Zero Trust Troika: The Who, The What, The How

In the past, organizations relied on perimeter security to protect their networks.

This meant that they built walls around their networks and only allowed authorized users to access them: access everything or nothing.

However, this approach is no longer effective.

With the rise of cloud computing, mobile devices, and remote work, the perimeter of the network has become increasingly porous. This makes it easier for attackers to gain access to networks. We now have the ironic situation of making it harder for legitimate users while lowering security for the illegitimate.

There has to be a better way.

And there is: Zero Trust Network Architecture.

Zero Trust Network Architecture is a new approach to network security that is designed to address the challenges posed by the modern threat landscape. Zero Trust Network Architecture assumes that no user or device is trusted by default. Instead, all users and devices must be authenticated and authorized before they are allowed to access any resources on the network.

There are three key things you need to ensure in order to have a Zero Trust network architecture:

• Who: Who is this actor (person, system) proposing to do something with my systems?
• What: What is this actor entitled to do on a specific system?
• How: How will I get the traffic from the actor (the Who) to the resource?

Rephrased, the three key things are:

• Unified authentication: A single authentication mechanism for all users and devices. This makes it easier to manage authentication and reduces the risk of passwords being compromised. Unify the authentication across multiple types of users, and multiple types of identity. Allow a contractor, a temp, or your peer in a joint venture each and all to have a single sign-on without a new account or identity.
• Precise authorization: A VPN is the definition of imprecise. You are all-on, or all-off. Precise authorization to control access to resources individually, with roles. Can you edit the Wiki? Or only read it? This means that users are only granted access to the resources they need to do their job with the least privilege. This helps to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive data.
• Simple access: A simple and user-friendly access experience. This makes it more likely that users will follow security best practices. Make multifactor and single-sign-on ubiquitous. Make it work regardless of network, regardless of device. Overlapping IPs and lack of public IP should be immaterial.

Zero Trust Network Architecture is a powerful security architecture that can help organizations to protect their networks from attack. By implementing Agilicus AnyX, organizations can reduce the risk of data breaches, improve their security posture, and save money on security costs.

Here are some of the benefits of using Agilicus AnyX:

• Increased security: Increase the security of your network by assuming that no user or device is trusted by default. This makes it more difficult for attackers to gain unauthorized access to your network, and, if they do, they cannot travel laterally. Defense in Depth.
• Reduced risk of data breaches: Reduce the risk of data breaches by preventing unauthorized users from accessing sensitive data.
• Improved user experience: Improve the user experience by providing a simple and user-friendly access experience, browser-first, and device-agnostic. This makes it more likely that users will follow security best practices.
• Reduced security costs: Reduce security costs by consolidating security infrastructure and eliminating the need for multiple security products. Implement multifactor policies in an Identity-Aware Web Application Firewall to provide ubiquitous audit without rework of existing systems.

If you are looking for a way to improve the security of your network while simplifying the end-user experience, Agilicus AnyX is the best option.

Learn more: https://www.agilicus.com/what-we-do/