FEATURE industry and governments, and I’ m doing exactly the same, just from the other side. I think my job is as political as anything I did in government before.
How does Zscaler work with governments?
We work as much with our private customers as we do with governments. If I could make one change, I would not call the role government affairs, I would call it political affairs, because I think it gives this impression that it’ s only the public sector we work with, and that’ s not the case. One of the things with the current political environment is we almost work more with the private companies because they are as concerned or interested in political affairs as the public sector is. We work with policy people, with political leaders, regulators, people within think tanks, academia, journalists. We are also lobbyists for, in our case, Europe and the European Union, within the company. We speak to our engineers, our product people, and say we either align and develop and innovate, or we are out of business in a couple of years, so there’ s this internal role of representing government interests inside the company as well.
Do the challenges vary between the region with regards to cybersecurity?
You could argue that the differences are not huge, but the way they address the challenges is very different. So, the capabilities and the resources are different. Digital sovereignty is, of course, a huge thing in Europe right now. Sovereignty is a big thing in the Middle East, as well, for slightly different reasons. Africa is a big continent of swing states that are
Casper Klynge, Vice President, Head of Government Partnerships and Public Policy across EMEA, Zscaler www. intelligentcxo. com
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