According to the latest report on security priorities conducted by the company Foundry, Zero Trust is increasingly acclaimed by companies to fight against cyber threats. This technology is one of the most explored by IT teams and is the alternative to the old approaches centered on perimeter security. It thus emerges that a third of organizations have a Zero Trust model in place; the intention to deploy them has increased to 21% in 2022 compared to 13% in 2021. Faced with ever more varied and numerous attack vectors, IT teams must absolutely strengthen the security of their structures.
According to ANSSI, “Zero Trust is an architectural approach in which the inherent trust in the network is removed, the network is assumed to be hostile and each request is checked against an access policy”. This approach consists on the contrary in reducing the “implicit trust” granted to the users and to the activities carried out through the equipment of a given entity. Various factors are required for a request to be considered trustworthy, including authorization, access to sensitive data, strong authentication, and device health.
What is the Zero Trust Model?
The Zero Trust design principles that have been incorporated by ANSSI are a new approach to solving a problem that companies have faced for a long time: securing information and networks. As a result, companies across a wide range of industries are reconsidering their approach to security and integrating Zero Trust elements into their security architecture, processes, and procedures.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an example of the Zero Trust principle. By requiring the application of additional factors to prove the identity of users before they can access a resource – for example, checking their fingerprint or confirming a PIN code sent to their mobile device – the MFA adds an extra layer of security to networks and systems. From a Zero Trust perspective, MFA is used to verify an organization’s security measures, to ensure that the people accessing the network are who they say they are. This level of security dramatically reduces the opportunities for cybercriminals to use compromised credentials to gain access to a company’s data, devices, networks, and systems.
Build a safe and secure domain
The Zero Trust model can be thought of as a group of pillars that represent different aspects of security, from devices and networks to applications and users. However, beneath these pillars are the core elements of a Zero Trust architecture: analytics, automation, governance, and visibility.
Furthermore, the process of the Zero Trust model is known to be continuous and regular. Initially, companies typically refine their architectures, ensuring that their solutions are almost fully integrated into the aforementioned pillars. This allows them to make decisions more quickly and efficiently with regard to policy implementation.
While installing and building a Zero Trust model is time-consuming, upgrading policies, processes, and tools proves to be very positive for the architecture, provided it is audited and validated. a permanent audit. These actions are essential to guarantee the robustness and effectiveness of the security measures in place.
Monitor to better protect
The Zero Trust model does not come with any false sense of security: it is “perimeterless” security. It is very different from traditional perimeter architectures, where everything that happens inside the network is considered trustworthy, on the principle that to be in the network, users must have successfully passed the stage of authentication and are therefore authorized to be there. However, this model considers that insiders pose no potential threat to the organization and that perimeter security is beyond reproach. Conversely, the Zero Trust architecture emphasizes protection against possible insider threats, thereby preventing cybercriminals from gaining access to the system using compromised credentials.
Ensure end-to-end network visibility
Once a company decides to implement a Zero Trust model, in order to ensure its effectiveness, they must integrate several essential characteristics: complete visibility of the entire network, network TAPs capable of replicating the traffic from the stream, as well as a tool that can replicate and distribute the packets to pre-existing cybersecurity monitoring applications.
Visibility at scale will enable organizations to spot unusual activity, identify potential threats, track interconnected devices, observe usage history, and orchestrate IT mitigations. intermediary of application programming interfaces (API). They should also be able to use protection groups to classify networks, servers, and services based on the potential degree of damage they could sustain. Organizations will thus be in a strong position to quickly adopt a Zero Trust model.
In sum, no matter what stage an organization is at in its journey to implementing this approach – whether it is in the inception phase or already well advanced – it is imperative to ensure that the analysis and visibility are integral to the design detection and validation that underpins the Zero Trust architecture. In an environment where businesses are in constant friction from cyber threats, strategies to strengthen network security are crucial.