5 Pillars Of Zero Trust Security. What Is ZT?

With the increasing rate of mobile users constantly connecting to business apps via unmanaged devices, the need for zero-trust security has become essential to every organization to ensure maximum network security and reduce cyberattacks to their minimum. The system uniquely addresses and secures the modern challenges faced by businesses today, such as ransomware threats, hybrid cloud environments, and remote workers’ security.

This security approach aims to ensure total protection of a corporate network which it achieves using its five central pillars.

So, what Is Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a security structure that obligates all users (both on-site and remotely) to be authorized, authenticated, and constantly validated for security posture and configuration before being given access to the organization’s resources.

It can also be described as a security model that insists on identity verification of every device and individuals trying to gain access to the data and applications of a private network. This is notwithstanding the location from where they are operating. It combines different technologies to check thoroughly who is unauthorized to access the network.

This system trusts nothing inside the network, and so it employs a rigorous approach to all users and devices. The only trusted resources come from the defined IP addresses controlled by the organizations.

It is, therefore, an “end-to-end” strategy to data security that consists of identity, endpoints, credentials, operations, access management, and interconnecting infrastructure.”It addresses common security threats like malware, phishing, and credential theft.

How Does Zero Trust Work?

This security approach assumes that every access attempt emanates from an untrusted network, so access will be denied until trust is displayed. Once the trust of the devices and users has been confirmed, zero trust grants access only to the specific resources that are requested to avoid unauthorized movement within the network.

5 Pillars Of the Zero Trust Security Model

The Zero Trust model rests on five central pillars, which shows that the model should not concentrate on some areas alone but instead cut across the entire digital landscape. These pillars are;

Identity Security

An identity is a set of attributes that describes an entity. The zero trust model offers a detailed approach to identifying and validating anyone trying to access corporate data and applications. Only authorized users will be granted access, proven through solid authentication.

This principle is adopted before applying the access policies that help reduce potential attacks on the surface area and limit access.

Device Security

Just like the first pillar (device security) that proves an individual before granting access to the network, this is also applicable to the device used, which is what the second pillar seeks to achieve. It identifies and proves the authorization of a device before allowing access to a company’s resources.

Application Workload

Application workload security pillar covers the digital processes, applications, and private and public IT resources used for an organization’s operational activities. This pillar seeks to prevent unauthorized access and tamper with sensitive services and apps.

Network Security

To narrow down access to authorized users only, networks are subdivided into end-to-end encryption monitoring, real-time threat protection, and analytics.

Data Security

The data security pillar rotates around the grouping of an organization’s data which is made private except for that authorized access. It involves the step by step of determining where data can be stored and also uses encryption mechanisms when data is at rest or in transit.

Benefits Of Zero Trust

Here are some unique benefits of Zero Trust.

• The risk of a data breach is minimized because all requests are verified before access is granted.

• It gains absolute control over the container environment and cloud.

• With a zero-trust security model, security policies are implemented according to the communicating workloads’ identity, which helps maintain close security access like protocols, IP addresses, and ports. As the environment changes, protection remains constant with the workload.

• It also shields users from the internet to prevent exposure and exploitation.

• Its model of securing the network helps to save extra costs on IT personnel and loss from damage.

• It persistently monitors the activities of users’ devices and applications while on the network to keep a clean environment. And it can revoke permission when activities carried out are not consistent with its guidelines.

Conclusion

Whether you adopt a zero trust model in the cloud or on the premises, a robust authentication mechanism system is required to help define, enforce and adopt the user access policies and necessary tools for creating and adopting software-defined security perimeters.

You find more information here: https://nordlayer.com/blog/what-is-zero-trust/. Read more about zero-trust security.