Case Study: Fairfax County achieves simplified zero-trust microsegmentation and stronger east-west protection with Zscaler Workload Segmentation

How Fairfax County Simplified and Amplified its Security Strategy with Zscaler Workload Segmentation

Fairfax County, Virginia, a local government serving more than 1.1 million residents with a workforce of over 12,000, faced growing cyberthreats and an increasingly complex network estate spanning on-premises and Azure. With roughly 80% east‑west traffic and hundreds of applications, next‑generation firewalls had produced thousands of rules that strained a small centralized IT team, creating a need for a simpler, zero‑trust approach to stop lateral movement and reduce the attack surface.

The county deployed Zscaler Workload Segmentation as part of the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange—alongside ZIA, ZPA, and Cloud DLP—using agent-based deployment and machine learning to automate identity‑based microsegmentation and policy lifecycle management. The solution protected around 2,000 production systems across cloud and data center, simplified policy creation and troubleshooting, increased visibility into application communications, and reduced the operational burden on the lean IT staff, enabling them to focus on critical projects and begin retiring legacy firewall rules.

Fairfax County

Gulzar Khan

IT Program Manager