Today’s mobile workforce requires secure and seamless remote access. Creating strong policies that verify users, devices, and applications takes time, resources, and commitment.
Getting everyone on board requires clear communication and a change in mindsets. However, implementing zero Trust can offer significant benefits.
1. Greater Flexibility
Zero-trust network access provides a flexible and straightforward solution for organizations that need to provide remote access for their employees. It enables minimal application access and minimizes the impact of a breach. This security model can also support a diverse workforce with varied devices and locations. Zero Trust eliminates the friction of deploying security controls to remote workers by implementing hyper-accurate detections and automated protection.
The Zero Trust architecture terminates every connection and conducts real-time deep inspection and threat detection to validate devices, users, and access privileges. This reduces the attack surface and allows IT to establish policies based on device health, antimalware status, etc. It can detect and prevent lateral movement within an internal system from compromised devices such as servers, laptops, desktops, or critical Point of Sale (POS) systems.
Zero-trust solutions can be implemented quickly and efficiently, primarily when delivered as a service. However, it is essential to understand that a Zero Trust solution should be deployed as part of a comprehensive security strategy that includes microsegmentation, multi factor authentication, and endpoint device monitoring.
The right combination of these capabilities will ensure that Zero Trust can deliver immediate ROI by reducing risk and improving visibility. This is why working with a partner who can provide guidance, expertise, and support as you implement this technology is essential.
2. Improved Security
Zero Trust requires everything on the network to be authenticated, authorized, and verified. The access privileges granted are based on the user, device, and application context with the least permissions needed to complete a task. This helps eliminate the over-privileged access seen in flat networks and provides superior security over traditional firewalls.
Encrypting and segmenting connections makes it much harder for hackers to move laterally within the organization. This enables organizations to protect better critical applications like point-of-sale systems and databases from ransomware attacks.
Additionally, Zero Trust provides visibility of network resources and allows organizations to implement fine-grained policies that help with compliance and risk management. For example, using micro-segmentation, they can allow certain types of data only to be accessible by specific locations or devices. This makes it easier to demonstrate compliance with standards and regulations during audits or in the case of a data breach.
Zero Trust may require an upfront investment in tools and employee hours to get up and running, but the long-term benefits are well worth it. Companies can realize significant cost savings by increasing security, reducing administrative overhead, simplifying the inbound stack, and improving end-user workflows.
A study found that companies that deploy a zero-trust strategy have lower security costs than those that don’t.
3. Greater Visibility
Whether employees are on-premises, in the cloud, or using their devices, Zero Trust provides a seamless and productive security experience. This is accomplished by automatically verifying users and their devices, enforcing granular policy rules to protect sensitive data, and minimizing network exposure.
Today, organizations face threats from both outside and within their internal ecosystem. Zero Trust can detect and block external threat activity like malware, phishing, DDoS attacks, ransomware, and more. It also mitigates insider risks by enforcing device and user access policies to limit lateral movement after a breach.
Zero Trust can accomplish this by deploying a software-defined perimeter, eliminating the need for VPNs, firewall appliances, security segmentation, and other legacy infrastructure. It also helps simplify inbound stacks by reducing the number of endpoint agents that must be deployed and managed.
Lastly, Zero Trust offers a unified security architecture that enables enterprises to quickly respond to changing business conditions and meet regulatory compliance requirements. This is achieved by proactively detecting unusual or risky behaviors in their network with real-time visibility and alerts.
This enables them to take action immediately to reduce risk exposure and minimize the impact of a data breach. In addition, Zero Trust supports unified audit and compliance for both on-premises and multi-cloud environments with continuous security posture validation.
4. Reduced Costs
Zero Trust is a powerful way to secure a modern workplace constantly expanding beyond the traditional corporate network perimeter. With users, apps, and data increasingly being spread across countless cloud services and personal devices, it’s critical to implement not only agile but also cost-effective security.
The zero trust approach takes a more holistic view of the business’s security posture, with all users and devices being assumed hostile. Rather than granting Trust to every device and user, access is granted case-by-case, with privileges based on the application’s sensitivity. This granularity ensures that users and applications can be trusted only when they meet specific policies and context requirements, such as device type, OS version, and location.
In addition, implementing an adaptive policy framework and device monitoring practices inherent to zero-trust solutions helps reduce costs by catching attacks before they become problematic. This helps organizations to achieve a more excellent balance between productivity and security without adding additional friction to the user experience.
While deploying a zero-trust architecture will require upfront investment in tools, platforms, and employee hours for the implementation and ongoing operation, companies that leverage these technologies can realize significant savings over time. These include optimized hosting and management fees, reduced licensing costs for perimeter-based tools, and lower staffing levels as the business implements this technology.
