ZDTA Zscaler Digital Transformation Administrator Questions and Answers

One of the four essential steps of a cyber attack is to find the attack surface. This step involves identifying vulnerabilities, entry points, and targets within an organization’s network or systems that can be exploited by attackers.

The study guide outlines this as a critical phase in the cyber kill chain, where attackers map out potential avenues for compromise.

Yes, the Access Control suite includes controls for segmentation and conditional access, which are designed to prevent lateral movement within networks. These features allow organizations to restrict access between different segments and enforce policies that limit the spread of threats or unauthorized access within internal environments.

Cloud Application policies offer deeper, application‑aware controls, such as granular actions on specific SaaS functions, making them a superior choice for managing access to modern web apps compared to generic URL filters.

The Cloud Firewall includes Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capabilities that detect protocol evasion techniques where applications try to communicate over non-standard ports to bypass firewall controls. Once detected, the traffic is sent to the appropriate inspection engines for further handling and mitigation. This ensures that evasive traffic does not bypass security controls.

Cloud application control is the feature that allows an administrator to distinguish and enforce policies specifically on the corporate instance of a SaaS application. This enables granular control, allowing users to access the approved corporate SaaS while restricting access to personal or unauthorized instances. Out-of-band CASB generally provides visibility but does not enforce real-time distinctions in this context. URL filtering with SSL inspection and Endpoint DLP serve different purposes, such as content inspection and endpoint data protection, respectively.

The study guide explains that Cloud Application Control policies identify and enforce controls based on SaaS application instances, providing precise policy enforcement aligned with corporate SaaS usage requirements.

The two most efficient ways to provision users authenticated via SAML are SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) and SAML Autoprovisioning. SCIM allows automated user provisioning and deprovisioning, while SAML Autoprovisioning enables dynamic user account creation upon authentication, streamlining user lifecycle management.

Zero Trust is achieved by granting users application‑level access without ever placing them on the same network as the destination, ensuring users can reach only the specific app and never the underlying network.

Advanced Threat Protection provides botnet protection by monitoring connections to known Command and Control (C&C) servers, inspecting command traffic (sending and receiving), and detecting unknown C&C servers using AI/ML techniques. This comprehensive approach helps in identifying and blocking botnet activities effectively.

The study guide details these mechanisms as key elements of the botnet protection feature set in ATP.

The forwarding mechanism called ZTunnel with Local Proxy creates a loopback address on the machine to forward traffic to the Zscaler cloud. This local proxy intercepts client traffic on the loopback interface and securely forwards it through the Zscaler cloud, providing flexibility and control over traffic forwarding.

When a SAML Identity Provider (IdP) returns an assertion containing device attributes, these attributes are first consumed by the Zero Trust Exchange component. This component uses the device attributes for policy creation and enforcement decisions, integrating identity and device posture information to make dynamic access decisions.

Cross‑Site Scripting enables attackers to run malicious JavaScript in a user’s browser - often used to steal session cookies and hijack user sessions, a technique known as cookie stealing.

The Zscaler Client Connector is the lightweight agent installed on endpoints - whether at home, in the office, or on the road - to securely forward user traffic into the Zero Trust Exchange.

Imported MIP labels are applied as matching criteria within a custom DLP Policy, letting ZIA inspect data in motion and enforce actions (block, quarantine, notify) based on the sensitivity label assigned by Microsoft Information Protection.

The Email Notification Template is the built‑in mechanism for forwarding a copy of the exact content that triggered a DLP rule to your designated auditor via email.

Zscaler’s IPS engine and Yara‑style content signatures specifically detect and block botnet command‑and‑control traffic, stopping infected hosts from communicating with C2 servers.

Zscaler Identity Threat Detection and Response gathers information about Active Directory (AD) domains primarily by running LDAP queries. LDAP queries allow the system to retrieve user and domain information directly and accurately from the AD infrastructure, enabling detection and analysis of identity threats and suspicious activities.

The study guide highlights the use of LDAP queries as a reliable and standard method for accessing AD domain data in this security context.

When you configure a URL Filtering rule with the Caution action, the only HTTP methods you can select for that rule are CONNECT, GET, and HEAD.

The “Blocked Countries” feature in Advanced Threat Protection lets you restrict access to web destinations based on their geographic location, preventing connections to any sites hosted in the specified countries.

