Zero trust security architecture in enterprise security removes the concept of trust. It redefines how individuals and organizations view and act upon the IT security perimeter. The foremost principle of the zero trust architecture is to trust nothing and verify everything. All components of an organization: users, devices, apps and data and software, whether on-premise or on the cloud, must be validated, tracked and protected.
Using these practices, organizations can mitigate the attack vectors malicious actors use to steal data, compromise passwords or do other tasks that could bring catastrophic impacts within the enterprise environment.
Therefore, shifting to zero trust architecture is increasingly being embraced by organizations. It is also taking hold in governments; for example, President Joe Biden’s Executive Order to improve the country’s cybersecurity includes adopting zero trust. However, the path towards zero trust is more challenging than most people hope.
Is Zero Trust Architecture Still a Consideration in the Current Security Landscape?
MixMode AI’s State of InfoSec Q3 of 2022 finds that zero trust is among the top three priority areas for security teams.
Despite being around for several years, the zero trust model is still challenging for organizations. Several barriers make it difficult to implement and execute zero trust security architecture.
During the past few years, organizations have witnessed the mass migration of security professionals and adopted a hybrid and remote working culture. This hybrid working culture is a significant barrier to implementing the zero trust security model. The more people work away, the less secure the traditional perimeter-based approach becomes. In addition, as the remote working culture is becoming common, more employees are using unknown devices, apps, public Wi-Fi, routers and VPN services than ever before. Using many untrusted applications that run on a device with access to sensitive business data is a significant security risk.
The tug of war between modern and traditional technologies poses another significant barrier to organizations’ plans to adopt zero trust architecture. The legacy systems cannot manage the dynamic rules to implement this security model. Additionally, it doesn’t work well with the modern approach or technologies required to restrict unauthorized access while verifying authorized access.
One basic zero trust principle is mapping an organization’s critical data, applications, devices and how users access and interact with sensitive information. However, the challenge for organizations here is taking the data-centric needs of the zero trust architecture and deploying it with traditional data silos.
Road to Achieving Zero Trust Security Architecture
Achieving zero trust security architecture is not an overnight task, requiring much work. With more organizations supporting the hybrid or remote working culture, executing the zero trust model will take even more work. However, the best zero trust security solutions can significantly help as they increase cyber resiliency and secure remote access. These solutions are not limited to threat detection and responses. Instead, it also offers a variety of approaches, including endpoint security, multi-factor authentication (MFA), cloud security, identity access management and more.
Access management and segmentation are vital elements. Organizations can consider applying the zero trust model to the application access. The advanced zero trust network access (ZTNA) provides easy access to the applications no matter where the app is or from where it’s accessed. Since every network is structured differently, applying application control is challenging when the apps are located in different locations, like SaaS or on-premises.
A firewall-based client integrated within the ZTNA is another way to overcome the barrier of hybrid work culture. The ZTNA model is self-hosted from the cloud, self-managed or fully managed services, so it doesn’t matter where the application or the user is; it will provide secure remote access. Therefore, effective zero trust security solutions must be a part of any comprehensive cybersecurity strategy.
To overcome the legacy systems problem, organizations can simply deploy MFA to them. Since MFA is the primary component of network security, it will improve the security posture and threat response needed to implement zero trust.
In addition, to prevent legacy data silo issues, organizations can introduce micro-segmentation design. This relies on the concept of what to segment, what access controls are needed and who has the privileged access rights and protection measures required. With segmentation, it is also easy to stop the attack from spreading internally and ensures that the impact is contained to a limited segment.
Final Thoughts
The zero trust approach helps organizations remain protected from cyber-attacks by deploying identity-centric business and architectural security solutions. However, some barriers make it challenging to implement. Organizations must conduct a zero trust assessment of their environment and existing capabilities and create a roadmap to achieve it.