Zero Trust Model and Security Principles

Only legitimate devices must be allowed to access the network infrastructure. This includes hardwired servers, workstations, workless devices and more. No rogue devices, such as personal smartphones, should be given access to shared resources.

Now that a hybrid workspace is becoming mainstream, it is becoming more difficult to know if your remote employees are using only legitimate applications authorized by the IT team. It must be confirmed that only authorized applications are allowed to access the servers.

In cyberspace, the data that you collect, analyze, and store every day is the lifeblood of any organization. This can be personally identifiable information (PII) of your customers and employees or your intellectual property. If any of this falls into the wrong hands, you might end up facing a lot of financial and reputation damage. It is of paramount importance to ensure that you have multiple layers of authentication so that only authorized people can access the data.

Zero Trust framework affects not only the digital aspects of your business but physical infrastructure as well. So, if anyone wants to access the server located in your data center, it is crucial to vet them first. There must be at least three authentication layers, such as a unique ID number, a smart card, and a biometric modality like iris recognition or fingerprint.

One of the most common ways a cyberattacker breaks through the line of defense is by accessing the network line of communication and moving laterally. In order to avoid this, you need to remediate all possible vulnerabilities and ensure that only authorized employees can start a network communications path. As per the Zero Trust framework’s ‘Concept of Least Privilege,’ the remote workforce must only be given the least amount of access they need for performing their tasks.

Apart from this, you will also need Subnets, smaller segments created by dividing the network infrastructure. So, even if a cyberattacker manages to get through a layer of authentication, the chances of them breaking through the others will be greatly reduced.

This involves getting an understanding of your resources and their access points. It will help you visualize the involved risks.

This stage covers detecting and stopping threats. In case of a breach that cannot be stopped, you must try to reduce its impact.

Regardless of resources and IT infrastructure’s location, it must be protected. Apart from this, you also have to focus on optimizing the user experience for security and IT teams and end-users.

Continuous verification refers to assuming that no devices, credentials, or zones can be trusted at any time. All your assets must be verified continuously. However, in order to make this work effectively, certain key elements have to be put in place:

1. Deployment of a rapid, scalable, dynamic policy model – users, data, and workloads can often change. This means that the policy has to account for risk as well as IT requirements and compliance with the policy. The Zero Trust security model ensures that organizations are able to comply with specific requirements.
2. Implementation of risk-based conditional access – With this, you will be able to ensure that workflow interruption occurs only when there is a change in the risk levels. This ensures continuous verification without affecting user experience.

In case there is a breach, you have to focus on minimizing its impact. The Zero Trust model limits the access paths for an attacker and the scope of credentials, giving you the time to mitigate the attack. Here are some ways to limit the radius:

1. Least privilege principle – When using credentials, including the service accounts, it is important to give these credentials the least possible access. If their tasks change, their scope of access will change as well. Many cyberattacks use over-privileged service accounts because they are often given more access than they need and are not monitored.
2. Identity-based segmentation – Maintaining network-based segmentation operationally as users, credentials, workloads, and data change can be challenging. Identity-based segmentation can help mitigate these challenge

In order to make accurate and effective decisions, it is crucial to get data that is processed and acted on in real-time. Here are the different data sources that you need to focus on:

• User credentials – Human accounts, service accounts, privileged accounts, and non-privileged accounts
• Endpoint – Devices used for accessing data
• Workloads – Containers and VMs, including the ones used for hybrid deployments
• Network
• Other sources such as SSO, SIEM, Threat Intelligence, Identity Provider

The job of implementing the Zero Trust model for physical infrastructure requires you to put these practices in place:

• Identifying risky access processes and users and tracking their behavior
• Establishing identity assurance using a multifactor authentication process
• Limiting lateral movements at the facility
• Enforcing the least privilege at access points

Casepoint has implemented several levels of physical security controls to ensure that its information assets are protected. Every physical access to the data centers has multiple layers of authentication.

For the successful implementation of the Zero Trust model, you need to implement consistent monitoring practices that evaluate data movements, user behavior, data alterations, and network changes. Even though privilege restrictions and authentications are the foundation of zero trust, you must verify every action taking place within your infrastructure.

Zero trust solutions use identity attributes meeting predefined trust principles, such as authorization requirements, to verify the services and applications accessing your resources. It reduces risk by uncovering the assets that are on the network and how they are communicated. Once you have established the baseline, a zero-trust strategy will eliminate overprovisioned services and software to reduce risks. It will also check every communicating asset’s credentials continuously.

When you move to the cloud, you have to focus on challenges such as loss of visibility and access management. Even though cloud service providers offer security enhancements, workload security still is a responsibility that you have to bear. Having a zero-trust security architecture will enable you to implement security policies based on the communicating workloads’ identity and are tied to the workloads directly. This way, the security remains close to the assets that require protection. Even when the environment changes and you migrate to the cloud, the protection will remain constant.

The Zero Trust security model assumes every entity to be hostile. It inspects and authenticates every user and device and only grants requests after assessing the permissions. As context changes, such as the data being accessed or the user’s location, this trust is reassessed.

So, if a cyber attacker manages to breach your network through a vulnerability like a compromised device, it won’t be able to steal or access your data. Also, since the framework doesn’t allow it to move laterally, there is no place for the attacker to go.

Zero trust shields the workload connections and the users from getting exploited or exposed. Thanks to this invisibility, maintaining compliance with privacy regulations and standards becomes easier. With the zero trust micro-segmentation, sensitive data, such as trade information, data backups, and personally identifiable information, will be protected. It involves establishing fine-grained controls for separating regulated data from non-regulated data. In case of a data breach or during an audit, you will have supervisor control and more visibility than you would have with flat network architectures.