Businesses today are dealing with multi-cloud environments, evolving cyber threats, and a lack of visibility that make the traditional old-school perimeter-based security model insufficient. Securing access has become increasingly complex, particularly in a hybrid work environment where everyone is considered an insider. Futurism is coming to GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai to unravel cutting-edge Zero Trust Security Solutions to help organizations secure their hybrid and multi IT environment and infrastructure. 

To remain resilient in today’s fast-evolving threat landscape where attackers are coming up with advanced and sophisticated attack tactics, organizations and security experts need to adopt a Zero Trust security model. However, implementing Zero Trust policies can be challenging, especially in mixed IT environments, and there is a risk of negatively impacting productivity and user experience. In this blog, we dive deep into why Zero Trust is the need of the hour for businesses to secure multi-environment and hybrid IT infrastructure. It will also talk about the best approach to implementing zero trust and the key requirements and benefits of the same to ensure its success while frustrating attackers, and not the users.

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Today, businesses are dealing with an ever-growing number of endpoints, devices, and cloud-based applications/networks. With this increasing complexity comes a greater need for effective security measures to protect sensitive data and prevent breaches. Enter Zero Trust Security – a security model that has gained immense popularity in recent years, especially in multi-environment IT setups. Get in touch with our security experts and Digital Transformation (DX) leadership team to explore the Zero Trust Security approach at GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai. 

What is Zero Trust Security?

Zero Trust is a security model that operates on the principle of “never trust, always verify.” In other terms, Zero Trust aims to simplify risk and threat management by eliminating implicit trust. Under this model, no device or user is granted access to a network or application without first being thoroughly authenticated and authorized. This approach differs from traditional security models, which typically assume that everything inside a network is already trusted and only focus on defending against external threats.

A Zero Trust Security model operates on the assumption that any device or user could be a potential threat and requires continuous monitoring and verification of all users, devices, and applications. This approach is particularly crucial in multi-environment IT setups where data is stored across multiple clouds, networks, and devices.

Read also: Why do you need Zero Trust for your organization?

Benefits of Zero Trust Security for Multi-Environment IT

• Better protection against insider threats: With Zero Trust Security, every device and user is treated as a potential threat. This insider threat detection approach helps businesses to detect and prevent insider threats, which are quite prevalent and a significant risk factor in multi-environment IT setups.

• Enhanced visibility and control: Zero Trust Security enables businesses to monitor and control access to sensitive data in real-time across all mission-critical endpoints. This approach makes it easier to identify and address endpoint security threats quickly, reducing the risk of data breaches. Meet our team at GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai to see how our endpoint security solution backed by a robust Zero Trust framework offers optimum visibility and control over all your devices and mission-critical business data.

• Reduced attack surface: Zero Trust Security reduces the attack surface by limiting access to sensitive data and applications to only those devices and users that are verified. A Zero Trust powered identity and access management solution makes it more difficult for attackers to gain illicit/unauthorized access to critical systems and data.

• Improved compliance: Compliance with regulatory standards is a critical concern for businesses operating in multi-environment IT setups. Zero Trust Security helps businesses to comply with various regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS by providing better visibility and control over data access. Meet our security leadership team at GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai to explore our data protection and monitoring services that utilizes a Zero Trust approach to help organizations secure their most critical data against new-age data threats and attacks.      

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• Data privacy: Maintaining the privacy of customer data is of utmost importance to a brand’s reputation. Establishing privacy is essential for developing trust and loyalty among customers. Today, organizations operate in diverse and distributed ecosystems and thus, ensuring security should be a primary concern, and Zero Trust is the most appropriate approach. By assuming that no sources can be trusted, every device, connection, and user undergoes rigorous verification. 

• Protection against credential stuffing: Hackers exploit a security weakness called credential stuffing to infiltrate user accounts on web infrastructures and networks by using stolen user credentials. This not only damages a company’s reputation and leads to lost revenue, but also harms customers’ trust. This is why businesses require additional protection, and the best defense strategy against identity and privileged access attacks is Zero Trust. Your employees’ business accounts serve as gateways to your enterprise’s data vaults, and their credentials serve as the keys to those vaults. Regrettably, humans are not particularly adept at keeping these keys secure, leaving the doors wide open for hackers to breach into. This is where Futurism Secure-Access comes in handy. Futurism Secure-Access is a fully managed Identity and Access Management (IAM) service offering powered by Zero Trust Security framework that allows businesses to achieve full control over access management.

• Security for remote work: As remote work becomes more prevalent, new security threats emerge, and maintaining a cohesive business ecosystem becomes more challenging than ever. With employees accessing critical data, applications, and networks from a range of devices and sources, from remote locations, security vulnerabilities and challenges are more prevalent than ever. Adopting a Zero Trust Security approach can help companies prevent security breaches resulting from password reuse, user impersonation, and stolen credentials. By replacing standard password protection techniques, which are often exploited in phishing schemes, with a Zero Trust framework, businesses can improve user privacy and enhance security measures. Zero Trust is especially effective in protecting remote work environments, providing real-time security insights and context across all security domains. Feel free to drop by our security experts at GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai and don’t forget to ask for a virtual tour of our C-SOC (SOC 2 Type II Certified).

Implementing Zero Trust Security in Multi-Environment IT

Implementing Zero Trust Security in multi-environment IT setups requires a structured approach that involves several key steps:  

Identify sensitive data and applications: Businesses need to identify the data and applications that require protection and prioritize them accordingly.

Implement strong authentication: Strong authentication mechanisms such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) should be implemented to ensure that only verified users and devices can access sensitive data and applications.

Implement micro-segmentation: Micro-segmentation involves dividing a network into smaller segments and limiting access to each segment based on the user’s role and the data’s sensitivity. This approach makes it more difficult for attackers to move laterally within a network.

Monitor and analyze: Zero Trust Security requires continuous monitoring and analysis of network activity to detect and respond to security threats promptly. Our security experts will be more than happy to discuss the various implementation options for Zero Trust Security for your organization at GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai.

Takeaway

In today’s complex multi-environment IT setups, businesses need to adopt a security model that offers better visibility, control, and protection against both insider as well as external threats. Zero Trust Security offers a promising approach that can help businesses achieve these goals. By implementing strong authentication, advance threat detection, micro-segmentation, and continuous monitoring, businesses can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and improve compliance with regulatory standards.

With our Zero Trust Acceleration Services, you can secure your hybrid and multi-cloud investments effectively. This will establish a new balance of policies, controls, configurations, governance, and automation across all your IT environment, IT workloads/assets, network infrastructure, users, and data. Our team of SOC engineers, analysts and security experts can assist you in identifying, categorizing and prioritizing all your IT assets. This will help to establish appropriate access control and protection layers needed to safeguard your multi-IT infrastructure.

Drop by our security experts at GISEC GLOBAL 2023 in Dubai (14-16 March) to explore our strong and proven Zero Trust cybersecurity expertise.