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Today's businesses must provide network access not just to remote or mobile workforce but also to devices, applications, and everything 'smart'. As a result, the surface area available to cyber criminals for attacks has increased. Businesses are, therefore, up against a huge challenge to protect their businesses from the impending cyber threats. Zero trust could be the solution to this problem.
Authenticate Users
Organizations must consider Zero Trust architecture to prevent ex-filtration of sensitive data. This architecture, proposed by Forrester Research, advocates the principle of 'never trust, always verify'. This allows for a strict approach to verifying users and devices—internal or external—trying to access the network.
Usually, the point of infiltration is just an entry point for the cyber criminals and not the actual target. Once they are able to break-in to the network, cyber criminals move around laterally, looking for critical data they can access and exploit. To stop this unrestricted movement, businesses can define parameters that allow only designated users to access certain assets on the network. For instance, HR folks are denied access to, say, marketing or finance data and vice versa.
To achieve this level of restricted/privileged access, organizations must identify specific user group and the assets or applications they need to access. Accordingly, these groups should be provided with unique access rights that they must authenticate before reaching the intended applications. This is with a view to identify genuine traffic and block illegitimate attempts to gain access.
Check, Double Check
Zero Trust architecture enables organizations to gain visibility into the type of traffic on the basis of user, device used, location, and so forth, that act as barricades, users must clear before they can access the desired asset. To further secure the external perimeter, organizations can layer this visibility with two-factor authentication or other authentication methods.
The bottom-line for organizations is to protect their crown-jewel assets from rising cyber threats. Therefore, they can consider Zero Trust architecture as part of their overall security strategy.