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Zscaler and Carahsoft take zero trust downstream
Zscaler and Carahsoft recently announced an extended partnership to bring the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange to US small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and mid-market organisations. The objective is to bring enterprise-grade, cloud-delivered security in a form that SMBs and mid-market businesses can buy, deploy, and manage without enterprise-sized budgets or security teams.
It is a timely move and an acknowledgement that zero trust services have largely been sold and implemented as enterprise-only solutions. Large organisations have the teams, budgets and regulatory incentives to rethink network architecture, identity controls and application access. Smaller firms often have the same threat exposure, but fewer people and resources available to manage it.
The market gap
The arrangement is structured so that Carahsoft’s reseller network offers standardised packages, more predictable pricing, and enablement resources to help partners sell and support the platform. Zscaler says the goal is to replace legacy, appliance-based security with a unified cloud-delivered approach.
It is anticipated that this approach could remove the common obstacle for mid-market organisations. Security teams do not necessarily reject zero trust because they disagree with its principles. They struggle with the perceived cost, complexity and uncertainty of moving away from familiar firewalls, VPNs and point products.
The problem is not awareness. It is operational capacity.
An SMB or mid-market business with a handful of IT generalists cannot approach a security transformation in the same way as a global bank. It needs a smaller first step, a clearer commercial model, and a partner that can help configure and run the service.
AI raises the stakes
That need for enterprise-grade, cloud-delivered security is becoming more urgent as AI use expands across businesses of all sizes. Zscaler’s ThreatLabz research found that enterprise AI and machine-learning transactions increased by 83% year-on-year in 2025, across more than 3,400 AI and ML applications.
More AI activity means more data moving between users, SaaS platforms, applications, and emerging AI tools. It also introduces a growing number of non-human identities, from AI agents to automated workflows, that need appropriate access controls.
We recently explored why AI agents should be treated as privileged insiders. The core point applies just as strongly to the mid-market: a user, device, or AI agent should not receive more access than it needs.
The channel will determine success
Zscaler has enterprise credibility while Carahsoft brings reach into the reseller ecosystem.
But success of the partnership will mostly depend on whether it makes zero trust simpler in practice, not merely more available in catalogues. The two firms will need to give partners repeatable playbooks and customers clearly defined outcomes.
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