Zero Trust Model: 3 Core Principles You Should Know

Technology plays an important role in ensuring high network security and protection against cybersecurity attacks and online threats. It has become especially important to ensure the utmost network security since the employees started working and accessing network resources and applications from remote locations.

Without a proper security solution, accessing sensitive network resources from remote locations via unsecure and public internet can have serious repercussions.

This is where the Zero Trust Security model comes into play. This article will show what Zero Trust is, how it works, and the core principles you should know for your organisation. Let’s go!

What is Zero Trust, and How Exactly Does it Work?

Zero Trust is a network security solution that requires all the users, whether inside or outside the network, to go through 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 the traditional network security solutions, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), and 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 the 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 this model.

Now, let’s get into understanding the core principles of Zero Trust.

The 3 Core Zero Trust Security Principles

The Zero Trust model relies on the following three core principles:

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 go through a 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 to access only those network resources they need for work and restricting access to other network resources.

It 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 lets you ensure that users or employees can access only those resources they are permitted to access through application-specific tunnels.

This solution also helps reduce internet fraud—hiding the 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 a 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 and offer 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 application to grant secure access to the network.

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 a lot of 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.