Zero Trust Model: 3 Core Principles You Should Know
Zero Trust Security Technology plays an important role in ensuring high network security and protection against cybersecurity attacks and online threats — particularly to systems of employees working from home or remotely.
Without a proper security solution, accessing sensitive network resources from remote locations via unsecure and public internet can have serious repercussions, and that is where the Zero Trust Security model comes into play.
This article will show what Zero Trust is, how it works, and the zero trust core principles you should know for your organisation. Let’s go!
What is Zero Trust Model, and How Exactly Does it Work?
Zero Trust is a network security solution requiring all users, whether inside or outside the network, to undergo strict authentication, authorisation, and verification. It continuously monitors the network security posture and user validation to grant access to specific network resources and applications.
The Zero Trust model works completely contrary to traditional network security solutions like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). It assumes everyone to be an untrustworthy entity inside or outside the network perimeter.
The Zero Trust Security architecture is designed to secure the network infrastructure of today’s modern workplaces and enterprises. It successfully addresses modern network security challenges—including ransomware attacks, hybrid cloud environments, and secure remote access.
Hence, the number of organisations adopting the Zero Trust Security model is growing exponentially. In addition, 83% of risk and security professionals say that Zero Trust is a prominent and essential security strategy for their organisations—signifying the growing importance of the Zero Trust model.
Now, let’s get into understanding the core principles of Zero Trust.
The 3 Core Zero Trust Principles
Before we get into more details about The Zero Trust model, we need to learn — what are the three principles of zero trust?
Continuous User Verification
One of the biggest and primary principles Zero Trust works on is “Never Trust, Always Verify.”
By default, it trusts no users, devices, or credentials—requiring each user to undergo strict user verification and authentication before accessing the network resources.
It verified user credentials through the robust Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and the device’s security posture authentication before granting network access to the users.
Thus, it incorporates user authentication without sacrificing user or employee experience.
Limits the Radius and Minimises the Attack Surface
Traditional network security solutions offer perimeter-based security—putting the entire internal network and its resources at risk if a malicious entity hacks into the network.
Zero Trust significantly reduces this risk, as it doesn’t enforce excessive implicit trust that provides users access to the entire network.
Instead, Zero Trust policies rely on granular access controls and network segmentation—providing users access only to those network resources they need for work and restricting access to other network resources.
Zero Trust minimises the network attack surface through:
- Granting least privilege access: The Zero Trust policies allow you to leverage granular access controls and set role-based access policies to grant users the minimum and necessary network access required to do their jobs.
- Segmented application access: Zero Trust model lets you ensure that users or employees can access only those resources they can access through application-specific tunnels.
Zero Trust security solutions also help reduce internet fraud—hiding private and confidential information and resources from employees and only admins to access them.
One-click Secure Access
The Zero Trust Security model enhances user experience (UX) through secure and seamless one-click access to the network.
It combines and easily integrates AD and Identity Provider (IDP), Single Sign-On (SSO), and MFA capabilities to ensure secure and easy one-click access to network applications and other critical resources.
It also ensures the data privacy of the users and employees.
It authenticates users and their device identities without routing the user data and information through Zero Trust vendor-owned infrastructure—ensuring high data privacy, integrity, and security.
Besides, Zero Trust also offers multi-device support, including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) or other cloud-based applications to grant secure network access.
Stages of Implementing Zero Trust Security Model
There should always be a checklist while implementing the Zero Trust Security Model. Different companies have different requirements, but having a checklist can always help set the right direction for strategy implementation.
There are three basic steps in implementing the Zero Trust model:
- Visualise: First, you need to visualise the risks involved and understand the resources and their access points.
- Mitigate: Once you have visualised the potential risks, you must eliminate the threats. And if you cannot immediately stop the threats from breaching the security wall, you must mitigate their impact.
- Optimise: Lastly, you must focus on optimising the end-user experience by extending protection to every aspect of the IT infrastructure and all resources, regardless of location.
Benefits of Choosing a Zero Trust Architecture
- Streamlined protection of resources
The zero-trust model works on the principle of explicit no-trust. It means that ZTA will bar all communication among services and applications until they are verified by their identity attributes, such as authentication and authorization requirements.
