Most IT decision-makers consider security their top priority. They view it as far more important than operational efficiency or exceptional performance. These factors become irrelevant if you can’t protect your valuable systems and data assets from threat actors and breaches.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is the nation’s chief cyber defense and critical infrastructure security coordinator. The agency’s Zero Trust Maturity Model provides a comprehensive guide for implementing a zero trust architecture (ZTA) to protect your IT environment. We will use this guide as the foundation of our zero trust discussion.
What Are the Principles of Zero Trust?
The central idea of the Zero Trust model is that no user, device, or system should be trusted by default, even when it is already inside the network perimeter. The model is built on the following core principles.
- Never trust, always verify: Authenticate and authorize every access request, whether it originates inside or outside the network.
- Least privilege access: Give users and systems the minimum access required to do their job, limiting the damage if they are compromised.
- Assume breach: Design systems as if a threat actor is already inside the network.
- Microsegmentation: Segment the network into small, isolated zones to limit lateral movement and the effects of an attack.
- Continuous verification: Authenticate and authorize access continuously based on context such as device health, behavior, time, and location.
CISA’s Zero Trust model is supported by five pillars that address specific areas of an IT environment.
- Identity: Verify and manage the identity of users, services, and entities with solutions such as multi-factor and risk-based authentication.
- Devices: Organizations must inventory and assess all devices for security posture and monitor them continuously during access.
- Networks: Segment and control network traffic to eliminate trust based solely on network location with encryption, microsegmentation, and software controls.
- Applications and workloads: Secure all applications and workloads with access controls, testing, and monitoring to ensure authorized application-layer access.
- Data: Protect data with classification, encryption, and access governance.
The model also highlights three cross-cutting capabilities that support these pillars. The capabilities are:
- Visibility and analytics through continuous monitoring and insight across all pillars;
- Automated policy enforcement and response:
- Governance through policies, risk management, and compliance oversight.
How Does Zero Trust Protect Sensitive Information?
Zero Trust protects sensitive information by assuming that any entity may be compromised. This assumption protects the data itself rather than relying on the network perimeter to safeguard the environment from external or internal threat actors. Zero Trust continuously asks whether a specific entity or device, under specific conditions, should be allowed to access a specific data element.
The following activities and solutions are essential to an effective zero-trust architecture.
- Data discovery and classification help organizations understand their information assets and protect them with appropriate measures based on value and sensitivity.
- Sensitive data should be encrypted everywhere so that, if it is intercepted, it cannot be used without proper credentials.
- Least privilege access controls provide access to sensitive data strictly on a need-to-know basis.
- Microsegmentation isolates sensitive data into segments to block lateral movement by threat actors from accessing it.
- Continuous authentication provides context-aware access to sensitive data by evaluating requests in real time based on user identity, location, device health, and behavior.
- Data loss prevention (DLP) tools can monitor and block unauthorized access and movement of sensitive data.
- Just-in-time access addresses user requests by providing access only when needed for a limited time to reduce the exposed attack surface.
- All access attempts, successful or failed, must be logged to create an audit trail for forensic investigation and compliance evidence.
The Components of a Zero Trust Security Strategy
Organizations must leverage technical, procedural, and architectural components that work together when implementing a Zero Trust security strategy.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), single sign-on, and privileged access management control access to sensitive data. Teams must manage the lifecycle efficiently to provision and sunset accounts and devices appropriately.
- The organization’s policy engine determines whether to grant or deny a request and may revoke access based on rules and signals. A policy administrator enforces this decision by establishing or shutting down the access request and network connection.
- Companies must ensure device security and posture with solutions such as endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, mobile device management, and continuous health checks to verify patch levels and encryption status.
- Network microsegmentation is crucial for isolating workloads and limiting the effects of lateral movement. A software-defined perimeter can hide infrastructure elements from unauthorized users.
- Teams must ensure application and workload security with measures including secure API gateways and service-to-service authentication to verify workload identity. Cloud workload protection platforms are vital for securing container and cloud workloads.
- Organizations must focus on data security with discovery and classification tools and comprehensive information rights management. Data should be encrypted at rest, in transit, and in use, with data loss prevention solutions in place to prevent unauthorized use of sensitive information.
- Businesses must integrate threat intelligence feeds and continuously monitor all access requests in real time to detect deviations that may signal a breach. Visibility and analytics, including network traffic and user behavior analysis, are vital for identifying anomalies that indicate the presence of threat actors. Teams benefit from real-time dashboards that enable fast action when anomalies are detected.
- Companies should implement security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) tools to enforce policy with automated incident response playbooks. Threats move too fast to rely on manual deterrence alone. Policies, users, and devices should undergo regular audits and assessments to address evolving threats and enhance the security posture.
VAST Solutions to Support a Zero Trust Strategy
VAST’s team of experienced professionals understands the requirements of implementing a Zero Trust strategy. We help you identify the sensitive data that needs protection with our Discovery and Assessment service. Our Managed Services provide the continuous monitoring necessary to support your Zero Trust security policies. VAST’s strategic partnerships with industry leaders provide our customers with access to cutting-edge security solutions such as Palo Alto Networks and Huntress.
Contact our team today to learn how we can help you support a Zero Trust strategy and protect your sensitive data.
