The continuous growth of network landscapes has demonstrated that traditional security methods like perimeter-based security architectures lack the finesse and control required to safeguard against new risks, both internal and external, hence, a new security technique is the need of the hour.
Zero Trust: an all-in-one solution
To mitigate future risks, Zero-trust, a security model designed in 2010 by John Kindervag of Forrester Research, will play an important role. It is a simple concept: trust nothing, scan everything.
The model operates on the belief that by thwarting implicit trust and executing strong identity and access management (IAM) controls, businesses can ensure that only verified individuals, devices and apps can secure access to an organization's system. It greatly restricts the threat of unauthorized access, insider threats, and malicious assaults.
The attackers specifically target small and medium-sized businesses due to their vulnerable security infrastructure. Recent research discovered that 94% of small firms face multiple challenges in maintaining their security posture because of a lack of skilled security personnel (40%), excessive manual analysis (37%), and the increasingly remote workforce (37%).
According to the recent IBM report, zero-trust lowers the cost of data breaches by 43%. Additionally, Illumio reported that zero-trust segmentation saves nearly 40 hours per week and mitigates an average of five cyber attacks a year in a typical organization.
The future of zero trust
Over the past decade, zero trust has evolved from a concept discussed to tighten security to a widely deployed approach to increase securing organizations around the globe. According to the 2021 Microsoft report, 76% of organizations have at least started implementing a zero-trust strategy, while 35% believe they have fully installed it.
However, multiple threat analysts believe that most organizations across all sectors have more work to do. Because zero trust requires layers of policies and technologies, hence, advancement will be required in the tools that can be employed, along with ways to refine how organizations deploy and use them.
The American government has already urged state and local governments, as well as universities and critical infrastructure firms, to move to a verify-then-trust principle.
To help move zero trust forward, organizations around the globe will require to overhaul the entire cybersecurity department, as the current security team may not have the skills, experience, or staff. And they may need to recruit additional staff or services.
During any transition period, security teams must practice tightly-controlled change management throughout, as hackers continue to challenge the security infrastructures. Businesses, specifically those with limited cybersecurity resources, as well as federal agencies, have an increasingly urgent need to implement zero-trust.
