Despite the incredible speed at which attacks are being detected and responded to in recent years, bad actors continue to grow in their virulence, sophistication, and coordination, refusing to stand still.
Considering the recent large-scale ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure, it would be safe to conclude that the sophistication of attackers has attained a new dimension. Without a doubt, cybersecurity is critical to both business and global security. And this is why there is a need to get a more effective approach to protecting your company from these attacks.
What is Zero Trust Security?
Zero Trust Security is an IT security model that is based on a strict identity verification process. It is a framework that requires that every user and device that is attempting to access resources on a private network must be authenticated and authorized. It doesn’t matter whether they are within or outside the perimeter of the network. Zero Trust Security seeks to secure users and applications from advanced threats on the internet.
While not entirely a new theory, the Zero Trust model was first introduced by a Forrester Research analyst. Today, its importance keeps increasing not only for the digital transformation of the modern-day but also on network security architecture for businesses.
The difference between Zero Trust and traditional network security is that while the latter trusts any device or user inside the network, the Zero Trust is based on an architecture that has no trust for anything or any user (including your own employees).
One major issue with traditional network security is that although it is difficult to gain access from outside the network, users within the network are trusted by default. The implication of this approach is that once bad actors gain access to the network, they can do whatever they want on the network.
Why Should You Care?
The modern workforce has been organized in such a way that applications can be accessed from multiple devices within and outside the business perimeter. With this, enterprises have started adopting the Zero Trust Security Model which helps ensure that a user is authorized and authenticated to access whichever resource or device they are requesting.
Going by Forrester’s recommendation, Zero Trust should be segmented for people, data, workloads, devices and networks. This must however be done with no compromise on the speed and seamlessness of your applications.
How to Implement Zero Trust Security
1. Identify the goals, the current state, and the security priorities of your organization
The security demands of every organization will vary based on their current state and goals. It is important to analyze what level of security that will be most suitable for your organization. With careful evaluation, a hard core level of Zero Trust Model may turn out to be unnecessary.
Other suggestions here only serve as a potential roadmap to make your life easy.
Any invasive security measure must be planned, tested, and rolled out with limited to no impact to your business. The common phrase here is “it’s a marathon; not a sprint”.
2. Adopt a threat protection solution that ensures the following:
- Should offer solid protection for users on and off the network.
- Should make users visible on the network.
- The solution must have Internet-bound traffic
- Should Identify and block access to malicious domains
- It must restrict data exfiltration that is DNS-based.
- Ensure that once a device is compromised, communication is disrupted from the device.
- It should enable you to enforce your acceptable use policy.
3. Consider an Access solution that has the following qualities:
- There should only be one sign-on for all corporate resources and applications.
- The access solution should keep the applications hidden and make use of the power of the internet for delivery.
- It must allow for multi-factor authentication.
- It should come with built-in application security and application acceleration.
- It should not complicate IT processes, and no client-side software or hardware, and should have simple onboarding
- It should be able to deliver full reporting or integrate with your existing SIEM.
4. There should be Proactive protection against zero-day malware
Users and devices should be able to safely connect to the internet whether they are within the perimeter of the business area or not.
5. Adopt an Application Access Model with a least-privilege
It is common to see companies allow logged-in users to access their entire network at an IP level. This is usually done with a simple VPN setup. However, this may be an opportunity to challenge that architectural design.
For example, would a contractor who uses your billing system need to have access to the processing terminals of the credit card? Access to applications should be simply based on the role to be performed by a specific user.
Need Guidance with Cyber Security?
The list of considerations that are necessary for protecting your company is long and the factors are evolving daily. We keep close tabs on it all so that you don’t have to. If you need help assessing your landscape, or reviewing the options, we are here! We’d love to help.