Zscaler launches free-to-use URL scanning service

Cloud security vendor Zscaler has launched a new free-to-use online service called Zulu that can assess the security risk associated with URLs by analyzing the content they point to, as well as the reputation of their corresponding domain names and IP addresses.

There are several free URL scanning services available online and all of them are useful in their own right. While conceptually similar to other such scanners, Zulu does have a few features that makes it stand out.

For example, Zulu allows security-savvy users who investigate various Web attacks to choose what User-Agent and Referrer headers the scanner will use when accessing a URL. There are a lot of attack pages that only serve malicious content to visitors who arrive there from a certain website, most commonly a search engine, or only to visitors who use a certain browser.