Intelligent CISO Issue 15 | Page 37

T The zero trust approach RONAN RONAN DAVID, DAVID, VP VP OF OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AT EFFICIENTIP, A BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT NETWORK SECURITY SPECIALIST, AT EFFICIENTIP, A NETWORK THE BENEFITS OF A ZERO TRUST SECURITY SPECIALIST, APPROACH OUTLINES TO THE REDUCING BENEFITS THE OF POSSIBILITY OF A DATA BREACH. A ZERO TRUST APPROACH TO REDUCING THE POSSIBILITY OF A DATA BREACH. Nearly half of IT professionals in the UK have experienced a serious data breach at their current employer. This tells us that basic perimeter security is no longer enough to keep today’s organisations safe from nefarious parties. Businesses now need to do more to prevent the next data breach and the required public disclosure that comes with it. To avoid reputational, financial FEATURE segmentation. The internal network, where users are located, is walled off from the outside: the potentially dangerous Internet and partner networks. Anyone inside the wall is assumed to be a regular employee going about their business and is trusted not to steal data or otherwise act out. This is a false To avoid reputational, financial and customer losses, businesses must take a zero trust approach to those that use their networks. assumption. When most contemporary threats – malware, phishing and of course credential stuffing attacks – originate inside a network, this security setup is of little help. The wall represents a single point of failure and once an attacker is in, they’re in, able to grab all the valuable data they want. and customer losses, businesses must take a zero trust approach to those that use their networks. While hailed as providing nimble security, able to be optimised in small increments, perfect for any organisation undergoing Digital Transformation, zero trust is complex. www.intelligentciso.com | Issue 15 The logical solution to this macro- segmented model is to stop relying on one line of defence and split the network into zones to put more walls between an attacker and a businesses’ valuable data. A first manageable step can be to deploy a robust DNS security solution to ensure visibility and granular control of the traffic passing through a private network. This is known as ‘micro-segmentation’ and is the latest way organisations keep attackers at bay. In addition, businesses need to carry out a zero trust approach which does away with trusting any user on the network, regardless of where or who they are. Instead, everything and everyone is untrusted – by default. The trouble with most enterprise networks when it comes to protecting against a data breach is they are based on a simple security layout known as macro- With zero trust, employees are given the minimum level of access and privileges needed to do their work. The walls which separate each part of the network serve 37