Top 5 Benefits of a Zero Trust Exchange
Zero Trust is an initiative strategically designed to prevent data breaches by getting rid of the idea of trust from the network architecture of an organization. Zero Trust is guided by the principle of “never trust and always verify”.
The concept is meant to offer protection to current digital environments by taking advantage of network segmentation, prevention of lateral movement, simplifying granular use, and offering layer threat prevention.
The idea of Zero Trust was started by John Kindervag while he was serving as the vice president for Forrester Research. He realized that the conventional security models work on the old assumption that all things within the network of an organization should be trusted. This is contrary to the Zero Trust model that realizes that trust is vulnerable.
Zero Trust architecture
When it comes to the architecture of Zero Trust, you pick a ‘protected surface’ that comprises the most critical and valuable data of the network. Every organization has its own distinct protected surface. Considering the fact that it comprises the most critical data, a protected surface is of a higher magnitude and always be identified.
Having identified your protected surface, it is easy to determine how traffic is flowing throughout the organization vis-à-vis the protected surface. The best and only way of determining and enforcing policies that guarantee secure access to data is by understanding who your users are, the type of applications they are using and how they are connected to the network.
How to deploy Zero Trust
Many people often think that implementing the Zero Trust concept is complex and expensive. But that’s not true because you can build Zero Trust in existing infrastructure without replacing anything and spending a lot of money.
The first thing you need to do is to identify the protected surface then map the transaction flows. After that, build a Zero Trust architecture, create a Zero Trust policy, and monitor and maintain.
Here are the top 5 benefits of a Zero Trust exchange:
- It reduces threat surface
This is probably one of the major benefits of a Zero Trust exchange. It ensures that nothing is taken for granted and every activity on the network is properly monitored.
- Increases visibility
The other major benefit of Zero Trust is that it provides greater visibility over the network. This means that you are able to see and monitor all user activities and detect any issues in advance.
- Increased protection
A Zero Trust system protects your network both from internal and external attackers in the sense that no one is allowed to the network without proper and adequate verification.
- It minimizes the ability of attackers to maneuver laterally in your organization.
In other words, attackers cannot access all information at once even if they get into your organization’s network.
- It creates several layers of security
Last but not least, Zero Trust maximizes the use of authentication and security. This means no one without express permission can get into the network.
In general, a Zero Trust cloud has a lot of benefits for an organization. It ensures that your network infrastructure is well protected. You can learn more about Zero Trust from places like Zscaler.