What is Zero Trust Security?

Historically, most organizations operated under a perimeter-based security model. Everything inside the perimeter was considered to be authorized and benign, while threats were seen as coming from outside of the organization. Security solutions were deployed to protect the perimeter and stop outside attackers from getting inside.

This approach to security had multiple issues. One is the potential for malicious insiders. Another is the fact that organizations lacked visibility into threats that gained access to the organization’s network. Thirdly, the rise of the cloud, remote work, and mobile devices meant that the perimeter is dissolving.

Zero trust is a security model designed to overcome the limitations of legacy security strategies. Instead of implicitly trusting insiders and distrusting outsiders, zero trust takes a “trust but verify” approach to security.

Learn More Get the Miercom Zero Trust Platform Assessment 2024

What is Zero Trust Security?

How Does Zero Trust Work?

With legacy security strategies, most verification might have occurred upfront. After a user proved their identity, they were given unfettered access to corporate networks, systems, and applications.

Zero trust works by making access decisions on a case-by-case basis. Each user, application, computer, etc., is assigned the minimum set of access and permissions necessary to fulfill their role. When they make an access request, the zero trust system compares their assigned permissions with those required to complete their request and permits or blocks the request accordingly.

Main Benefits of Zero Trust Security

Zero-trust has been growing in popularity as a security strategy due to the numerous benefits that it offers to an organization. Some of the main benefits of implementing a zero-trust security strategy include those to security, visibility, and compliance.

Security

A zero trust security policy mandates that every access request be evaluated based on least privilege access controls. This helps to ensure that the requestor has the privileges necessary to access the requested system or perform the requested action.

Zero trust helps to enhance an organization’s security because it reduces the potential risks of excessive permissions and attackers’ abilities to move laterally through the network. If a user’s privileges are tightly constrained, the amount of damage that they can do is limited. Also, mandating that all access requests be evaluated based on least privilege access controls makes it more difficult for an attacker to move laterally through the organization’s systems and achieve their objective without their presence being detected.

Visibility

In a traditional, perimeter-focused security architecture, an organization’s security solutions are concentrated at the network perimeter. While this helps to limit the number of external threats that can enter an organization, it also means that the company has limited visibility into what is going on within that network perimeter. If a threat doesn’t cross the network boundary, it may be invisible to an organization’s security apparatus.

The zero trust security model moves the security boundary to sit around each individual application or system. Since every access request must be approved or denied, the organization has much deeper visibility into the actions being performed within its network.

This deeper visibility has numerous implications for the business, and these are not limited to the benefits for security. For example, in-depth visibility into requests, API calls, or traffic flows can help inform the design of the organization’s IT infrastructure. Applications that commonly communicate may be moved closer together to minimize latency, or an organization may undertake upgrades to certain systems and components to improve performance.

Compliance

Companies are subject to an ever-expanding array of compliance obligations. Depending on the locations where it operates and the types of data that it collects and processes, an organization may be subject to a variety of location-specific laws — such as GDPR, CCPA, etc. — and regulations designed to protect certain types of sensitive information — such as PCI DSS or HIPAA.

Often, the primary goal of these regulations is to ensure that an organization is appropriately protecting and managing access to certain types of sensitive data. Companies demonstrate compliance by implementing specific security controls and demonstrating that only authorized users can access the protected data.

With a zero-trust security policy, an organization has visibility into each access request relating to potentially sensitive data. This can be invaluable for both achieving and demonstrating compliance. Least privilege access controls can detect and block unauthorized attempts to access this data, and detailed access logs can be provided to auditors and regulators at need to demonstrate that no unauthorized access has occurred.