Zero Trust solutions work like a security gate that checks every application and service's identity and reveals what is in the network and how the processes are communicating. It also removes unnecessary software and services, making everything more secure by constantly verifying the "credentials" of each connected asset.
- A scalable remote workforce
By following the principle of zero trust — assuming every entity is hostile, ZTA thoroughly inspects every request. It ensures that users and devices are authenticated, and permissions are assessed before granting trust. This approach allows for a secure and controlled remote workforce, as only authorised entities can access resources and data.
The continuous monitoring and evaluation of trust changes based on context. Dynamic parameters that judge user location and data access ensure access privileges are always up-to-date and appropriate.
Implementing ZTA in a remote work environment helps protect against attackers who may gain access through compromised devices or vulnerabilities. As ZTA denies lateral movement within the network, attackers are limited in their ability to move laterally or access sensitive data even if they breach one point of entry.
Zero Trust Architecture provides a robust security framework that enhances protection for a scalable remote workforce, reducing the risk of unauthorised access and data breaches.
- Policy compliance assurance
The zero-trust security model reduces exposure to potential exploits and enhances privacy and shielding of user and workload connections from the internet. It demonstrates compliance with privacy standards and regulations like PCI DSS and NIST 800-207. As a result, audits can be relatively and significantly fresh.
Furthermore, implementing zero-trust micro-segmentation allows for creating perimeters around specific types of sensitive data using fine-grained controls.
Compared to traditional flat network architectures with over-privileged access, this separation of regulated and non-regulated data provides superior visibility and control during audits or in the event of a data breach. This added level of control helps maintain policy compliance and ensures a more secure and compliant environment.
- Simplified cloud-based cybersecurity
With a zero-trust security architecture, security policies are tied to the identity of workloads, ensuring protection remains constant as the environment changes. This simplifies cloud-based cybersecurity and addresses access management and visibility concerns for security practitioners.
A zero-trust model eliminates the complexity of managing security based on network configurations. This helps security practitioners address their greatest fears — moving to the cloud, including access management and loss of visibility.
A zero trust model also emphasises the shared responsibility between your organisation and the cloud service provider (CSP) for workload security, making it easier to manage and maintain security in the cloud environment.
- Smaller attack surface
There is no perfect security strategy that promises 100% data protection. But among the most capable security strategies, the zero trust model is very popular.
Because of the zero trust principles of not trusting any entity, a zero trust model can reduce the attack surface and mitigate the impact and severity of cyberattacks.
Conclusion
The Zero Trust Network Security model is the need of the hour that significantly strengthens your network security posture, reduces security management complexities, reduces time to identify and remote data braces, and lets you save time and revenue.
Gartner’s report suggests that the total spending on Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions will rise from $820 million in 2022 to $1.674 billion by 2025—at an exponential CAGR of 26%.
So, if you wish to leverage the benefits of Zero Trust Security for your organisation’s network—check out our InstaSafe Zero Trust solutions to experience better security controls, reduced complexity, and enhanced user experience.
Book a demo today to learn more.
FAQs About Zero Trust Model
- What is ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access)?
Zero Trust Network Access is a network security solution that provides secured remote access to an enterprise’s applications and software. It works on the zero trust principles that require all users, whether inside or outside the network, to go through strict authentication, authorisation, and verification.
2. What are the advantages of zero trust security?
Implementing zero trust model can help create a —
- Streamlined protection of resources
- A scalable remote workforce
- Policy compliance assurance
- Smaller attack surface
- Simplified cloud-based cybersecurity
3. What is the difference between zero trust and traditional security?
Using the perimeter model, traditional security models bestow a lot of trust on user location. If an IP address tries to access a platform or software from a considerably safe location (inside the enterprise premise), it may get single-layer verification. It is often not secured, and attackers can easily bypass the firewall.
On the contrary, Zero Trust uses no trust in the user's location or IP address. A user is given the least privilege even after getting access to the system. The user needs multi-layer authentication to access the system/software/platform.
4. What is the zero-trust security model in the cloud?
A zero-trust model works on the zero-trust principle where a user needs to go through multi-layer authentication while trying to access a platform or software of an enterprise. A zero-trust security model in a cloud environment works on the same principles: the system does not trust anyone based on their IP address and location. It ensures that protection remains constant as the environment changes.