The increasing adoption of cloud applications and an expanding remote workforce are redefining network security. In a traditional setting, the emphasis was on perimeter-based security—assuming that everything behind the corporate firewall is safe. However, it’s clear that organizations have to rethink the philosophy of implicit trust in a corporate network.

Organizations of all sizes are currently under siege by adversaries with unlimited time and enough technical skill to exploit the cracks in our information systems and networks. All organizations have something to protect, whether large or small, and they are always looking for new technology to help against these adversaries. Zero Trust has become the latest framework to solve all of our security woes.

Blockchain, IOT, Neural Networks, Edge Computing, Zero Trust. I played buzzword bingo at RSA 2020, where the phrase dominated the entire venue. Zero Trust is a conceptual framework for cybersecurity that characterizes the principles required to protect modern organizations with distributed infrastructure, remote workforces, and web connected applications.

This is part 3 of a 3 part blog series My last two blog entries provided some key elements of a Zero Trust Network (ZTN), which focused on the tenets of zero trust and how the confidence is gained for untrusted traffic and authorized on a continual basis. The comprehensive nature of Zero Trust can be a little overwhelming in a world of limited resources, time and budgets.

The Foundation of a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) talked about the guiding principles, or tenets of Zero Trust. One of the tenets mentions how all network flows are to be authenticated before being processed and access is determined by dynamic policy. A network that is intended to never trust, and to always verify all connections requires technology that can determine confidence and authorize connections and provide that future transactions remain valid.

The Zero Trust approach to security is based not on where you are, but who you are. This model shifts the focus from network and perimeter-based security to identity-based access. In simple terms, this means: Zero Trust security provides a powerful approach to keeping an organization’s resources secure and usage auditable.

Zero Trust is an information security model that does not implicitly trust anything inside or outside its network perimeter. Instead, it requires authentication or verification before granting access to sensitive data or protected resources. Zero Trust was coined by John Kindervag at Forrester Research in 2009. Zero Trust security provides visibility and security controls needed to secure, manage, and monitor every device, user, app, and network.

Contrary to popular belief, small businesses don’t need to be restricted by their budgets and productive capacity - especially when it comes to security. By using the right Zero Trust approach, businesses can prevent data breaches, all while continuing to grow.