very first practice exam. So, that came out with ZDTA. It's free. You can take it in the Zscaler Cyber Academy. Take it as many times as you want. See how you do. It was actually developed right alongside our actual certification. So, it's the closest we can get you to the real thing without it being the real thing. That's awesome. And we have the same thing that just rolled out with ZDTE. So, really big resources for people to start preparing for getting Zscaler certified. Can I jump in with just maybe like a beginner level question here? But there's all these different certs. They all start with the letter Z. What's the difference? And who would be interested in these? Get out of my head. Get out of my head. I was going to be like, what the heck? I mean, I know what it is, obviously. But I was going to ask the question like, what the heck is a ZDTA, Katie? I mean, do we do anything around here without the letter Z in it? Nope. I mean, if it's got to be named or we need a logo or whatever it is. Slap a Z on it. Put a Z on it. We're going to find a way to work that Z in. So, yes, all of our exams, we have three that are global in the market, available to everyone. ZDTA, which is our Zscaler Digital Transformation Administrator. And then next we have ZDTE, Zscaler Digital Transformation Engineer. So, that's leveling up a bit. It's a lot more about troubleshooting, implementation and all of that. And then we have a specialized cert for ZDX. So, ZDXA, that's our Zscaler Digital Transformation. Oh, God, I messed up. You're going to have to stop, Evan. The mess ups are why people watch the show. Everyone just stare at her awkwardly. Yeah, I'm like, oh, my gosh, digital experience. So, that's a very niche thing. You've got to be working with ZDX using digital experience. And if you know about that, I think it's very niche in what it is. So, ZDTA would be like, who are the personas and the help desk people, like entry level? Entry level folks want to start with ZDTA. And actually, we have something that's a micro credential that's lower than ZDTA. ZDTA is our first proctored certification. But if you wanted to take something unproctored, and you were just coming through the door, we have ZTCA, which is Zscaler. Oh, my God, guys, like I can't talk. It's a cyber associate. Oh, cool. Yeah. It's like a beginner friendly process. Yes. And it's like, you maybe don't even know about Zscaler, maybe you don't know about Zero Trust, or you know very little. So, you come through the door, you take ZTCA, that's unproctored, you can take it in our Zscaler Cyber Academy, it just gives you a really nice intro to get going with Zscaler. And then once you have some hands on practice, you can start thinking about that administrator level certification. And it does, we do have a guiding document on the certification website that talks about like how much hands on we recommend, how much experience you need in networking and security, and what the roles are that do roll up to that. So, that documents on our Zscaler.com certification website. We'll have that link as well in the show description in the notes that you can just clicky clicky and get to it. There you go. Yeah, it's really helpful in kind of planning your journey. One of the biggest questions I always get, though, is do you have to take ZTCA first? Currently, you do not have to take ZTCA first, you could take Zscaler Digital Transformation Engineer first, if you feel like you already know how to implement the product and do some sophisticated things with it, you know how to troubleshoot and all of those things. You could start there, which is totally fine. Like, do that if you want to. But we don't currently cascade it down. So, if you start at ZDTE, you don't automatically get the administrator. Currently, you have to earn them separately. Gotcha. So, that's something important to note. So, question for you, and since Huxley stole my question. So, ZDTA has been around for a while, three years, right? ZDTA, I think I remember it was like Zscaler for users, that was a whole thing, right? And so, my question to you, Katie, and this is less about the certs themselves, but more so about your role, right? How hard is it to make sure that there is alignment between these certifications and how fast we move at Zscaler with new products and services and features and capabilities? I think that's probably the better word, capabilities. There has to be, obviously, there's a little bit of lag, right? So, the product is moving, in the last four years, it's moved lightning speed. Yeah, it's crazy. Right? And how do you keep up with making sure, that's why we have all these refreshers, but how do you keep up with making sure that our materials on the academy is aligned to what's happening on the product side? Yeah, no, great question. So, I have a small but mighty team, and we work really closely with our content development team in Zscaler Cyber Academy, and also with our training instructor team. So, all of us kind of come together, and we work with product, obviously, to get any kind of product updates, things like that. But then we bring together our subject matter experts from our various Cyber Academy teams, but also from product and the field and people throughout our organization that are experts in these areas. And we have job task analysis that we repeat, and