The shift to data-centric enterprises and digital transformation is driving a corresponding increase in the number and sophistication of cyber-attacks. To protect valuable data and meet the demands of modern business, organizations must adopt new security strategies. The security status quo, built for old problems, is no match for the challenges of a global, untethered workforce. Why?

What is Zero Trust and how can it transform your enterprise security?

Understand trust and digital transformation

To answer this question, we need to examine the trust concept. Establishing trusted access for networks, apps, devices and users has become a significant security problem due to rapid technological changes and the evolution of work. Traditionally, corporations trusted their network boundaries to be secure. Myriad solutions guaranteed a locked down perimeter. However, the old perimeter security concept does not apply anymore: if attackers gain access to a corporate endpoint or workload once, they can move laterally through internal systems, often unnoticed. 

“The assumption that systems and traffic within a data center can be trusted is flawed. Modern networks and usage patterns no longer echo those that made perimeter defense make sense many years ago. As a result, moving freely within a “secure” infrastructure is frequently trivial once a single host or link there has been compromised.” (Barth, D., Gilman, E. (2004). Zero Trust Networks). 

Empower global workforce, embrace new ways of working

The new reality means that a remotely-working, global workforce requires new ways of work, productivity, and security. Established solutions such as next-gen firewalls, VPNs, web gateways, and network access control are insufficient to meet those needs. To ensure secure enterprise operations, organizations need visibility into access and processes. However, legacy security solutions do not provide sufficient visibility into networks, apps and data outside the organizational security perimeter. Therefore, those assets cannot be trusted.

To achieve trust, you need visibility into the apps, data-flows and user identities that access corporate resources, including details such as location, time, network, and device. If  an organization cannot confirm these elements, it cannot accurately establish trust for any sources accessing its data. 

Furthermore, as the cloud becomes the standard for innovation and development speed, organizations that operate purely on-premises and within their perimeter will be left behind. To drive cloud transformation and bolder business competitiveness, organizations need to apply new frameworks to secure data, network, apps, endpoints and users outside their perimeter. Enter the Zero Trust model. Zero Trust establishes trust in an unknown network by securing network communication and access so that the physical security of the transport layer can be reasonably disregarded.  

Explore the concept of Zero Trust

Think of Zero Trust as a smarter sister of traditional security architecture that helps prevent leaks of confidential data and lowers the risk of successful cyber attacks on your business. The Zero Trust network is built upon five fundamental assertions:

1. The network is always assumed to be hostile.
2. External and internal threats exist on the network at all times.
3. Network locality is not sufficient for deciding trust in a network.
4. Every device, user, and network flow is authenticated and authorized.
5. Policies must be dynamic and calculated from as many sources of data as possible.

Zero Trust is also about gaining the essential visibility required to establish trust for employees and partners to work effectively and enhance data security. User trust is critical, but it is insufficient. Even a trusted user should not access company data in an untrusted environment. Context is an essential element to establish trust in a Zero Trust world.

Zero Trust - for every business

A Forrester study found that two-thirds of organizations using Zero Trust-powered technologies were more confident when adopting mobile working models, and 44% were more confident when securing DevOps environments. 67% of all enterprise resources are exposed to access-related risk, and a Zero Trust security approach is the best strategy to manage access to enterprise resources. Zero Trust is not only for the big players, it is also vital for small businesses. According to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 61% of all data breaches affected small businesses. 

To better understand how to lead your organization “the Zero Trust way”, answer the following questions:

1. How do you identify and catalogue your sensitive data?
2. Do you know how often your most sensitive data accessed?
3. Can you ensure that all your resources are accessed securely?
4. How do you limit and enforce access controls?
5. Is your security solution automated and orchestrated efficiently?
6. Does your security solution provide visibility and analytics to monitor your ecosystem? 
7. Do you trust the identities of all the people who access your data?
8. Do you know from where and from what devices people access your data?
9. Is your data protected and secured?
10. Is your network segmented to ensure secure access? 

If most of your answers are “No,” explore the main roadblocks to Zero Trust security for your organization and create a roadmap that can get you there.

The benefits of Zero Trust

Sinan Eren, CEO and co-founder of Fyde, states that on your journey to Zero Trust security, your organization will initially benefit from discovering all the endpoints, applications, and workloads in your network and infrastructure. This initial discovery will lead to a robust inventory of users, devices, and services/apps. Once this organization-wide inventory is established, it will pay immediate dividends on your vulnerability remediation and data protection investments. As the next step in your Zero Trust journey, you will then be able to establish better visibility into who is accessing which service or application, using what device, when and from where. It will help drive down compliance costs and will provide a robust system of record to show to your auditors. This level of visibility over time can lead to a global policy for access control, which will shape your strategy for data protection and privacy.

Fyde and Zero Trust

Fyde’s Zero Trust approach to network security supports the borderless, global business. It provides remote, conditional, and contextual access to resources and reduces over-privileged access and associated third-party risks. With Fyde, employees and partners can access corporate apps such as Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Gitlab, Kibana, MS RDP, SSH, and cloud workloads. Fyde is compatible with all apps, from legacy to SAML/HTTPS, and supports access to multiple infrastructure sites without switching access profiles. To ensure secure access, Fyde solves intermittent connectivity challenges and empowers a mobile-driven and dynamic enterprise.

Learn more about Zero Trust:

Fyde: Zero Trust architecture and components

Remote workers need a security upgrade. How Zero Trust can help

Startups need to prioritize security. Zero Trust can be a lifesaver

To learn more about how Fyde can enable this transformation, check out Fyde Enterprise and reach out to us on enterprise@fyde.com.