In May 2021, following an influx of high-profile data breaches and nation-state cyber threats, including the SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline attacks, the US federal government released an executive order on improving the nation’s cybersecurity. The order urged federal agencies and contractors to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses by implementing a Zero Trust model,and strongly recommended that the private sector follow suit. But what is Zero Trust and why does it matter?
What is Zero Trust?
Zero Trust is the latest buzzword in cybersecurity, with large technology companies and the federal government adopting it as their next-generation security model. Popularized by John Kindervag, an industry analyst at Forrester, the concept centers on the belief that trust is a vulnerability, and security frameworks must be designed with the strategy “Never trust, always verify.” Rather than being an individual tool or a platform, Zero Trust is a security framework – moving away from the traditional perimeter-based approach and always “assuming breach.” Zero Trust means trust no one, not even users behind the firewall, as insider threats now make up 60% of data breaches.
Zero Trust assumes that every attempt to access your network is a threat until confirmed otherwise, adopting a “least privilege” access and inspecting, as well as logging, every single network call, file access, and email. While traditional or perimeter network security focuses on building multiple layers of security to keep attackers out, Zero Trust calls for organizations to understand who every user is and what endpoint they’re coming from. It assumes the network has been compromised and challenges the user to prove they’re not an attacker. To do this, Zero Trust draws on technologies like multi-factor authentication, IAM, orchestration, analytics, encryption, scoring, and file system permissions.
Why does it matter?
By adopting a Zero Trust mindset, businesses increase their capability to detect phishing emails, data exfiltration, credential stuffing, password theft, and other methods, stopping attackers before intrusion occurs. They also gain visibility into users, devices, and workloads across their environment, reducing the risk of cloud and container deployment and improving governance and compliance. By maintaining control across a network, Zero Trust helps to set policy rules which can be automatically updated based on identified risks, which ultimately saves valuable business time and reduces architectural complexity.
However, embracing Zero Trust means adjusting business mindsets. Most IT experts have been trained to implicitly trust their own environments and firewall; Zero Trust begins with un-learning this. This change can be a challenge for security teams — and working with legacy and existing environments only further complicates implementation. To ease the transition, organizations have to integrate the Zero Trust mindset into all aspects of their infrastructure and their digital transformation strategy.
How Centripetal delivers Zero Trust
Centripetal’s cyber threat intelligence solution, CleanINTERNET, implements Zero Trust by shielding known threats coming in and out of your network. We do this by leveraging proactive intelligence from over 3,500 cyber threat feeds, performing in-depth threat analysis and shielding on your business’ behalf. CleanINTERNET’s Zero Trust approach to threat detection and inspection protects your business from network infiltration and data exfiltration.
Our team of expert cyber threat analysts install and manage the service for you, delivering comprehensive, relevant threat findings to you directly and alleviating the burden of implementation and maintenance from your security staff. Our fully managed solution eliminates any worry over changing mindsets within your business and saves millions of dollars on separate threat feeds. CleanINTERNET offers enterprise-class protection and Zero Trust to organizations of all sizes.