we edit, we make things different, we update to get with the current technology. And it is really a delicate balance to try to have an exam that is reflective of like current state of our technology, and what people are using it for, and how it's going out in the field. But also to be fair to people, right? We want to give them time to learn those new technologies, to learn those new features, and things like that. So, we do try to be really strategic in how we're releasing things, letting people know, we update those study guides, we update our practice exams. But we also try to look at longevity. So, that's really where the balance comes in, is like, what are we putting on the exam that's going to still be viable in five to six months, essentially? So, we do kind of think about that. So, less more about the specific, like, okay, toggle this thing to do this, but more so about a thought process around possibly a protocol, right? Like application in the field is really critical to the success of the folks that we certify. That makes sense. That's something I think about a lot in my day-to-day work, doing enablement stuff. It's like, in the era of AI, just being able to memorize a ton of statistics and numbers and acronyms, it can be useful, but it's probably less useful day by day. And so, seeing that these newer refresh certifications are emphasizing critical thinking, it's really cool and really smart. Yeah, and that's what I feel like we've had such great feedback on from what we've done this year, so. Yeah, just to kind of latch on to what you said, Huxley, is that I've always learned the most, or it's stuck in my head what I've learned, at least, right? When I've had a task to solve, there was something, there was a problem that I had to solve for, and I had to go through the steps of actually solving it, and at the end of it, I now learn something, and it sticks, right? It sticks. Where if I just have to answer a geometry question, no one uses that. Just kidding. But I'm just saying, no one uses geometry, right? If I had to study for that to answer a question on a test, like, it's in and out. It's gone. See ya. It's only there for a short-term memory. I'm sorry, all you geometry people that are like, wait a minute, you use geometry every day. If we could do geometry, we wouldn't be hosting a podcast. Oh, that's so funny. Katie, I had one more question for you, and I'm just thinking, there's probably a lot of folks who are going to see this who have maybe heard about Zenith Live, but maybe haven't gotten to attend before, and so it's fair to say it's a big Zscaler-themed customer conference. You can meet people and engage in sessions and do certifications, but having been affiliated with these conferences before, do you have any insider tips or pro tips that you might offer to somebody who's a first-timer? Yeah, so first-timers, I encourage them to get out to the Expo Center. We have a Zscaler Cyber Academy booth, and we staff that booth with some of our actual instructors and our leaders and such, so you can talk to them, get questions answered, and they are like your cruise ship guide. They can tell you where to go, how to do things, so that's a really big win, and you can, I think, usually grab a cocktail while you're walking through there, so that's nice, too. But then also for my team at certification, we are there long days every day, and if you have questions, we want you to come to us because we can help you. We can give guidance and recommendations, get you registered to take an exam on-site. We have a lot of people that come in and talk to us and find out like, oh, the study guide's here, and this is there. Well, I'm going to go study in my room tonight, and then I'll come back and take the test tomorrow, which is fine, except sometimes it doesn't work out if the study guide's pretty long. It's a couple hundred pages. So, you know, but I just think that interaction, you know, the more you can interact with people, whether it's my team with certification, our Zscaler Cyber Academy, our instructors going to the training, meeting them. I mean, I'm just going to give a shout out to our trainers and instructors. They're some of the best, and I mean engaging. They make content fun, and they are here to help. I mean, I wouldn't say any of them are not some of the most helpful people I know on the team, so I just encourage people to really get in there with the training, get to know our trainers. They love that, so. It's a better answer than I would have given. I would have said get there early in the morning so you get fresh breakfast. That's the fresh breakfast and fresh coffee right in the beginning, so that way you don't get the tail end of it, right? That's true. Get to lunch on time. Yeah, so get to lunch. Get there early so that we get the fresh stuff. Speaking of Zenith Live, I understand we're going to have some test centers there. Is that correct? Yes, our team has so much going on for Zenith Live. We are doing what we call a pop-up testing center. This is our third year doing it. We have a giant testing room. We provide the laptops. We have our candidates log in on Pearson VUE, make sure they're registered for their exam. We get them seated. It's really replicating a test center that you would get if you went to like a Pearson VUE testing center, but it's a little