2022: The Year of Zero Trust
According to IDG, more than 73% of companies now have applications or infrastructure in the cloud.1 With these cloud environments being operated outside their network by service providers and data and apps spread across multiple locations outside the network, organizations have become vulnerable to new cybersecurity threats. Most cloud services do not provide secure encryption, giving cybercriminals an opportunity to attack.
To make matters worse, since the business community went remote last year, remote workers across the globe have been accessing their organization’s corporate data and resources hosted in the public cloud. The legacy perimeter security protocols that once protected those organizations are no longer sufficient to keep data safe from unauthorized use or protect against increasingly sophisticated threats. According to the Center for Internet Security, as we shift to a more distributed workforce, new challenges from ransomware and more will continue to emerge.2 Traditional security architectures aren’t equipped to handle the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape.
Traditional security frameworks operate on the assumption that everything inside an organization’s network should be trusted. Focused solely on securing the corporate perimeter, these antiquated cybersecurity strategies are designed on the basis that users’ identities and actions should be inherently trusted. In a modern cloud and mobile world—with more unmanaged devices connecting to business applications over the web—focusing on network-based security alone won’t cut it; organizations need to up their security game to meet today’s challenges.
Zero Trust Addresses Modern-Day Security Challenges
The evolving nature and requirements of these remote users and dynamic cloud environments warrant a new approach to security. Enter: Zero Trust.
While Zero Trust has been around for years, the “never trust, always verify” approach to security offers an ideal way to secure a distributed, remote workforce, while protecting cloud-based apps and services. Focusing on users, assets, and resources, Zero Trust operates on the presumption that no connection can be trusted and therefore must be continuously authenticated and authorized before access to an IT resource is granted.
These days, an attack doesn’t typically originate at the target destination. Cyber attackers now have a large attack surface to choose from across a range of endpoints. And once they’re in, they are free to move around the network and access data. Zero Trust Architecture is an organization’s best defense to address the emerging security vulnerabilities. As the National Institute of Security Technology explains it, Zero Trust is “designed to prevent data breaches and limit internal lateral movement.”
Cyber attackers are intelligent actors operating in a dynamic environment, and organizations need to be just as savvy in how they prevent, detect, and respond to the growing threats. Don’t let ransomware or a breach bring your business down. As experts in Dell cybersecurity portfolio of solutions, we can help you adopt a more modern approach to security grounded in a Zero Trust methodology, so you can protect your data and assets, no matter where they sit.
1. 2018 IDG Cloud Computing Survey
2. https://www.cisecurity.org/blog/2021-cybersecurity-trends-to-prepare-for/