Top 20 Cloud Executives to Watch in 2021

Andrew Schnabel, Vice President of Federal, Zscaler

Andrew Schnabel leads Zscaler’s efforts to ensure government agencies can take advantage of secure modern cloud technology for mission-enabling tools to strengthen remote work, increase capacity, improve performance and upgrade security as employees work from anywhere.

Schnabel was instrumental in Zscaler’s participation in the Defense Department’s zero trust proof-of-concept to help DOD move from a network-centric to a data-centric security model.

He also prioritizes the need to educate the cyber workforce, bringing the DOD SkillBridge, Warriors Ethos and Shift’s Defense Venture Program to Zscaler to support military service members’ transition into the civilian workforce through industry-sponsored positions and training.

“Efforts to support the hybrid workforce and strengthen cyber defenses against our adversaries have to be a team effort,” Schnabel said. “Government agencies, tech companies and the integrator community — all of us need to be working together on solutions to transform legacy networks. We are smarter today than one year ago. The key is modernizing security as we modernize our environments, applications and how we work.”

Why Watch

Schnabel focuses on advocating for zero trust security — an important foundation for cloud modernization — and he is leading Zscaler’s efforts to achieve Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. CMMC is a unifying standard for the implementation of cybersecurity across the defense industrial base, and provides security assurances that DOD agencies’ systems and sensitive data are protected.