Key zero trust strategy to increase digital security. According to Gartner, 63% of organizations globally have fully or partially adopted zero trust strategies. Surprisingly, for 78% of these organizations, investment in zero trust represents less than 25% of their cybersecurity budget.
Zero Trust best practice
As many as 56% of organizations have chosen to follow the zero trust path mainly because it is considered a best practice in the cybersecurity sector. However, as he points out John Watts, VP Analyst and Leader AI at Gartner, Many companies remain uncertain about the best practices to adopt for an effective zero trust implementation. “Despite widespread belief, many organizations manage to cover only a portion of their operating environment with zero trust strategies, mitigating a relatively small fraction of overall business risks,” says Watts.
The three key actions
Starting from this data, Gartner has outlined three recommendations for implementing zero trust strategies.
Define the scope. It is crucial to immediately establish which business sectors will be affected and how much risk can be mitigated. Watts highlights the importance of this initial phase, as the scope of zero trust rarely covers the entire organizational environment.Use strategic and operational metrics. 79% of organizations that have fully or partially adopted zero trust use strategic metrics to track progress, and of these, 89% focus on measuring risk. However, it is critical to customize these metrics to reflect specific zero trust goals, such as reducing the spread of malware within corporate networks.Prepare for increased costs and staff training. Approximately 62% of organizations expect an increase in costs and 41% expect an increase in staffing needs due to zero trust implementation. According to Watts, “budget impacts will vary depending on the scope and robustness of the zero trust strategy, but a systematic and iterative approach is critical to effective risk management.”
In conclusion, it is essential to have a well-defined strategic plan that includes operational metrics and evaluates the effectiveness of the policies adopted, in order to minimize possible delays.
What is the zero trust approach and how it works
Zero trust is a cybersecurity strategy in which security policies are enforced not based on presumed trust, but on context, which is established through least-privilege access controls and rigorous user authentication. An optimized zero trust architecture results in simpler network infrastructure, better user experience, and more efficient defense against cyber threats.
The concept behind zero trust architecture is that everything must be verified, and nothing should be automatically trusted. A zero trust architecture enforces access policies based on context, which considers factors such as the role and location of the user, device, and data being requested; in this way, it can block inappropriate access and lateral movement within an environment.
Implementing a zero trust architecture requires visibility and control over users and traffic in the environment (including encrypted traffic), monitoring and auditing of traffic between different parts of the environment, and multi-factor authentication (MFA) methods that they are not limited to requiring passwords, but also use biometric data and one-time codes.
In a zero trust architecture, a resource’s network location is no longer the primary factor in its security profile. Instead of rigid network segmentation, data, workflows and services are protected by software-defined micro-segmentation, keeping them safe everywhere, both in the data center and in distributed hybrid and multicloud environments.