Cybersecurity threats pose notable complexities across the digital space. Encountering growing threats and attack vectors requires financial services companies to implement proactive security strategies to protect their assets while maintaining stable customer trust. It adopted the Zero Trust architecture with network segmentation implemented for isolating important assets, IAM or Identity and Access Management, continuous monitoring, and encryption for vendor risk management.
The Zero Trust Architecture Market is forecasted to grow at a rate of 17.3% from $17.3 billion in 2023 to $38.5 billion by 2028. Following the zero-trust approach helps companies strengthen their security posture, reducing the risk of cyberattacks and data breaches. Furthermore, implementing some robust access controls and encryption measures has helped the organization achieve compliance with industry standards and regulations.
What is the Zero-Trust Framework?
The Zero Trust security framework typically mandates every user, considering the internal or external network of the organization involved, should undertake measures for the implementation of authorization, third party due diligence, authentication, and constant validation of the security configurations and posture before attaining or maintaining robust access to the data and applications. The approach will assume that there are no traditional network perimeters where networks exist locally in the cloud or in a combination or a hybrid form with distributed resources anywhere with employees who work across numerous locations.
The zero-trust model serves as a robust framework for protecting data and infrastructure during modern digital transformations. It handles modern business challenges involving securing a remote workforce, ransomware threats, and hybrid cloud setups.
How Zero Trust Security Works
To establish the ideal strategy for Zero-Trust security where you need to aim toward the following areas:
Data
The zero-trust model initiates by safeguarding the data and establishing additional layers of security. Whenever an attacker breaches your effective perimeter controls, bribes an insider, or exploits a misconfiguration, they have less access to the critical data under zero trust due to the rules in place for detecting and responding to inappropriate data access before it becomes a notable breach.
Networks
The attackers should steer through the network to steal data; however, Zero Trust networks make things extremely complex. The segmentation, isolation, and limitations of the network with technology, like the next-gen firewalls with the Zero Trust network, are highly resistant to cyber criminals and hackers.
Users
Humans are often the weakest link across security strategies. Try limiting, monitoring, and enforcing the way the users are accessing the resources across the internal and external networks. Also verify the user activities present on the network before relying on the users with access like taking back document control. Monitor the users to safeguard against any infrequent, however inevitable, human errors. Irrespective of falling prey at the hands of phishing attacks or proactive malicious insiders then, the Zero Trust concept for the users remains essential.
Workloads
Workload primarily refers to the whole stack of applications and the back-end software that allows customers to interact with the business. Unfixed customer-centric applications are the general attack vector here. Try treating the entire stack, from the storage to the operating system to the front-end web interfaces, as the threat vector and safeguarding it with Zero Trust compliant controls.
Devices
The number of devices depending on the network has increased over recent times. From smartphones and PCs to connected IoT devices, every instrument represents a possible entry point attackers would exploit. Security teams should isolate, control, and secure every device present on the network to create zero-trust spaces.
Visibility and Analytics
To enforce the Zero Trust model, try empowering your security and incident response teams with thorough visibility of the IT space, including file activity and the network. You should employ highly advanced threat detection with user behavior analytics to remain on top of possible threats across the network, identifying abnormal behavior noticed in real-time.
Benefits of Zero Trust
Implementation of the Zero Trust Cybersecurity framework would generally benefit your company in numerous ways. Some of these are:
Greater Network and System Visibility
Since Zero Trust will only assume that some devices or users are trusted, you should decide on the activities and the resources that require the complete coverage of your security strategies. Typically, every data and computing source should stay safeguarded after the appropriate monitoring gets installed for covering the resources and the activities under the Zero Trust framework, where you will gain greater visibility into the system activities. You should know that each of the access is requesting the location, time, and application involvement and staying well-equipped to flag and respond to every malicious activity.
A More Secure Remote Workforce
Remote work has upsurged in the past couple of years with the evolving work-from-home workforce with numerous concerns. At the same time, the users and the devices are accessing the important data from around the work and out of your physical workspace. Employ the Zero Trust that can help ensure the security of the well-distributed workforce. Zero Trust grows well and above the typical firewalls and the security measures that are, at times, appropriate across the remote workspace. Under the Zero-Trust try identifying whether it is attached to the devices, users, and applications to seek proper access to offer strong protection for work and data across different locations.
Effective Ongoing Compliance
Zero Trust can assist in terms of ensuring constant compliance across several industries and the regulatory framework. Each access request gets assessed and logged into the considerable compliance of docu
mentation with organizational resilience. Track the right time, location, and applications that involve every access request, creating clear and seamless trials of the audit. The constant compliance and audits get streamlined while there is a series of evidence with different access requests. It will help reduce the effort needed to generate the evidence making the governance of the operations faster and highly efficient.
Closing thoughts
Due to the ever-growing cybersecurity threats with the growing demand for remote work with the upsurge in IoT and BYOD with the Zero Trust Framework that constantly grows. You should always take the data-first approach towards security, which is important. The more number of companies understands where their key data exists, who can access it, and whatever they are dealing it, things effective the proper defenses against the elegant threats.