When it comes to your business, you can’t afford to trust the wrong people. In fact, chances are you shouldn’t be trusting anyone at all. So, zero trust architecture might just be the advanced cybersecurity protocol your organization needs to stay safe online, right?
And while you’ve likely heard the phrase thrown around in an article or two, can you confidently say that you know what it means?
With new and more dangerous security risks lurking around the corner each and every day, there isn’t any time to waste. From the experts at EMPIST’s help desk, here’s what business owners need to know about zero trust architecture, cybersecurity, and what it means for the future of your technology ecosystem.
Zero Trust Architecture: Defined
For years, technology innovators have focused on developing user-friendly, business-boosting tools that could be easily integrated into existing operations and structures. To do that, networks, devices, and software have, in the past, been programmed to implicitly “trust” known users who connect to them – giving them access without double-checking their identity.
While this protocol has undoubtedly made many pieces of business technology easy to set up and use, it’s also inherently put them (and, unwittingly, your business) at an increased risk of cyberattack.
Zero trust architecture is an enterprise-level cybersecurity strategy that dismantles these standard practices of automatically “trusting” devices, accounts, and users in a given technology ecosystem. More than just a resource or tool, zero trust architecture describes a comprehensive approach to security that treats each end-user interaction as untrustworthy until proven otherwise, rather than the other way around. In short, zero trust architecture ensures that all users are required to be authenticated and continuously verified in order to continue using your business’s network.
Following this approach will, zero trust supporters say, help organizations establish clear, secure perimeters around their sensitive information and more accurately assess potential threats.
How To: Zero Trust Architecture
While many methodologies fall under the zero-trust umbrella, the first thing your business needs to know before implementing them is this: zero trust architecture only works to help secure your organization if you commit to it fully. That means working diligently to ensure that there are no gaps in your ecosystem and that all endpoints are reliable and repeatedly secured.
In order to reach this level of security, your technology team – whether it be external or internal – must take the following steps:
- Ensure that the organization has visibility into all assets, users, networks, applications, and more that interact with your systems, including BYOD (bring-your-own-device) options.
- Identify vulnerabilities in your current ecosystem and make necessary updates to ensure that they are eliminated.
- Configure permissions to always give users the “least privilege” when accessing data or software.
- Take a hands-on approach to managing the organizational and clerical changes that moving to zero trust will present.
- Monitor configurations for continuous updates, additional changes, and improvements – zero trust is an ongoing process.
You Can Trust EMPIST
Setting up zero trust architecture may sound like a complicated process – and that’s largely because it is! But when we said you shouldn’t trust anybody with your technology, we didn’t give you the full picture – and that’s because you can trust EMPIST.
For over 20 years, EMPIST has been helping organizations of all shapes and sizes construct an effective, efficient, and, most importantly, secure digital environment. To learn more about our advanced-level cybersecurity offerings and growth-minded IT Managed Services, visit us online here.
Or, to get started with a representative, you can contact the EMPIST team right now, right here.