If you want to make a lot of money as a tech investor, there’s a new Silicon Valley acronym you absolutely need to know about.

And I can understand what you may be thinking. There are already too many buzzwords in the tech world. Why learn a new one?

That’s a fair point. But this term helped send shares of a cloud-centric growth firm up 29%. No, not in a year or even a quarter – in a single session.

Don’t worry if you never heard of the term ZPA. It’s been considered a fairly obscure part of the tech economy – until now.

But the firm that pioneered this lucrative niche is charting traffic growth that is just off the charts, rising 1,000% in a single quarter.

With that in mind, today I will show why there’s so much money to be made here and reveal the company behind it at all…

VPNs And Beyond

Now then, very few people outside of either cloud computing or cybersecurity have heard of ZPA before.

Here’s the thing; this is a proprietary technology designed to replace what are known as virtual private networks. These are software-driven systems that provide encryption over the Web from a device to a computer network.

Users opt for these because encryption greatly cuts down on cyber intrusions. It also protects your browsing history and all your Web activity from prying eyes.

Problem is, they can really slow down your network. This is why I – and many other tech-savvy users – have not opted to go virtual. I know I am trading some privacy for faster download speeds.

But what if you could have both in one great package from a trusted Silicon Valley leader that is totally pro at protecting data.

That’s where Zscaler Inc. (ZS) comes in. After all, they coined the ZPA term – it stands for Zscaler Private Access.

The Data Advantage

See, for years, VPNs have been used to give employees remote access. By using software to bridge the company’s office network to the employee’s own computer, the employee can get to work almost as if they were at their office computer.

Except that, as I mentioned, VPNs are painfully slow.

They are also a nightmare for IT security. After all, the employee gets to use their own, personal computer, unvetted by the IT department, to connect to their employer’s network.

And by doing this over the Internet, the company exposes its network to potential hackers.

Zscaler’s ZPA solves all these problems.

It lets businesses upload versions of their corporate software to the cloud. That way, employees can use that software for work wherever they are, simply by connecting to the cloud.

It’s as fast as other cloud applications – Netflix, YouTube, or Amazon. Like other Zscaler services, ZPA runs on Zscaler’s own cloud out of 100 data centers scattered around the world.

In fact, thanks to some recent technological breakthroughs, all of these cloud and data-center based applications are about to get even faster.

I’m talking about a market-wide trend that’s going to have massive, sweeping implications for every company working in the digital space, and that could transform your personal wealth with the right investments.

But ZPA in particular is expected to see continuing gains as new technology changes cloud computing because it doesn’t require changing software. That makes it easy for businesses to set up.

And most importantly for the IT department, ZPA never exposes the corporate network to the Internet. This drastically cuts down on the risk of hackers getting up to no good.

Secure Telecommuting

This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic sending millions of office workers to work from home, businesses have had to scramble to give their workers home access to sensitive company software.

As its faster, easier to set up, and much safer than the traditional VPN solution, it’s no surprise that Zscaler’s ZPA was a huge hit this recent quarter.

Well, “huge hit” doesn’t even begin to cover it. In their recent earnings report, Zscaler announced that ZPA grew 10 times over the quarter, accounting for 43% of new and additional business.

That’s more than twice as much as the prior quarter. ZPA gained hundreds of thousands of new users, but there’s still plenty of room left to grow.

Only 32% of Zscaler’s largest customers use ZPA right now.

The cybersecurity firm also increased earnings per share and revenue both by 40%, with the latter climbing to $110.5 million.

The stock shot up on the news, and I expect more to come from the Silicon Valley firm.

Protecting The Cloud

Founded in San Jose in 2008, Zscaler helped pioneer the whole concept of cloud security. The whole company is designed specifically to secure the rise of cloud computing, a sector where just the services portion is worth more than $150 billion in annual sales.

Zscaler now supports more than 3,250 clients around the world, with 50% of its sales come from offshore. Part of its success comes from its huge scale. Each day Zscaler delivers 120,000 updates to its system while blocking some 100 million threats.

See, ZPA isn’t the only cloud security service from Zscaler. The firm provides firewalls, threat detection, and a wide variety of other cybersecurity solutions tailor-made for the cloud.

And its services, delivered as cloud-based subscriptions, work on both Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) AWS cloud as well as on Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Azure cloud.

So no matter who wins the cloud war, Zscaler will be there to secure it, for a tidy profit.

With more than 120 current or pending patents under its belt, competitors will have a hard time trying to replicate Zscaler’s success. It’s already the biggest provider of cloud-based Web security gateways, a $20.3 billion market.

Now, since Zscaler’s stock rebounded on March 16, it’s beat the S&P 500 three-fold with gains over 100%. This is a growth-centric firm that should continue to outpace the broad market for many years to come.

It’s exactly the kind of stock I have in mind when I say that the road to wealth is paved with tech.

Cheers and good investing,

Michael A. Robinson

Source: Strategic Tech Investor