What is Zero Trust Architecture?

Zero Trust is an approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust and validating every stage of a digital interaction. It is designed to protect modern environments, enabling digital transformation by using strong authentication methods, leveraging network segmentation, preventing lateral movement, providing threat prevention, and more.

A zero trust architecture follows the “never trust, always verify” principle. This has been in place since the term was coined. This architecture enforces access policies based on contexts, like the user’s role and location, their device, and the data they are requesting, to block inappropriate access and lateral movement throughout an environment.

How Does Zero Trust Work?

The main concept of zero trust is to assume that everything is hostile. Where network security models are based on approved IP addresses, ports, and protocols, a zero trust approach treats all traffic as hostile. It secures applications and services even if they communicate across network environments, requiring no architectural changes or policy updates. It securely connects users, devices, and applications using business policies over any network, enabling safe digital transformation.

What is Zero Trust Architecture Used For?

1. Reduce business and organizational risk.

Zero trust stops all applications and services from communicating until they are verified by their identity attributes. It uncovers what’s on the network and how those assets are communicating.

2. Gain access control over cloud and container environments.

Access management and loss of visibility are security practitioners’ greatest fears about moving to the cloud. With a zero trust architecture, security policies are applied based on the identity of communicating workloads and tied directly to the workloads themselves.

3. Reduce the risk of a data breach.

Because the zero trust model creates a secure segment of one with no way to move laterally, the attacker will have nowhere to go. Every request is inspected, users and devices are authenticated, and permissions are assessed before trust is granted.

4. Support compliance initiatives.

Zero trust shields all user and workload connections from the internet, so they can’t be exposed or exploited. Implementing zero trust enables you to create perimeters around certain types of sensitive data using fine-grained controls to separate regulated and non-regulated data.

Benefits of Zero Trust Architecture

Cybercriminals are attracted to today’s cloud and hybrid environments and aim to steal, destroy, or ransom business-critical and sensitive data. Zero trust is among the most effective cybersecurity strategies. It reduces the attack surface and mitigates the impact and severity of cyberattacks, reducing the time and cost of responding to and cleaning up after a breach.

It is also the most effective means of cloud security there is. The ability to not trust any connection without proper verification is essential given the amount of cloud, endpoint, and data sprawl in today’s IT environments. The increase in visibility also makes life much easier for IT and security from the administration level all the way up to C-level.

Secure Your Company with PacGenesis

At PacGenesis, we partner with the best providers of cybersecurity to help your business protect all its data and assets. We’re always learning about the latest security solutions to help you keep your business data safe. With over 10 years of experience and trusted by over 300 customers, we listen to your pain points, audit your current technology, then support and implement solutions that fill your organization’s needs. Contact us today to find out more about cybersecurity solutions that fit your needs.
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