The business structures are complex today, and so is their security.
Traditional security models no longer fit into the complexity of modern businesses and their environments. Businesses need a security architecture that keeps their data, devices, and apps across different work locations safe and secure.
In fact, the digital transformation and the new way in which organizations are operating in a hybrid or remote model has made them more prone to cyberattacks. This is where organizations need to adopt the new security model, the Zero Trust Security Model, where every user access request is verified and authenticated continuously.
Let’s understand in detail what exactly the Zero Security Model is, how it functions, and why it is important for your modern business.
What is Zero Trust Security?
The Zero Trust Security stands for its literal meaning, Zero Trust, where an organization functions on the principle of ‘Never Trust, Always Verify’. Upon implementation of this security model, all the users, irrespective of whether they belong from inside or outside of the organization’s network are treated as a threat.
Users need to be continuously authenticated and validated, instead of only once, i.e., at the perimeter. This practice is important for security configuration and safe access to business data and applications.
Continuous authentication and validation are required because Zero Trust works on the assumption that there is absolutely no trustworthy user in the existing network anywhere, including in the cloud, local, hybrid, or even a combination.
By adopting the Zero Trust approach, organizations can focus on protecting their business environments by enabling robust authentication methods for digital transformation. Along with this, the Zero Trust Security approach also leverages the ‘least access’ policy, network segmentation, threat prevention of Layer 7, and lateral movement prevention.
All this secures your business and data from modern-day business challenges like hybrid cloud environments, ransomware threats, and even remote working style.
Why Your Organization Needs a Shift from Traditional Security Models?
Previously, organizations functioned on a castle-and-moat model of cybersecurity. In this model, everyone outside of the business network was seen with eyes of distrust. However, every user from inside the organization was trusted and given the benefit of doubt. The businesses’ assumption that everyone from inside the organization is completely trustworthy is popularly known as ‘implicit trust’.
However, this trust would at times result in data breaches. In fact, the attackers were also able to move freely throughout the network by just surpassing the authentication once, at the perimeter.
So, to address the loophole where threats from the inside the organization were not addressed, organizations transitioned to the Zero Trust Security Model. This model validates every user from outside as well as inside of the organization with the same authentication method every time.
This has successfully reduced the opportunities for hackers to access the system, thus, preventing both internal and external threats.
How Does the Zero Trust Security Model Function?
Zero Trust Model is quite simple and assumes that everything is hostile in nature and requires authentication. The user verification is executed with the help of advanced technologies including endpoint security, strong cloud workload technology, identity protection, and multi-factor authentication.
The Zero Trust architecture works on the belief that one-time user validation won’t be enough as user attributes and related threats are subject to change.
And that’s the reason Zero Trust policies only counts on real-time visibility of application and user identity attributes that include:
- Credential privileges on every device
- Geo Location
- User Identity
- Behavior patterns of the device and credential
- Authentication protocol & risk
- Versions of operating systems
- Installed applications on an endpoint
- Detecting incidents such as suspicious activities or attack recognition
- Programmatic or Human type of credential
Further, businesses must assess the IT infrastructure and the potential attack paths to stop risks and minimize the effect of a breach. This can be done by creating a segmentation based on device types, group functions, or identities.
Why Does the Zero Trust Security Model Fits Right in the Modern Security Architecture?
The cloud receives access request from multiple users operating from different location on different devices. All the requests are differently verified, and the authenticated ones are only allowed access.
Today, when organizational structures are changing to completely remote or hybrid, businesses need new security models that can easily adapt to the complexity. Along with this, the security model should also be capable of protecting apps, devices, data, and people, secure wherever and whenever they are operating.
So, the Zero Trust Security model is one such effective strategy that can protect sensitive and critical business data like IP (Intellectual Property), PII (Personally Identifiable Information), and financial information.
Further, let’s understand in detail how the Zero Trust Security Model fits right in the modern security architecture.
Ensures Network Trust
IT teams need to trust the network before granting it the required access. But, unlike the traditional security models, the Zero Trust Security model does not assume that an internal user is credible. It authenticates the internal and external access requests repeatedly to ensure network trust, irrespective of the user and devices’ location.
