In 2025, most of the data centers will be in the cloud, and the Internet will be the network. Applications will be everywhere, users will be everywhere, and data will be everywhere. Most traffic from branches and edge computing locations will not go to an enterprise data center.
Traditional network and network security architectures are designed with a centralized, legacy data center. To support the secure access needs of anywhere/any time access for users and devices, network and network security architectures must evolve and converge. By 2025, today’s network and network security patterns will be inverted.
IT leaders will increasingly use a cloud-based set of capabilities called secure access service edge (SASE — pronounced “sassy”). SASE enables IT teams to deliver a rich set of secure networking and security services in a consistent, integrated manner to support the needs of digital business, edge computing and workforce mobility.
It is important to identify the extent of security responsibilities with cloud providers while establishing required capabilities by evaluating the cloud shared-responsibility model. For this you have to establish a security architecture, implementing multi-pronged security control via a cloud-native-first approach leveraging third-party and open-source tools, while continuously monitoring technology availability.
What is Zero Trust Architecture?
Zero trust is a security model that explicitly identifies users and grants them just the right amount of access so that the business can operate with minimal friction while risks are minimized.
Security and compliance are top challenges for cloud adoption. IT leaders must manage two aspects of cloud security and compliance:
1) Access to cloud services 2) Usage of cloud resources
A zero trust architecture removes implicit trust (“User inside my security perimeter”) and replaces it with adaptive, explicit trust (“User is authenticated with multi-factor-authentication from a corporate devices”). Zero trust architecture is implemented by validating device compliance prior to giving any access, establishing strong identity verification,, and ensuring least privilege access to only explicitly authorized resources.
Here are the threats countered by Zero trust architecture
Trust Issues in Legacy Security Practice
Existing IT architectures are rife with implicit trust, which attackers abuse, and they are unsuitable for modern threats and modern work environments. Zero trust replaces implicit trust with continuously assessed, explicitly calculated adaptive trust.
Cloud Environments
Lack of control reduces trust
- Cloud environments shift some level of responsibility to the cloud vendor
- Little or no control over how those responsibilities are addressed
Supply Chain and Third-Party Threats
Increasing complexity and a proliferation of tools and vendors reduce trust
- Manipulation of development code repositories, tools, and environments
- Manipulation of developed products and tool distribution channels
- Counterfeit/compromised hardware
Lack of Experienced IT Professionals
It is harder to find and retain experienced IT professionals, including
- Database Administrators
- System Administrators
- Security Analysts
- Security Operations
Zero Trust Architecture Benefits
Zero trust forms a guideline for security architectures to improve security posture and increase cyber-Threat-resiliency.
Risk Reduction
Zero trust architectures (ZTA) reduces the risk of malware infections along with minimizes the potential spread of an threat, while implicitly trusting no-one present through on-prem, cloud or edge location computing. This also implies that devices should not be trusted by default, even if they are connected to a permissioned network such as a corporate LAN and even if they were previously verified.
Secure Hybrid Work Environments
Zero trust principles can secure the “anywhere, any time, any device” hybrid workforce. To secure Hybrid work environments like On-prem, Work from home, Client offices or public workspaces organizations needs to have a dynamic strategy. Beyond Zero Trust one needs to also work towards Security Awareness Training, Least Privilege Access, Remote Wipe, SASE and Integration of cyber resilience to fight cyber threats.
Enhanced User Experience
Well-implemented zero trust architectures improves cybersecurity while providing the same security controls and user experience irrespective of location of presence. A unified experience to securely control strong user identity, device health verification, validation of app health, and least-privilege access to resources and services. Any breach can be quickly highlighted by an employee and the IT team can quickly take quick and remedial action to safeguard critical organization data.
Enhanced Secure Cloud Usage
Cloud Zero Trust enables more secure use of cloud computing via identity-based Access controls. Organizations can achieve consistency for cloud growth , hybrid and mobile endpoint environments. Over cloud, organization’s applications and data is spread out across multiple locations. Hence they may lose insight into, who is accessing their applications, or even what devices are being used to access them (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.). Since most of their assets are on third-party infrastructure along with how data is being used and shared.
Full Zero Trust vs Partial
You can achieve dramatic security improvements even if you apply partial zero trust deployment. These measures build resiliency and awareness for employees about the seriousness of information security and the criticality of data. As you consider Zero Trust security architecture transformation, focus on benchmarking your starting position to identify areas for wins and measure this model as you evolve. Start with a single use case, or a vulnerable user group, for validation of the model and use all permutation and combinations to ensure there are no loop holes before moving to other or maybe critical applications.