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Resources/Comparisons/Aona vs Zscaler
For Zscaler Customers · 2026

Zscaler is your network layer.
Aona is your human layer.

If you have Zscaler, you have great network-level AI visibility. Here is what it still does not cover — and why it matters.

Zscaler catches the event. Aona stops it happening again.

What Zscaler handles well

  • Network-level shadow AI discovery across all traffic
  • Blocking and allowing AI apps at scale across the organisation
  • Alerting your IT and security team when a policy is violated
  • Integration with your existing SSE/SASE security stack
  • Enterprise-grade reliability trusted by 40,000+ companies

What Zscaler does not cover

  • What the employee sees when a block happens (nothing — just an error)
  • Whether the employee understands why it was blocked
  • Whether the same violation happens again next week on home wifi
  • Coaching the employee to use AI safely in real time
  • Measuring whether your workforce's AI behaviour is actually improving

We are not here to replace Zscaler. We are here to complete it.

What actually happens without Aona

Today (Zscaler only)
  1. 1Employee pastes client contract into ChatGPT
  2. 2Zscaler flags the event → IT team gets an alert
  3. 3Employee sees a block page with no explanation
  4. 4Employee tries again on their phone's 4G connection (not on your network)
  5. 5Same violation happens again next month. And the one after.

Events get caught. Behaviour never changes.

With Aona added
  1. 1Employee starts typing client data into ChatGPT
  2. 2Aona intercepts at the browser level — before it's sent
  3. 3A real-time coaching pop-up appears: 'This looks like client data. Here is why that is risky and what to do instead.'
  4. 4Employee learns. Understands the policy. Changes their behaviour.
  5. 5After 60 days, your policy violations have dropped by ~80%

Zscaler still catches what slips through. Now there is far less to catch.

The 5 things Zscaler customers tell us they were missing

1

'Our employees had no idea why they were being blocked'

Zscaler blocks at the network level. The employee just sees an error. No explanation, no learning, no behaviour change. Aona pops up at the moment of the action and explains exactly what happened and why.

2

'Home wifi, personal devices, and mobile — Zscaler has no reach there'

Your Zscaler deployment only covers managed devices on your network. Aona's browser extension works regardless of network or device. The coaching follows the employee.

3

'We had visibility, but no way to measure if behaviour was actually improving'

Zscaler gives you dashboards of incidents. Aona gives you a trend line: policy violations this month vs. last month, per team, per tool, per data type. You can show the board that things are getting better.

4

'New employees had no idea what our AI policy even was'

Zscaler does not onboard employees to your AI policy. Aona does: onboarding flows, policy acknowledgement, do/don't guides, built into the tool they use every day.

5

'We wanted to enable AI adoption, not just block it'

Zscaler's default instinct is enforcement. Aona's default is education. That difference matters for culture: you want employees to feel supported, not surveilled.

Where Zscaler is stronger — and we will tell you that straight

If your primary goal is network security — blocking AI apps at scale, securing your SSE perimeter, protecting against lateral movement — Zscaler is the right tool for that. They have 40,000 customers and a decade of enterprise trust for a reason. We do not do network proxying, and we are not trying to.

What we do: we sit at the employee layer. We work alongside Zscaler — not instead of it. Most of our customers who have Zscaler tell us they see Aona as the last mile their security stack was missing: the part that actually changes what employees do.

90-day free trial — no network changes required, no conflict with Zscaler.

How Aona and Zscaler work together

Step 1 — Zscaler

Network layer

Monitors all AI traffic at the network level. Blocks unsanctioned apps. Alerts your security team.

Step 2 — Aona

Employee layer

Intercepts at the browser. Coaches the employee in real time. Tracks behaviour change over time.

Step 3 — Result

Fewer violations

Fewer violations reach Zscaler because employees learn. Your security stack works harder with less noise.

Common questions from Zscaler customers

Will Aona conflict with our Zscaler deployment?

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We already get shadow AI reports from Zscaler. Why do we need more?

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Can we run both in a 90-day trial before committing?

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What does our Zscaler team need to do to set Aona up?

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See what Zscaler is not showing you

90-day free trial. Deploys alongside your existing Zscaler stack in under an hour. No network changes, no commitment.