In today’s digital landscape, cybersecurity is more important than ever.
Organisations of all sizes and industries face numerous threats to their data and systems, including ransomware, phishing, and other cyber attacks. One approach to securing organisational assets is the Zero Trust security model.
The concept of Zero Trust security has gained significant attention in recent years, especially as more organisations shift to cloud computing and remote work.
The traditional security model, which assumes all devices and users within a perimeter are trusted, is no longer effective in protecting against modern cyber threats. Typically the perimeter would be defined by a network firewall that separates organisational devices and users from everything else.
The Zero Trust security model takes a different approach, assuming that all network traffic and access attempts are potentially malicious, regardless of whether they originate from inside or outside the perimeter.
In this blog, we’ll explore the concept of Zero Trust security model, including its principles, benefits, and challenges. We’ll also discuss how to implement Zero Trust security model and its importance in cloud computing. So, let’s dive in.
So, what is Zero Trust?
A Zero Trust security model is exactly what it sounds like: a policy where no devices or users are ‘trusted’ by default.
Instead, this trust is earned based on a series of factors. These include user information, multi-factor authentication, IP address, location, authentication credentials, access rights and user device posture, and so on.
Although this creates a more restrictive user environment, it’s far more secure than other cybersecurity models, where users and devices inside the perimeter are assumed to be trustworthy.
How a Zero Trust security model differs from traditional models
Zero Trust models might sound similar to conventional cybersecurity, but there’s a fundamental difference. Standard methods use a ‘castle and moat’ approach – anything outside the system is the enemy; anything inside is a friend. They can go wherever they want.
In contrast, a Zero Trust model divides your network into segments (known as micro-segmentation). This approach still treats anything outside the system as a threat. However, its users and files are also confined to specific areas. It’s still like a castle and moat, but imagine each room has a locked door and a knight inspecting everyone who approaches the door they are protecting.
As you can tell, it might take longer to get around the Zero Trust castle, but it’s far better protected against hostile threats.
Further, because the zero trust model checks each user and device prior to granting access to each service, it is possible to allow access to all services across the internet without risk. Returning again to the castle picture, it is as though each room in the castle has its own moat, drawbridge and portcullis, in addition to its own dedicated knight! This fits much better with a future of service delivery from cloud that the traditional on-premise model.
Core principles of a Zero Trust security model
At the core of a Zero Trust cybersecurity setup is default distrust. That is, anyone – no matter who they are – is vetted against multiple data points when they attempt to access a service. Similarly, users are prevented from accessing certain services or parts of services based on their risk factors.
The process begins to ‘trust’ a user based on information submitted or discovered about that user (going far beyond a standard username and password.). Because zero trust grants access per-resource, it must evaluate per-resource and then grant access. A user’s ‘right-to-access’ a resource is built and the zero trust solution will compare the access requirements for any particular resource with what it knows about each particular user session before granting access to that particular resource.
A Zero Trust security model uses several different components, including:
- Network segmentation
- Multi-factor authentication
- Continuous monitoring
- Access controls
- Posture Assessment (User and Device)
Advantages of Zero Trust
The clearcut advantage of a Zero Trust security model is increased cybersecurity.
By spending more time and processing power vetting anything accessing your system, you’re more likely to identify and block threat actors before they’re anywhere near anything important. Zero Trust strategies come with the following benefits:
- Enhanced security – The primary benefit of a Zero Trust security model is enhanced security. With the Zero Trust model, every user, device and application on the network must be authenticated and authorised before they can access any resources. This approach ensures that only legitimate users and devices can access resources and reduces the risk of unauthorised access, data breaches and other cyber threats.
- Reduced risk of data breaches – By adopting a Zero Trust security model, you can reduce the risk of data breaches. The model provides granular access controls and permissions, meaning users have access to only the resources they need to do their job. This approach minimises the risk of data breaches caused by insider threats, such as employees intentionally or unintentionally leaking sensitive information.
- Improved visibility – A Zero Trust security model provides improved visibility into the overall service delivery. With traditional security models, security professionals rely on perimeter defences to protect their services. However, in a Zero Trust model, every user and device must be verified before they can access any particular application or service, giving your IT team greater visibility and control over who is accessing what resources.
- Better compliance – The Zero Trust security model helps organisations comply with various industry regulations and standards. It provides an auditable trail of who’s accessing what resources, making it easier to track data access and meet compliance requirements.