Zero-Trust Security Principles

The zero-trust security model is built around a set of core principles. Some of the primary tenets and tools for implementing zero-trust security include the following:

  • Strong Authentication: Zero trust works by applying access controls to limit users’ access to what they require for their role. Strong authentication — using multi-factor authentication (MFA), single sign-on (SSO), or similar tools — is essential to proving a user’s identity and applying the correct permissions and privileges.
  • Explicit Trust: Continuous verification of identity instead of reliance on single point-in-time authentication.
  • Least Privilege: The principle of least privilege lies at the center of the zero-trust security model. It states that a user should only have the minimum permissions required for their role. Eliminating excessive permissions limits the risk that a user poses to the organization.
  • Security segmentation: The zero trust security model states that every access request should be evaluated based on the least privilege access controls. To accomplish this, it is necessary to ensure that all requests pass through a security appliance capable of performing and enforcing this evaluation. Macro, Micro, and Nano segmentation place each application or system behind its own trust boundary, mandating that zero trust access controls be applied to every request.
  • Assuming the Breach: Proactive and Real-time security operations under the assumption that systems have been breached.
  • Automation and Orchestration: An effective zero-trust system enforces granular security across the organization’s IT infrastructure while maintaining usability. Accomplishing these objectives requires automation and orchestration to implement and manage zero-trust security processes at scale.

What is a Zero Trust Architecture?

A zero trust architecture puts the principles of zero trust into practice. It uses the following technologies to ensure that access requests are evaluated based on a case-by-case basis:

  • Identity and Access Management (IAM): Manages the permissions associated with various user and system accounts on the network.
  • Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Implements strong authentication to match users to their accounts and associated permissions.
  • Endpoint/Device Protection: Protects the endpoint against malware and other threats that could compromise a user’s account.
  • Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA): Provides remote access to Corporate, Internet and SaaS assets based on a least-privilege security policy.
  • Security segmentation: Implements granular trust boundaries where access controls are evaluated through implementing Macro, Micro, and Nano segments in different environments like Datacenters, Hybrid Clouds, Microservices, or SaaS services.
  • Infrastructure Entitlement Management: It involves setting policies and controls that ensure users have the appropriate permissions and privileges to access these resources in the public cloud while preventing unauthorized access and potential security breaches.
  • Workload protection: It involves implementing various security measures, such as access control, authentication, encryption, and monitoring, to ensure that malicious actors or events do not compromise the workload.
  • CI/CD Security: It means ensuring that users or processes only have the necessary permissions to perform their roles within the CI/CD pipeline. For example, a developer might need access to the source code repository and the build system but not the production environment where the code is deployed.
  • Visibility and Analytics: Provide visibility into corporate network activities and identify potential threats.
  • Automation and Orchestration: By automating security processes and coordinating the various security tools and technologies in use, organizations can better detect and respond to potential security threats while also reducing the risk of human error and improving the overall security posture of the organization

Zero Trust Security Strategy: Main Steps to Follow

Making the transition from traditional, perimeter-focused security models to zero trust can seem complex. However, organizations can accomplish the shift by following these steps:

  1. Understand the Business needs and requirements.
  2. Identify the surface attack.
  3. Map out the transaction flows.
  4. Construct a proprietary Zero Trust architecture.
  5. Develop a unique Zero Trust policy.
  6. Monitor and maintain the system (optimizing over time)

How to Implement Zero Trust Security Tactics

After designing a zero-trust security strategy, an organization needs to put it into action. Some best practices for implementing zero trust include the following:

  • Deploy Network Overlays: Zero trust can be implemented using a software-defined perimeter (SDP). By defining data flows and controls in software, an organization can make changes without significant rewiring.
  • Use a Host-Based Model: Employees may connect to a variety of systems and applications over the web. A host-based model controls access in a usable and scalable way.
  • Implement Encryption: Encryption algorithms are an effective means of managing access to sensitive data. Encrypt data at rest and in transit and restrict access to decryption keys.
  • Leverage Kubernetes: Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that works in all cloud environments and enables deep visibility and control. This makes it an ideal tool for implementing zero trust in complex, multi-cloud environments.
  • Automate Where Possible: Zero trust provides very granular protection, which can be difficult to manage at scale. Using automation where possible is essential to building a system that is usable, sustainable, and scalable.

How Check Point Infinity Can Enable Zero-Trust

A zero trust security model is only effective if an organization can actually enforce it. If attackers can evade or bypass least privilege access controls, then they provide no real protection to the organization and its IT assets. The next step will be to identify gaps between an organization’s existing security architecture and an effective zero trust architecture and identify zero trust solutions to close these holes.

To identify your organization’s existing Zero Trust maturity part of  the Infinity Global Cyber Security Services provided by Check Point Software. Then, learn how to close these gaps for your remote workforce in this buyer’s guide to ZTNA.

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