Cyberattacks or data breaches today are not done through attacks on the business networks. Instead, weak, stolen, or compromised credentials are being taken advantaged to infiltrate networks. Once threat actors are inside a network, they move laterally to find other accounts with more privileged permissions to gain access to critical infrastructure and sensitive data.
According to a study done by Forrester, at least 80% of companies that experienced a data breach, acknowledged that a compromised privileged account was used. This is why a big part of the Zero Trust journey begins with adjusting your Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Six Tenets of Zero Trust
To understand how implementing a Zero Trust strategy can help organizations, an understanding of the 6 tenets in which it is built around is needed.
Verify who is requesting access
Identities today are not just people, they can also refer to workloads, services, and machines. Being able to verify user identity through multifactor authentication can help organizations lessen the need for multiple credentials while lowering the available attack surfaces for cyber criminals.
Keep the IT infrastructure secure
Malware and cyberattacks only need one compromised device or account to enter the network, even more so for those with higher levels of access privilege. Authorizing access to only security compliant and authorized devices helps mitigate these risks.
Grant the least privilege
The concept of least privilege is like having a physical badge access in an office. Not everyone will be allowed to go to certain areas unless they request permission, and then be approved. This is critical in limiting lateral movement once an attack infiltrates your network to only what the user can access based on their roles.
Secure data pathways
With the increase in connectivity of users, data is always moving. This means that data, whether the organization is aware or not, is being accessed and flows inside and outside the organization. Ensuring the security of data in transit or pathways for app access is important in keeping a Zero Trust strategy.
Audit everything
With proper documentation, having audit logs for performed privilege access actions makes it useful for forensic analysis and also trace back who performed what action.
Provide adaptive control
Zero Trust Privilege must be adaptive to risk context. A good example of this would be if a request comes from a potentially risky location, a higher level of verification should be required before granting access. With modern machine learning, it has become possible to analyze a user’s behavior and find anomalous or unusual activities, which promotes taking preventive actions proactively to minimize potential security risks.
Zero Trust Benefits
By having these six tenets in place, organizations can expect the following benefits:
Breach avoidance
Some would consider this as the most significant benefit. As stated above, 80% of breaches involve compromised privilege credentials. Surprisingly, one-third are committed by “trusted” insiders. Zero Trust strategies can help organizations reduce the risk of a breach by almost 50%.
Compliance
Stringent data protection regulations and standards can impose a complex and confusing array of requirements, which depend on the size, industry, and location of your organization. Having comprehensive visibility into your network which allows you to monitor all activities across all your application whether in real-time or in the past can help simplify these requirements, Zero Trust easily fulfills this.
Digital transformation
Zero Trust enables organizations to accelerate their cloud, DevOps, IoT, and other digital transformation initiatives with confidence.
To learn more about how to implement the different aspects of Zero Trust strategies, you can contact us through the form below and we will get back to you as soon as we can!