Embracing Zero Trust: Revolutionizing Cybersecurity in a Digital World

Zero Trust: Checking Every Request, Every Time

At a glance

• Zero Trust Model: A security approach that stops assuming anything inside the corporate network is safe.
• Security Enforcement: Every user, device and request has to be verified.
• Adoption Necessities: Rolling it out takes cooperation between technology vendors and the organization’s leaders.
• Key Players: Microsoft, Google and IBM have shaped many Zero Trust tools.
• Future Implications: It fits a world of remote work and cloud computing.

Why the old trust model broke

Businesses are more connected than ever, and attackers have taken advantage. The old assumption that anyone already inside the network can be trusted doesn’t survive contact with a determined attacker who has stolen one employee’s password. Zero Trust was built to replace that assumption.

Never trust, always verify

Zero Trust rests on one idea: never trust, always verify. Threats can come from anywhere. So every user and every device gets checked, continuously, before it reaches data or systems, whether the request comes from a laptop at headquarters, a phone on hotel Wi-Fi or a server in someone else’s cloud.

Putting it into practice

Rolling out Zero Trust takes work from both technology vendors and company leadership. Microsoft, Google and IBM have built many of the tools organizations use, including fine-grained access controls, adaptive authentication and micro-segmentation, the core pieces of a Zero Trust design.

Vendor tools that made it practical

Microsoft’s Azure AD Conditional Access applies access rules based on context such as user, device and location. Google’s BeyondCorp model lets employees work securely from any location and device without a traditional VPN, and was designed around Zero Trust from the start. IBM uses machine learning and AI in its security products to help spot threats.

Built for remote work and cloud

Remote work and cloud services raised the stakes. Attackers have more ways in.

Zero Trust is a necessary change in how organizations protect their systems. For most, it is no longer optional.

Frank Jones, CISSP

Frank Jones has loved computers from the age of 13. Frank got his hacking career started when he downloaded a war dialing program that he used to detect dial up modems in his hometown of Chicago. Frank Jones now works as a JAVA coder and cyber security researcher.