What is Zero Trust Security?

Refactoring your security architecture to support modern cloud-based technologies requires a modern identity solution that integrates with existing security and compliance tools. This way, a Zero Trust Identity Architecture can continue to enforce existing use cases while enabling the creation of new ones. Achieving this requires architecture built upon interoperable solutions that can readily exchange information. This will also enable your organization to make use of visibility, risk, and threat intelligence to drive automated decision-making.

In the wake of several high-profile cyber attacks and breaches involving federal agencies, the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST) created an abstract definition of a Zero Trust Architecture along with several deployment models. Elaborated in NIST SP 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture, this model is explicitly intended to provide a roadmap for enterprise security architects looking to implement Zero Trust-based approaches to information security.

According to the NIST model, a Zero Trust Architecture must incorporate three core components. These are:

• A policy engine, decides to grant, deny, or revoke access to resources for all entities that request to do so. The policy engine calculates trust scores or confidence levels to serve as a basis for each of these decisions.
• A policy administrator, establishes and terminates the connection between an entity and a resource. The policy administrator relies on decisions made by the policy engine to determine whether to allow individual sessions to proceed. It generates authentication tokens or credentials for each session.
• A policy enforcement point, which enables and monitors ongoing connections between entities and enterprise resources. 

With Zero Trust architecture, all interactions are to be achieved in the most secure manner possible, emphasizing consistent identity verification and authentication. And all interactions are continuously reassessed. Each time access to a resource is granted, this is done for only one session — and for that resource alone. Every access request is evaluated dynamically based on organizational policy and risk evaluation. Each request is checked to ensure that the identity-making the request (user or machine identity) should be granted access, that their laptop, mobile device, or other IT system is behaving appropriately, and that the requested resource has the right characteristics.

To obtain the complete set of capabilities needed to achieve holistic visibility and control, you’ll need multiple solutions with overlapping and tightly integrated capabilities.

Building a Zero Trust architecture isn’t a simple, one-step process. It instead requires implementing new solutions that can gather intelligence across your IT ecosystem and inform the SASE, access management, and security tools that enforce policies. Designing such an architecture means thinking differently about interconnectivity and the value of an open, standards-based approach. It means thinking smarter in your entire approach to identity and security across your organization.

Dive into the details by reading more about the Building Blocks of Zero Trust Identity Architecture on our blog.

1. Gain Greater Visibility Across the Enterprise

   Because Zero Trust never assumes anyone or anything is trusted, you decide what resources and activities you’ll need to cover in your security strategy. Ideally, all data and computing sources are protected.

2. Simplify IT Management

   Because Zero Trust rests on the foundation of continual monitoring and analytics, you can use automation to evaluate access requests. Access is automatically granted if the privileged access management (PAM) system judges the request to be standard, or a low risk, based on key identifiers. IT doesn’t need to be involved in approving every access request — they serve in an admin capacity only when the automated system flags requests as suspicious.

3. Gain Insights and Work Smarter

   Zero Trust also enables your security team to work smarter. Because it utilizes centralized monitoring, you can easily generate reliable data stored in a single location. This facilitates robust analytics, so your team can gain insights they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. As a result, your security team can maintain a more secure environment.

4. Improve Data Protection

   Zero Trust delivers better data protection, as a Zero Standing Privilege framework combined with just-in-time (JIT) access prevents rogue employees or malware from gaining access to large portions of your network due to the elimination or reduction of standing access.

5. Secure Your Remote Workforce

   With Zero Trust, identity is the perimeter. Firewalls are no longer sufficient now that users are spread across the world, and data is spread across the cloud. Identity is attached to the users, devices, and applications seeking access, so adopting a Zero Trust approach offers robust protection for workers and data in any location.

   With identity as the perimeter, founded on time-limited access and just enough access, Zero Trust enables remote security. Old credentials are no longer floating around. People cannot access data or resources they shouldn’t after moving to a different department — or organization. And everyone can work more efficiently because slow-moving VPN tunnels don’t bog them down. Additionally, identity allows us to assume that even employees, resources, and infrastructure inside the organization could be compromised.

6. Streamline User Access

   Organizations that are beginning to centralize visibility, identity management, and policy enforcement will be further along the road to Zero Trust, particularly as they become better able to enforce least privilege access automatically. Automation that accompanies a Zero Trust framework enables users to access what they need quickly, so they don’t have to wait on administrators for approval.

   One approach is to refactor your security architecture to support modern cloud-based technologies. This requires a modern identity solution that integrates with existing security and compliance tools. This way, a Zero Trust Identity Architecture can continue to enforce existing use cases while enabling the creation of new ones. Achieving this requires architecture built upon interoperable solutions that can readily exchange information. This will enable your organization to make use of visibility, risk, and threat intelligence to drive automated decision-making.

7. Continuous Compliance

   Zero Trust helps to ensure continuous compliance with every access request being evaluated and logged. Tracking each access request’s time, location, and applications creates a seamless audit trail. With continuous compliance, audits are streamlined as there is a contiguous chain of evidence for all access requests. This minimizes the effort required to produce evidence, making upholding governance faster and more efficient.

Want to learn more about the seven primary benefits of Zero Trust? Check out our post to gain a deeper understanding.

Saviynt cloud identity & access governance strengthens your Zero Trust strategy. Our Zero Trust toolkit includes identity governance and administration, privileged access management, application access governance, third-party access governance, and data access governance products.

Ready to make Zero Trust the foundation of your security?

No. Zero Trust supports teamwork and the sharing of information, though it ensures that data access takes place on a need-to-know basis, where information is shared only after verifying the appropriateness of the access request. Just because there’s no assumed or implied trust doesn’t mean there’s no trust. Instead, there’s explicitly justified and appropriately granted trust. Also, access is continually validated to ensure that it remains appropriate throughout the session and the whole of an identity’s lifecycle.

No. Today, Zero Trust is the model that all Federal Agencies must adhere to when designing security architectures for their cloud-based and hybrid computing environments. It’s been defined by reputable, vendor-agnostic cross-industry authorities, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which has published a reference architecture that supplies a roadmap for deploying Zero Trust security within enterprise environments. Zero Trust is now well defined, and it’s possible for any organization to move closer to this ideal.

No. In our digital world dominated by data, dependent on cloud computing, connected by mobile devices, and rife with IoT, every company has become a tech company. Realizing and acknowledging this demands a mindset shift. You must view the world through a different lens. This applies to larger global enterprises and smaller businesses alike. You have to accept that technology is at the core of every business. Whether companies host their own hardware or rely on SaaS solutions, nearly every core business function — from HR to accounting and sales — relies on technology. Which is why both organizational assets and sensitive data exist within every corner of IT systems. These resources must not only be secured but also aggressively monitored and actively protected.