When creating SSL inspection policies, the exception policy for the specific URL category must appear first in the policy list, followed by the more generic "inspect all" policy further down. Zscaler evaluates policies in order, so placing the exception first ensures that traffic matching that category bypasses inspection before the generic policy is applied.

The study guide emphasizes the importance of policy order to ensure correct application of exceptions and general rules.

Zscaler uses a proprietary technology called Zscaler PageRisk to calculate risk attributes dynamically for websites. PageRisk assesses the risk level of a website based on a variety of dynamic factors, including the site's content, reputation, and behavior, helping to identify potentially harmful or suspicious sites in real time.

This dynamic risk scoring allows Zscaler to enforce security policies more effectively, blocking or allowing access based on calculated risk rather than static lists alone. The study guide specifies that PageRisk is integral to the platform's adaptive security posture and URL filtering capabilities .

In API architecture, an Endpoint is defined as a URL or URI that provides access to a specific resource or service within the API. It acts as a point of interaction where clients send requests and receive responses. This is a standard definition across API implementations, including Zscaler's API framework, where each endpoint represents a distinct function or data resource accessible via the API.

Option A refers to physical devices, which are not considered endpoints in API terms. Option C describes network infrastructure components but not API endpoints. Option D describes an API gateway, which manages API traffic but is not itself an endpoint.

This explanation is consistent with the Zscaler Digital Transformation study guide’s section on Integration and APIs, which clarifies that API endpoints are URLs pointing to specific resources or services within the API framework.

Server Groups in ZPA use Dynamic Server Discovery to supply Connector Groups with the application endpoints’ DNS names or IPs. The Connector Groups then resolve those addresses and perform health checks to ensure the applications are reachable before steering user traffic.

The DLP (Data Loss Prevention) Engine in Zscaler consists of DLP Dictionaries. These dictionaries contain the sensitive data patterns, keywords, and identifiers used to detect sensitive information in network traffic. They serve as the foundation for defining what content should be inspected and protected.

While DLP policies and rules govern how the engine acts, the engine itself fundamentally depends on these dictionaries to identify sensitive data accurately. The study guide states that DLP Dictionaries are key components that power the detection capabilities within the engine.

URL Filtering remains the most widely deployed web filtering method, serving as the first line of defense by categorizing and controlling access to websites before any deeper inspection or cloud‑based security service takes over.

The graph in the Security Alerts section displays the Top 5 Threats by Systems Impacted, highlighting which threats have affected the most endpoints over the selected time period.

SCIM is optional for ZIA user provisioning - you can onboard users via manual CSV import, SAML attributes, or other identity integrations without implementing SCIM.

During authentication to a private web application, the SAML assertion is delivered to the service provider via a Form POST through the browser. This standard SAML mechanism involves the browser receiving the assertion from the IdP and then POSTing it to the service provider to complete the authentication flow.

The valid Malware Protection setting selectable when configuring a Malware Policy in Zscaler is Block. This setting instructs the platform to block malicious files or activities detected by malware scanning engines.

Other settings like Isolate or Bypass are not standard malware policy actions in Zscaler’s malware protection configuration. The “Do Not Decrypt” option relates to SSL inspection settings, not malware policy actions. The study guide specifies “Block” as the primary malware policy action to enforce protection.

The TLS Decryption platform service intercepts and decrypts SSL/TLS sessions, granting Zscaler access to both headers and payloads of encrypted traffic for inspection and policy enforcement.

In SaaS Security API DLP policies you can choose “Remove External Collaborators and Shareable Link” as the enforcement action - Zscaler will report the incident, revoke any external collaborators on the file, and delete its external share links.

The recommended minimum number of App connectors to ensure resiliency in Zscaler Private Access is 2. Having at least two App connectors provides redundancy, so if one connector fails or is unavailable, the other can continue to provide access without interruption. This recommendation is critical to maintaining high availability and fault tolerance for internal application access.

The study guide specifies this minimum to ensure continuity and reliability of application access through ZPA.

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) solutions are specifically designed to identify and remediate identity‑centric risks - continuously assessing user and service identities to detect compromised credentials, misconfigurations, or risky behaviors, thereby reducing overall identity‑related risk.

You obtain the Zscaler One API access token by sending a POST request with your client_id, client_secret (and any other required parameters) to ZIdentity’s OAuth2 token endpoint, which then returns a JWT you use for subsequent API calls.

SSH tunneling falls under unsanctioned protocol use, which Zscaler’s Cloud App Control feature detects via deep packet inspection and then blocks according to policy.