A case for zero trust network

Data breaches expose confidential, sensitive and protected information to unauthorised persons, inevitably leading to security breaches.

The rise in remote working and work-from-anywhere initiatives has put the spotlight on zero trust network access (ZTNA) in particular. The more people work from anywhere, the less secure a traditional perimeter-based approach becomes. Every time a device or user is automatically trusted, it places the organisation's data, applications and intellectual property at risk.

Many organisations have a vision of what they want or need in terms of zero trust and ZTNA, but their vision is not necessarily being translated into the solutions they are able to put in place, finds a new report by Fortinet.

In The State of Zero Trust Report released in January, the global cybersecurity firm found that organisations claim to have deployed or started to implement ZTNA strategies but they cannot consistently authenticate users or devices and struggle to monitor users after authentication. Fortinet surveyed 472 cybersecurity professionals and business leaders worldwide for the report.

The shift from implicit trust to zero trust is a response to the rising incidence and cost of cybercrime. The global average cost of a data breach is now US$4.24 million, and the top three initial attack vectors are compromised credentials (20%), phishing (17%) and cloud misconfiguration (15%).

A proper zero trust solution is about knowing exactly who and what is on the network at any given moment, and ensuring that authenticated users and devices are only provided with the minimum level of access for them to do their job.

Zero trust is not effective if companies are not able to authenticate users and devices on an ongoing basis. Authentication, access control and user identity are all critical elements of zero trust.

A robust implementation of zero trust solutions can reduce the likelihood of attack, using tools such as multifactor authentication, and mitigate the effects of a breach through techniques like micro-segmentation, says Fortinet.