bit more fun because myself and my team are running it, and we give out swag, and we can help you if you're having any struggles getting registered, so it's just like a really, and you get to hopefully get certified and go back to your boss and say, hey, I got certified, so going to the conference makes sense, and you left with something that's going to help your organization and your career, so yeah. Yeah, so there you go. There's justification to go to Zenith Live. Tell your boss, I want to get certified. They've got the thing there to do it. I'm going to go do it, and I get breakfast early in the morning. Don't worry, and then I'm going to learn more about the products and services through all our breakouts and our sessions and that kind of stuff, so lots of really cool things to do there. I want to plug one more thing that's new this year that we're doing for search. Yes, please. We are going, and they're doing it for Cyber Academy as well, but we're going to have a certified champions focus group, so there's a session time for that. It's in the agenda. If you are already certified, we encourage you to come to that session. We're going to be getting feedback, hearing from our candidates of what do they want to see next from certification, what are they looking to do, what could we do better to help the organization or their colleagues or any of that get certified, so those are new, the focus groups. Highly recommend people check those out in addition to our regular offerings of trainings. Hey, real quick before we wrap up because I heard something a little while ago, and I don't know anything about it, which I know is surprising, Ben, right? What's this cert jam stuff? Oh my goodness. I feel like I need so much more time today to take you guys through all of this. We're in an elevator, Katie. What's the elevator pitch? Yeah, we'll make sure we put links down below, people, if you want more information, but what is your elevator pitch for cert jams? Yep, so cert jams are our first class study sessions, study prep to get you ready and across the finish line to get your certification with Zscaler, so currently we offer a ZDTA cert jam. These are done virtually. We are going to have a couple sessions on site during Zenith Live, so if you're there, you can take one on site, but otherwise they're free virtual sessions. You sign up through Zscaler Cyber Academy. They're meant and targeted for folks that are ready to get certified. You've already maybe taken the training, or you've worked on Zscaler for some time. You're feeling pretty confident, but you want just that last push. If you've ever done like an SAT prep, a GRE prep, something like that, that's what this session is about. We have fabulous instructors. They're going to go over the course outline from the content of the course and put that with the test blueprint, the exam blueprint, talk to you about what's going to be on the test, how much of it, and then I personally think the most valuable thing that they do is they do these practice questions, and they do it where everyone's, you know, using Slido to answer, and then they're talking through what is the right answer. That's cool. Did everyone get the right answer? Okay, why did you choose this and not that? And that's where I see like some really valuable discussions happening and people getting what they need to out of that session, so I highly recommend CertJams. They're becoming wildly popular, and I love it. Yeah, that's very cool. We'll make sure to get the link down there for that, because I think those are super awesome. Any other questions? Huxley, did you have any questions before we get out of here? Because I know we are almost at that 15-minute mark. I can feel it. I can see you staring at me. We're so close to sticking the landing on our timing. I won't add any more questions, but I will say, Katie, thank you so much for joining us. This is great, and it's so exciting to see the impact that you and your team are having. Oh, thanks, guys. Yeah, I've heard a lot of things. I need to go edit out all the bloopers. We're not editing out anything. We're just going to stick in there. We need to do a blooper supercut. There is no bloopers on The Pulse. This is live, and this is happening, so. It's all bloopers all the way down. Who am I? What am I supposed to be saying? What's my name? I don't know what to do with my hands. Just put them down. We're not there yet. We're not there yet. Well, awesome, Katie. Thank you so much for being human and coming on the show and taking time out of your busy day and shifting gears to come on the show and talk about what you do. We'll be sure to make sure that we see you all at Zenith Live. The podcast is on YouTube. It's also over on our community page, our community platform, so be sure to check that out. Speaking of which, this is the first time that we've had a chance to announce this on our Pulse, but we have a brand new podcast landing page for the Zscaler Pulse on our community, so you can go through a nice, beautiful little podcast webpage and see all of our past episodes and get caught up in what's happening on The Pulse, so be sure to check that out as well. Good stuff. Yeah. Any last parting words before we say goodbye? See you at Zenith Live. See you there, and we'll see you on the community. Take care. Bye. Bye, everybody.
