Zero Trust interest and adoption have exploded in recent years thanks to high-profile security breaches and the need for secure remote access. But the path to a fully deployed Zero Trust architecture can seem daunting (or even cost-prohibitive).
After all, it’s not just micro-segmentation tools and software-defined perimeter technologies to consider. Zero trust involves a new mindset, too.
Understanding the Basics
Zero trust is a cybersecurity model that prevents data breaches by limiting the attack surface. It combines airtight access management, strict device and user authentication, and robust segmentation to prevent attackers from moving laterally within the network.
Zero Trust replaces the traditional firewall model that trusts everything inside the perimeter. This security architecture quickly became obsolete as organizations adopted cloud-first business transformation strategies and accelerated remote work environments. In many cases, these new environments don’t have a defined perimeter to secure against the range of threats seen in the past year.
Zero trust can be challenging to implement because it requires a significant change in how an organization manages its network. It means a considerable investment in time and resources, especially for large organizations that use multiple communication applications. Additionally, implementing Zero Trust will likely affect nearly every part of the organization’s technology stack. It can create political issues that could stall or derail the effort. In addition, a successful Zero Trust implementation must be built on the principles of least privilege access. It ensures that users, devices, accounts, and computing processes are only allowed the maximum capabilities needed for a specific task. It is essential as 80% of attacks leverage compromised credentials.
Defining Security Goals
Unlike perimeter-based access models that trust everything within the network, Zero Trust requires authenticating and authorizing every connection outside the firewall. He requires verification of user identity, device posture, application context, and more. It also restricts access to specific systems, applications, data sets, and APIs based on business rules while continuously assessing and enforcing a security policy. Reduces the attack surface, preventing breaches and minimizing the impact if they do occur.
The most effective way to implement a Zero Trust architecture is to define what systems, applications, and data are essential to the business and then design a security framework that secures those assets. It is called “protecting the protectable.” It’s much more cost-effective to focus resources on protecting what matters than trying to defend the entire attack surface and perimeter.
Once the business defines what they need, it can work with a Zero Trust vendor to build and implement a secure network architecture that enables digital transformation while limiting risk. Often, this involves implementing a variety of security best practices. These include implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA), securing and verifying devices, deploying micro-segmentation to limit the number of areas an attacker could target, leveraging continuous monitoring and analytics to detect anomalies and suspicious activity, and using threat intelligence from multiple sources to validate threats.
Defining a Security Strategy
To take advantage of Zero Trust, security teams must define their approach to security. The NIST framework offers a set of core tenets that organizations can implement to achieve their security goals. These tenets include:
Never trust, always verify–Authenticate and authorize based on the state of the identity (who, what, where, when, why). Continuous verification means every request is authenticated, approved, and encrypted before passing through the network. It eliminates implicit trust, reducing an organization’s attack surface and limiting the impact of a breach when it does occur by minimizing lateral movement through micro-segmentation and least privilege access.
Assume breach–assume that threats are already inside the perimeter and treat everything as infected. This approach prevents access to sensitive network parts by requiring multi-factor authentication, deploying end-to-end encryption, and utilizing visibility and analytics to identify anomalies. It limits the “blast radius” by enforcing minimal access for users and restricting access to sensitive data and systems based on risk.
It requires a significant change in infrastructure and architecture that will touch every user, system, and application in the organization. Moving to a Zero Trust model is a considerable undertaking that requires buy-in from the entire organization. It will also need ongoing maintenance resources to ensure that new systems and applications conform to the security architecture.
Defining a Security Roadmap
The core tenets of Zero Trust require each device, user, and service to be authenticated and authorized before accessing network resources. It is a significant change from the traditional approach, where users and devices are implicitly trusted once inside an enterprise. The Zero Trust model requires each asset to verify identity and context based on various data points, including user risk, device health, application behavior, and more.
Defining a security roadmap to support your Zero Trust deployment is critical for successful outcomes. Start by identifying your organization’s business goals, then work with IT to develop a comprehensive list of projects and timelines for completion. An inclusive process should include interviews with key stakeholders to understand business processes and identify potential barriers to success.
Once you have a roadmap, be sure to communicate the plan to all stakeholders and monitor progress through the delivery of project deliverables and milestones. As you complete each project, be prepared to re-evaluate your security roadmap and adjust as needed.
Once your Zero Trust infrastructure is established, you can begin deploying micro-segmentation and other advanced security techniques to improve visibility into your internal network, which is increasingly distributed. As a result, you’ll be able to ensure that all of your network assets and users are appropriately authenticated, authorized, monitored, and secure in the face of modern threats.