Why Cybersecurity’s Latest Buzzword, Zero Trust Needs a Simple Approach in the Hybrid World

Everything about how we view network security is changing. A true zero trust strategy should be built around adaptable solutions that provide continuous verification while never sharing your top secrets with anyone writes Almog Apirion, CEO and co-founder, Cyolo.

The hybrid remote dynamic is creating brand new headaches for businesses looking to remain compliant, prevent potentially catastrophic breaches, and ensure they can keep their data fully secure. In the coming years, companies and their security/IT teams will have their hands full when it comes to the abundance of cybersecurity challenges they will face. 

Everything about how we view network security is changing. With the global zero trust market projected to reach $52 billion by 2026, it’s clear many many businesses are looking more closely at zero trust, which places more emphasis and stronger controls over data and the people who are using it. In order to fit the needs demanded by the new ‘working from anywhere‘ era, companies need to implement easy-to-use solutions built around cloud flexibility and true zero trust access (ZTNA), which will help them secure their systems, eliminate excessive access, and isolate risk. 

The New Security Landscape for Businesses

Small-to-midsize businesses (SMB) and larger enterprises have had to undergo rapid digital transformation, shifting all their employees online. Businesses have seen a massive 400% increase in hacks and cyber crimes over the past year, coming in various forms such as phishing, malicious links, email compromise, malware, ransomware, etc. 

With so many SMBs and larger companies ill-prepared to handle the accelerated shift to online and digital communications, many are trying to keep up with implementing the latest security strategies. Supporting the transition from networking to trusted identities(users, devices, applications/servers, workloads etc.) has been a major challenge. 

It’s a new world when it comes to data security, and in the past, vendors would tell you how to use their solutions and make the business change its environment to suit their software. This shouldn’t be the case anymore, the required technologies should adapt to suit the businesses current environment to enable this transformation, not the other way around. 

One of the biggest challenges currently facing businesses is connecting users from multiple sources and locations to the working environment. Businesses today have information assets that are connected and spread everywhere, therefore they need adaptive and flexible solutions that can take them easily from their current complex ecosystems to one comprehensive solution providing identity-based secure connectivity.        

Zero trust, much like artificial intelligence (AI), has become a buzzword across the tech world yet few companies have a solid grasp on it. 

A true zero trust strategy should be built around implementing adaptable solutions that provide continuous verification while never sharing your top secrets with anyone. 

For example, if a zero trust provider is able to add himself or a separate employer as a user, a major attack vector is opened creating the ability for anyone to access assets via the very system that is supposed to secure them.

Learn More: Why SPACs Should Deploy Zero Trust Network Access

How Companies Can Prepare Themselves

A recent McKinsey report points to the rise in hackers targeting insecure home networks and household smart devices and shows how this new landscape will enable the cybersecurity solutions market to growOpens a new window exponentially over the next several years.

Today, businesses of all sizes are susceptible to cyber-attacks and must ensure they have an effective security strategy in place. For corporate environments in particular, the ability to connect their entire workforce to applications and resources within their complex environments, and optimize how they implement cloud-based security solutions is critical. 

Businesses, especially larger enterprises, have many factors to consider when it comes to effective cyber defense. To understand the potential cyber risks to an organization, security teams need to be proactive in identifying where potential threats might emerge in the future. 

To meet these new challenges, they need to look towards holistic zero trust solutions that are agnostic to any platform and conditions, while everything is based on identities including the ability to enforce advanced identity verification of users and devices. 

Learn More: Why the Evolution of Zero Trust Must Begin With Data Protection

Conclusion

The shift of the global workforce to a remote (or at least partially remote) environment is a change that looks to be permanentOpens a new window , and companies should look to new zero trust models that can help improve their security posture as well as threat intelligence and assessment. 

In order for businesses to thrive, they need to integrate next gen solutions that are flexible and built around ID-based connectivity. They also need distributed models that fully utilize a company’s existing sites and cloud resources into a simplistic solution with the flexibility organizations require today. 

Zero trust network accessOpens a new window is all about continuous identity verification before users are granted access to all interacting entities in the organization, securely connecting remote and onsite users to the working environment. Businesses need to adopt a true future-looking strategy built around simple solutions that are intuitive and lack complexity.

To understand the potential cyber risks to an organization, security teams need to have a zero effort zero trust approach, so they can be agile and proactive in identifying where potential threats might emerge in the future.  

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