- Future proof – Using a Zero Trust model makes delivering services to internal and external users from cloud much easier. Users can be granted direct access to the specific service they need provided they meet the security requirements of that specific application. This also has the potential size effect of allowing network costs for connectivity reduce as less traditional VPN infrastructure is required.
Of course, the trade-off is that your environment is more restrictive to use. However, in this age of cyber attacks, it’s a price well worth paying.
How does Zero Trust actually work?
Before we get into the detail of how to implement a Zero Trust solution let’s talk about the basic requirements.
Let’s assume UserA is using DeviceA is trying to access Service1. The Zero Trust solution will not grant UserA access until it understands that UserA meets the user requirements and DeviceA meets the device requirements for accessing Service1. Most Zero Trust solutions perform this analysis by placing Service1 behind some kind of proxy that performs the posture analysis against UserA and DeviceA before granting access and by blocking any direct access to Service1.
This posture analysis is critical to Zero Trust – in Google’s BeyondCorp it is provided by using their Identity-Aware Proxy, in Azure it is provided by a combination of Azure AD and the Azure AD Application Proxy.
How exactly you implement Zero Trust rather depends on which combination of application proxy, identity management, and posture analysis tools you will use.
How to implement a Zero Trust security model
Implementing a Zero Trust cybersecurity model involves shifting away from traditional perimeter-based security approaches that rely on the assumption that everything inside a network can be trusted. Instead, Zero Trust operates on the principle of ‘never trust, always verify’, meaning every access request and user is treated as a potential threat and must be verified before being granted access to any resources.
Here are some general steps to implement a Zero Trust cybersecurity model:
- Identify all services, assets and data that require protection. You need to understand what you need to protect before you can start implementing security measures.
- Choose a Zero Trust vendor solution to use for delivering identity management, application proxy and posture analysis.
- Identify for the particular Zero Trust vendor you have chosen what data points you can consider about the user and device accessing a service in order to determine whether to grant access.
- For each service, asset or data you are protecting identify which data points need to be assessed. For simplicity you ought to be aiming for a base level of checking that is consistent across all applications to which you add specific checks relating to particular services, assets or data – e.g. you might check username, password, MFA, user being in a particular country, device ownership, and device update status for all applications, then look for the user being a member of a specific group for each particular application. For some sensitive applications you might want the user to be in a particular office so that check gets added for those applications.
- Segment your network into smaller, more secure zones orientated around applications / services to limit the potential impact of a breach by making it difficult for a threat actor to move laterally. This limits the exposure of sensitive data and reduces the attack surface.
- Block access to the services, applications and data except through the Zero Trust solution and required administrator tools.
- Build the identity management tool, application proxy and posture analysis tool – this might include installing agents on user devices – including configuring the per-application Zero Trust access policies.
- Use encryption to protect data both in transit and at rest. This makes it more difficult for attackers to steal or manipulate data.
- Implement continuous monitoring and logging to detect and respond to threats in real-time. This includes collecting and analysing data from all network devices and applications.
By following these steps, your organisation can implement a Zero Trust cybersecurity model that helps to protect against data breaches and cyberattacks. It’s important to note that Zero Trust is not a one-time implementation, but an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring, testing and refinement.
Potential challenges you might face
In our experience, you’ll always face a challenge of some sort. Nothing ever goes entirely to script.
The most challenging hurdle to overcome will be the user culture and experience change.
A Zero Trust model badly implemented will mean it will take more effort for users to access your services. This will only serve to annoy your employees and may result in customers buying their services from someone else.
To avoid this as far as possible try to understand the user experience and attempt to make choices around posture analysis seamless to the user – for example if you are going to check that the users’ device has up to date antivirus definitions make sure that your ICT service is delivering antivirus definitions on time and without any problems.
The other potential barrier is cost. Zero Trust policies are possible to plan and implement on a reasonable budget. Still, there are undeniably costs involved with increased security, and the change required to get there costs money in staff time, outages and system changes etc. We recommend factoring this into your upcoming budget.
How can AMDH help?
AMDH Services is a specialist ICT consultant based in the East Midlands. Our team of highly trained experts provide cybersecurity planning and implementation services to businesses, charities, churches and public sector organisations.
A Zero Trust model might sound daunting. Perhaps you’re faced with the challenges mentioned above or unsure where to start. Either way, we can help.
Use the contact form below to get in touch. We’d be delighted to have a commitment-free, friendly chat about your organisation and how a Zero Trust strategy might work for you.
