With remote work and Bring Your Device (BYOD) becoming increasingly common, securing the network perimeter is more critical than ever.
Zero Trust security takes a least-privilege authorization approach, requiring strict user access controls. This can include assessing and approving all devices, limiting access to authorized devices only, and monitoring for risky behavior from compromised or stolen devices.
Security Perimeters
A security perimeter is a wall of protected networks that helps a business defend its assets from cyber threats. Traditionally, the network perimeter consisted of a LAN containing switches, routers and Wi-Fi connectivity.
Using the perimeter-based security approach, companies can identify their network entry points and protect them with firewalls or other types of controls. However, this approach can be impractical in distributed environments where remote users and applications are accessed from different locations.
As a result, security teams must prioritize the specific assets, services and data they want to protect. Then, they can use a zero trust model to logically segment the network into secure zones called protect surfaces and set up micro-segments to enforce access control policies around each.
This enables a more granular approach to network protection than the traditional security perimeter. Each protected surface and micro-perimeter is defined and controlled by a specific set of policies sensitive to who is accessing the asset, what they are accessing, and the current security context.
This granularity also allows security teams to monitor and track user activity in real time, streamlining the administration process and giving them greater visibility into what users are accessing. They can then implement privileged access security into their zero trust networking to help ensure that only the right people can access the right resources.
Authentication
Cyberattacks are a growing concern for businesses of all sizes. Fortunately, you can protect your business with insurance and a robust cybersecurity program.
Security experts agree you can take a few steps to help your business combat cyber threats: Back up data, activate multifactor authentication on digital devices, and ensure employees use strong passwords. In addition, it is important to educate your staff about the risks they face and how to prevent them from causing damage to your business.
Zero Trust Networking helps businesses combat cyber threats by requiring all users to be authenticated and authorized before accessing the network or applications. This approach is known as “never trust, always verify” and was first coined by Forrester Research analyst John Kindervag in 2010.
Whether your company is a small business or an international corporation, you must protect yourself from cyber attacks that can cause significant damage to your business and reputation. A recent study showed that half of all organizations suffer cyberattacks yearly, and many breaches result in catastrophic losses.
Zero trust networking is designed to adjust to your needs and keep you safe without compromising productivity or affecting your employees’ ability to get their work done. It is an excellent choice for organizations implementing a Security Service Edge (SSE) that combines networking services with a built-in Zero Trust strategy.
End-to-End Encryption
End-to-end encryption is a great security feature because it protects sensitive data in transit, keeping it from being viewed by third parties. It can also help protect personal data and prevent tampering.
To use this type of encryption, users create a public-private key pair that they share on their devices. They then encrypt messages to each other using their public key and decrypt them with their private key.
Even though it’s a great way to protect data in transit, end-to-end encryption has vulnerabilities. It’s a good idea to be aware of these limitations and take appropriate measures to combat them.
One common vulnerability is the man-in-the-middle attack, where a snoop can intercept a message before it reaches its intended recipient and decrypt it to their public key before sending it again to avoid detection.
However, there are ways to combat this issue, such as generating unique one-time strings of characters that the sender and recipient must read out before communicating. And in addition to protecting against snooping, end-to-end encryption can help combat the growing threat of IoT integrations and cloud computing.
Monitoring
The Zero Trust approach is a network security framework that requires all users, whether in or outside your organization, to be authenticated, authorized, and continuously validated for security configuration and posture before they are granted or kept access to applications and data.
This is particularly important in today’s work environment, where employees can be located anywhere and access resources from various devices and locations. This has made implementing security policies and protocols that are scalable, flexible and effective difficult.
Another challenge is that it takes work to create a consistent approach, as different business priorities and security needs can change over time. This means that a zero trust policy may only sometimes be appropriate or effective, and it’s crucial to continuously review and revise the process to ensure maximum effectiveness.
Monitoring is also essential to the Zero Trust approach because it allows you to identify and monitor threats before they become serious. You can use monitoring software to collect a range of information about the devices, assets, and communications within your network, and this will help you create and enforce policies that keep your networks secure.
In addition, monitoring can help you prevent lateral movement and other network attack techniques, which are often difficult to detect once an attacker has gained access to your system. This can help you quickly respond to attacks before they spread to other areas of your business.
