What is Zero Trust?
Applications are no longer restricted to conventional perimeters, and traditional security models are not equipped to handle digital transformation and remote workforces
A Zero Trust Security Model ensures better security and better compliance through an easy enforcement of granular access control, to secure users, devices, and applications.
What does a Zero Trust Model mean?
A Zero Trust Model is an overarching security strategy that assigns zero implicit trust to any user by default. All users, whether inside or outside the organization's perimeters, are continuously validated, and authorised before granting them least privilege access.
Never Trust, Always Verify
Do not assume implicit trust for any user, situated anywhere, inside or outside the network
Continuous Risk and Trust Assessment
Treat every access request as unique, and continuously validate the context and risk of the request before granting access
Least Privilege Access
Users get access only to those resources that they are allowed to access, and nothing else
Centralised Management
Security teams get granular control over who accesses what and can formulate role based access policies
Complete Visibility and Monitoring
There needs to be complete visibility over all network traffic to identify threat vectors
With InstaSafe Zero Trust, you can
Blacken your IT Infrastructure
Provide "Need to Know" Secure Zero Trust Application Access Security
Allow only Authorized / Trusted Devices
Secure Users and Applications from all types of Threats
A Zero Trust Model helps in preventing lateral movement and exploitation of data
Users can access only those applications that they are allowed to access
Applications, users, and data are segmented into silos to minimise attack surface
Monitor and Act against Risks before they turn to breaches
Zero Trust helps maintain control over all network traffic and flow of all data
Maintain complete visibility over the network for better identification of threat vectors
Granular control over who accesses what, with option to revoke access rights for users and devices
How does the InstaSafe Zero Trust Model Work?
A split plane architecture involves separating the control plane, where trust is established from the data plane, where actual data is transferred. This effectively removes enterprise data from the purview of the vendor, and since no enterprise data goes through vendor machines, data privacy is ensured
SDP based Zero Trust models employ a drop all firewall. Drop-All firewall ensures that every data traffic coming to the IP address is dropped. It helps to ensure that no entity in the internet can get to know the presence of the IP address in the network, and blackens the network from the entire external internet
To ensure that the right authorization data reaches the right device with the drop all firewall enabled, a single message authorization process is used to relay authentication information and enable seamless secure access
Users are only given access to what they are authorised to access, and nothing else. This methodology is used to limit insider threats and restrict the scope for lateral movement.
Understanding Zero Trust Security Model
Zero Trust is a combination of different security capabilities that aim to provide comprehensive security solutions to users accessing corporate resources securely either from inside or outside of the company perimeter.
Some of the Key Components of Zero Trust include:
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
IAM provides authentication mechanism considering the user identity and device identification. Multi factor authentication (MFA) provides additional security layer on top of single factor authentication of user identity
Micro-Segmentation
Entire network is divided into isolated segments which has its own micro perimeter. Each user is provided access to this micro segment based on access control rules and thereby limit the threat of lateral movement attack in case the user device is breached
Policy Engine
Policy engine evaluates each user access request considering the parameters such as user identity, device identity and device posture, geolocation and user behaviour. Access is provided on a “Need to Know” basis.
Network Visibility and Monitoring
Complete visibility of all user activity and network activity with real-time monitoring giving 360 degree visibility of security posture of entire infrastructure.
Steps to Implement Zero Trust Network Access
Zero Trust is a journey which every organization needs to take a phased approach of Zero Trust implementation and work on continuous refinement.
There is a five step process for Zero Trust Implementation.
1
Define your protect surface
Identify the assets which includes data, applications, cloud resources that you want to protect.
1
Define your protect surface
Identify the assets which includes data, applications, cloud resources that you want to protect.
2
Map the transaction flows
Understand the network traffic flow among the assets that needs to be protected and the user devices.
2
Map the transaction flows
Understand the network traffic flow among the assets that needs to be protected and the user devices.
3
Build a Zero Trust architecture
Based on network traffic flow, create a design that will best protect the assets. The design will determine how many gateways, placement of gateways and controller.
3
Build a Zero Trust architecture
Based on network traffic flow, create a design that will best protect the assets. The design will determine how many gateways, placement of gateways and controller.
4
Create Zero Trust Policy
Implement policy in the controller on which user can access what resources and what point of time. Under what conditions, users need to be provisioned and de-provisioned
4
Create Zero Trust Policy
Implement policy in the controller on which user can access what resources and what point of time. Under what conditions, users need to be provisioned and de-provisioned
5
Monitor and maintain the network
Inspect all the logs related to user and network activity to have better visibility and take corrective action if required.
5
Monitor and maintain the network
Inspect all the logs related to user and network activity to have better visibility and take corrective action if required.
How does your enterprise benefit from adopting a Zero Trust Model?
A Zero Trust Model ensure better security, granting secure connectivity of critical applications, to users anywhere in the world
The identity centric approach followed by a Zero Trust Model helps in enforcing customised access policies for each user or device
All network traffic is logged for audit. Complete visibility into network traffic helps in better identification of vulnerabilities and threats
Implementing Zero Trust reduces operational, deployment, and maintenance costs by more than 40% in comparison to traditional solutions
Facilitate easy transition to remote work, easy outsourcing of business to 3rd parties, and easy migration to the cloud
Want to learn more on the difference between Zero Trust Network vs VPN and know how InstaSafe compares against legacy solutions?
