The networking environment has changed. It may help to improve your security measures to adjust to those changes.
Modern cloud applications require that users authenticate or register themselves. This authentication identifies users as unique from others. User authentication is one aspect of establishing zero trust security, which can make your network more secure.
User authentication enables employees to save work in various applications. However, it’s also beneficial because HTTP, the application protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems, and forming the underlying framework for the World Wide Web, is itself a stateless protocol.
IT professionals must install these kinds of mechanisms to help maintain the states of various applications. These mechanisms help enable networks to separate sessions from other users who are using applications at the same time. They also help IT professionals provide secure access for staff members.
Today, a massive segment of the workforce has been thrust into remote work overnight. Now, securing all aspects of access is highly relevant.
To learn how telecommuting is taking off with the help of zero trust security, read on.
Sharing Data on a Need-to-Know Basis
There are two important facets of identity management. One, IT managers must manage cloud identities for every application, with some exceptions. They must keep track of users and authenticate their sessions.
Second, lax authentication practices can prove disastrous. Together, these two aspects of identity and access management have become growing issues over recent years. However, they’re especially troublesome in the post-COVID “new normal” world.
At first, cloud-based applications presented IT personnel with challenges. These apps included the likes of Dropbox, WordPress and Office 365.
Now, IT workers have options for cloud-based security and identity management. These options include:
- Analytics as a Service (AaaS)
- Identity as a Service (IDaaS)
These tools have evolved to make cloud-based identity management easier.
In the past, technology engineers have applied the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to networks. Now, IT professionals can use the same “as-a-service” dynamic to manage user identities. Cloud-based technology enables IT workers to enforce authenticating and identity management.
Is Your Enterprise Network Safe?
COVID-19 has resulted in a massive and sudden shift to a remote work environment. With this transformation came increased risk for enterprise data security.
Now, companies must scramble to ensure business continuity. As they do, they’ve reconfigured security controls. This reconfiguration includes making temporary policy exemptions and shipping equipment to staff members.
Experience shows that misconfiguration is one of the biggest threats to network security. Fixing these vulnerabilities is a top priority of any skilled SecOps team.
Some vulnerabilities are as fundamental as leaving the wrong ports open. Others involve setting the wrong defaults for detecting data exfiltration.
Network security also fails for other reasons. For example, the security team may not have enough time to stay on top of dozens of weekly updates issued by trusted vendors.
Nearly half of all breaches start with web apps. Accordingly, SecOps personnel must plug these holes. A zero trust network access policy may help in this matter.
Protecting Your Network From Prying Eyes
The shift to a remote workforce creates many network vulnerabilities. To begin with, each employee that makes the transition to working from home creates a threat. Now, multiply that threat by each device that an employee uses to access your network.
This network vulnerability may seem like a cause for great alarm, and in a sense, it is a problem. However, rather than worrying, you should view recent events as an opportunity to review the security of your network. It may surprise you to find out about the level of exposure that your company faces.
Most companies are too relaxed with user authentication. It’s common practice to give more access to employees than they usually need to do their jobs.
It’s usually not employees, however, who create the danger to your network. Unfortunately, malicious actors use this unnecessary access to compromise enterprise networks.
Today, organisations need a way to create, manage, and maintain user controls. Furthermore, they must have ways to customise those controls for every user on the network. These policies are part of maintaining a zero trust network security stance.
Today’s zero trust offerings help IT departments automate identity management. Zero trust solutions also help them to initiate self-service protocols for authorised employees.
For example, you could establish a black cloud. This feature is also called a Software-Defined Perimeter (SDP). It will keep users outside of the black cloud from accessing your systems.
These features ensure that only authorised users have access to services when needed. They also free IT personnel from getting bogged down with repetitive, standard security tasks.
A Solution for Remote Data Security
Zero trust security is about pinning down a network from beginning to the end of a data path. The practice involves:
- Establishing the trust aspects of users’ devices
- Establishing their identities and locations before allowing access
- Granting access based on device compliance, posture, location & other parameters
- Evaluating that posture on an ongoing basis
- Taking the appropriate action if the posture is abnormal than the usual behaviour exhibited by that user
To deploy a zero trust model, IT personnel must implement granular security measures. These measures begin with network users.
To begin implementing zero trust measures, IT experts must focus on vulnerabilities. In most instances, remote workers represent the biggest vulnerability.
Protecting Data in the New Normal
For nearly every worker, telecommuting is a different experience. Some workers do 100% of their job from home. Others do a mix of in-office and remote work in varying degrees.
Yet other employees may use co-working spaces to perform part of their duties. What’s more, today’s workers are getting further away from the office.
Circumstances have thrust the world into a remote work environment. These circumstances have affected the workplace with dizzying speed and impact.
It seems remote work has now become a part of the modern work environment indefinitely. Accordingly, decision-makers must learn how to secure company networks in this new environment.
Bolstering Network Security with Zero Trust Security
Traditionally, IT experts have focused on making it difficult for hackers to enter. Once a breach occurs, however, a hacker has full control over a network when companies use this kind of defense.
This kind of network perimeter defense is no longer viable. Modern enterprises require security that goes beyond password authentication.
Zero trust practices can help you to ensure that only authorised employees access you network. By embracing a zero trust security stance, you can keep prying eyes from accessing your network and keep control of your data out of the hands of malicious actors.