7 key steps to implementing Zero Trust

Cybercriminals never sleep. Every day we hear about attacks on software companies, governments, airport websites, hotels, hospitals, universities and social media platforms. In early 2023, a ransomware attack on a major food company forced it to shut down production facilities and stop food deliveries to stores. As we can see, the consequences of an attack can be huge.

However, you don't have to fall victim to cybercriminals.

The Zero Trust framework will help protect your business from threats through continuous authentication and authorization.

Zero Trust is a network security principle that says "Trust no user". It relies on the assumption that every user, device, application, network and cloud is at risk. This approach requires total situational awareness of online activities, including monitoring and recording insider activities and checking all incoming and outgoing traffic.

So far, less than 1% of organizations have implemented a Zero Trust program, but that is changing. Gartner predicts that by 2026, 10% of large enterprises and corporations will use this solution.

How to develop an effective Zero Trust implementation strategy?

First, ask yourself why this is important to your business. Be sure to consider the goals, the type of threats and how they are created, as well as the departments and business segments that are at risk.

All this will help you choose the right strategy.

Zero Trust frameworks can help protect your business from the threat by continuously monitoring and authenticating users. It is a solution that increases network resiliency while reducing infrastructure costs and complexity.

Below you will find 7 tips on how to introduce Zero Trust in your organization.

1. Develop your strategy

Start by asking why Zero Trust is important to your business. Remember to take into account:

• the goals you want to achieve,
• the types of threats you face,
• business segments you need to include.

This will help you formulate a zero trust strategy and make the case for this type of solution.

2. Specify what you want to protect

Collected data comes in many forms and is located in many locations. Consider:

• what data needs to be protected and why
• how to classify them
• what are the requirements for some specific types of data: e.g. payment cards or electronically protected health information.

Classifying your data by its sensitivity level will help you understand how to protect it well.

3. Understand your traffic and data flows

Map traffic flows and data usage for a detailed view of all assets, applications and users. This activity includes:

• access requirements for each application,
• application owners, database owners and administrators
• application users: how and where they access data,
• network requirements.

The more complete the information, the better prepared you will be to develop a Zero Trust policy.

4. Evaluate your Zero Trust maturity

Review your current security environment. You may find that you already apply some Zero Trust principles. They include:

• remote access to a private network (VPN),
• data loss prevention (DLP),
• firewalls (NGFW).

Knowing what you need and what you already have will help you shape your Zero Trust architecture as well as plan your implementation, resources, and budget.

5. Design your Zero Trust architecture

Create an outline to define what the core of the landscape will look like. Consider how Zero Trust will partner with:

• Cloud and business elements
• Data warehouses, threat intelligence, public key infrastructure and vulnerability management tools
• Software-defined circuits, micro-segmentation and management permissions.

This will enable you to develop a pilot program and solve problems without affecting your business.

6. Build your Zero Trust policy

Develop a trust algorithm to develop a policy based on traffic flow and data classification regulations to enable trust and risk elements to be included, and adjust permissions with analytics and automation as needed.

7.Monitor and maintain

As with any security strategy, you need to monitor and adjust your Zero Trust policy, which is based on performance, workload, and activity. Doing this before the hazard occurs reduces risk and reinforces a continuous state of zero trust.

We offer the Cyclance Gateway from Blackberry, which is a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution that reduces the risk of additional threats related to the handling of mobile and remote employees. Using an AI-based structure, Cylance Gateway performs continuous authorization to ensure that only secure and trusted devices have access to business resources.

To learn more about this solution, please contact Damian Gołuch, who is its maintainer.