Moreover, during verification, Zero Trust also proactively identifies, mitigates, and blocks threats like DNS data exfiltration, phishing, ransomware, malware, advanced vulnerabilities, etc.
Offers Secure Application Access to Partners & Employees
Traditional access technology such as VPN is vulnerable as their user credentials can be easily compromised, leading to breaches. Considering this, IT teams need to make changes in the way their access models work, so that only accessing information with a password should not be sufficient for any user. This will ensure business security along with enabling easy and quick access for all users, including the third-party ones.
The Zero Trust Model, through its granular security policies that define which user can have the access to which part of the system, works on offering the same experience for its users, by reducing access complexity and risk.
Address Modern Day Business Challenges
Business requirements have changed now a days, especially with digital transformation and the way employees work today. As a result, a network gets user and access requests from different devices, users, and locations. When not everyone is working from the enterprise premises, users can send access requests from their homes, client locations, or even a vacation.
This increases the risk exposure, because of which trusting even the internal users becomes difficult. This is where Zero Trust Security’s ‘Never Trust, Always Verify’ formula comes into play. In this policy, no user is trusted, and every access request is verified.
Increased Visibility into the Network Traffic
The Zero Trust Architecture, ZTA provides visibility that enables organizations to understand the performance behavior, contextual details, and even the user and application activity across different pillars.
Further, Network Performance Monitoring, NPM, improves the detection of any unusual behavior across or within the network. If the data depicts any unusual activities, the security policies can be alerted and adjusted.
Core Principles that Zero Trust Security Model Adheres To
The core principles of the Zero Trust Security Model work on removing inherent trust from users. It ensures that every user, device, and access request is continuously verified to ensure optimum security.
Moreover, the Zero Trust Security Model isn’t something that should be set once and then forgotten about. Its core principles must be continuously addressed to achieve the desired security goals.
- Continuous access verification and authentication, every time, for all the resources
- Set a limitation to the ‘blast radius’, which measures the total impact of a security event. This will help you minimize the impact of any internal or external breach
- Monitor the user behavior and alert in real-time if any activity is found suspicious
- Use concepts like JEA (Just Enough Access) and JIT (Just In Time) to offer least-privilege access
- Always assume a breach and improve defenses and threat detection
- Use granular policies to protect your business data
- Detect and prevent lateral movement within the network
- Use MFA, Multi Factor Authentication to verify a user
Practical Use Cases of How Enterprise can Implement Zero Trust Security
The Zero Trust Security Model is apt for any enterprise that stores digital data and functions on a network. Let’s understand some of the most common use cases of Zero Trust:
Secure Support to Remote Work
With Zero Trust, your employees can request user access from any location, irrespective of whether they are working from inside or outside the enterprise premises. This security model uses principles like multi-factor authentication that verifies the user access request at multiple levels, only granting access to legitimate users.
Augmenting or Replacing a VPN
Even now organizations count on VPNs to keep their data, location, and user access protected and undisclosed. But it is not an ideal choice. A VPN may provide a certain level of connectivity, but it still cannot provide visibility into user behavior or even control over user access.
Whereas, the Zero Trust Security model is much more capable of addressing modern business needs like speed, remote work, and even security measures.
To Onboard Contractors & Other Third Parties
An organization will always collaborate and work with partners, vendors, contractors, consultants, and other third parties. They will need user access to your network for collaterals and other materials, but how do you trust them?
With Zero Trust Security, businesses can extend least privileges and restricted access to parties and individuals working from outside the organizations. So, even if your internal IT teams are not managing these users, their user access will remain secure and restricted at the same time.
Secure Cloud & Multi Cloud for Remote Access
The Zero Trust Security Architecture authenticates every access request, irrespective of its source location or destination. This also helps businesses minimize the use of cloud-based services that might be unauthorized by blocking or controlling the operations of unauthorized apps.
Conclusion
Modern businesses need to entail modern security architecture, the Zero Trust Security Model to keep their data, network, and users secure. However, it may still sound complex, but you need to understand, Zero Trust Security is not a destination or a model to implement once, rather, it needs continuous trials.
So, we recommend you start small, understand its implementation, allow your users to get used to the new model, and then scale its deployment in phases to the entire enterprise.