Perimeter focused security architectures that default to high trust levels on internal networks are ill suited for today’s edgeless enterprises that increasingly support mobile and remote workers as well as large numbers of IoT devices. This is one reason Zero Trust is today’s leading network security strategy. Another reason is government mandates like US Executive Orders like EO 14028 – “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity”, from May 2021 and OMB memorandums like M-22-09 and M-21-31.
When designing your Zero Trust solution, there are lots of resources (in addition to the US federal guidelines above) that you can reference including: the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, the CISA Extensible Visibility Reference Framework, and the CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model. Here’s a whitepaper to help out as well – What You Need to Know for a Successful Zero Trust Security Deployment.
However, to make zero trust successful, there are several key factors you need to get right. They are detailed in this whitepaper and summarized below.
Here are four of them:
- You need to implement a visibility architecture that includes taps and packet brokers that aggregate and filter traffic so that your security tools get the exact information they need. Your architecture can’t be successful if there are blind spots. You need to see every part of your network to eliminate hidden threats and performance problems.
- You need packet visibility. While flow data is good, it only provides general trend information. Log data is also useful but it can be corrupted or even erased by malware. Only packet data gives you all of the details you need.
- A third aspect to address is that you need to constantly validate your architecture. Things change with new software and hardware updates, new malware released into the wild, new zero day flaws discovered, and so forth.
- Finally, security and Zero Trust is not just about prevention. You need to be able to respond quickly with cyber resilience tactics and threat detection techniques if your network is attacked.
Read all of the literature on this page to get clear insights into what you need to know about Zero Trust. Our leading sponsor, Keysight, can also help your government agency or enterprise implement Zero Trust security.
