Many of us have seen the headline-grabbing figures of cyber attacks on organizations, with some calculations projecting the worth of damage at USD 10.5 trillion annually by 2025.
The UK has recorded over 34% of cyberattacks on firms, resulting in the total closure of businesses. So, whether you work in the local government, healthcare, or manufacturing, it is essential to note that a lot is changing in the IT security landscape.
Growing and developing cybersecurity threats infused with new hybrid working patterns indicate that you have the privilege of trying out a new strategy to facilitate secure connections of remote users to applications and internal systems.
What The Zero Trust Architecture Is About?
Zero Trust architecture is a network security model that deploys authorization and authentication features across an entire network so that every access request is duly verified before being granted permission. As the name implies, Zero Trust solutions offer no trust until the potential device or user has earned it.
Why Implement Zero Trust?
Considering the interconnectedness of IoMT devices in the nearest future alongside robotics, augmented reality, and more., it is easily predictable that the traditional approach deployed in most healthcare systems will no longer be the norm in the nearest.
Consumer on-body IoT devices are wearable devices that anyone can use to follow up on their health metrics for both delivering to healthcare providers and personal concerns, which could provide information on various health conditions such as the heart rate.
To be informed about the developments, healthcare systems must repeatedly invest in the core aspects while diving from the castle-and-moat strategy to Zero Trust.
Zero Trust in healthcare means a lot to the healthcare systems and across different industries. Understanding these Zero Trust Security use cases helps to bring them to life.
1. Safe Non-Employee And Third Party Identities Access To Corporate Network From Within an Organization
In many organizations, employees are automatically permitted into the corporate network since they are insiders. However, contractors, partners, and temps also grant various third-party access. A situation that emphasizes why security metrics in specific locations should be uniformly available across different areas.
While deploying the third party in a corporate network, the Zero Trust approach of verifying all will ensure adequate security measures across different points on the network. If you only have the physical layer equipped with security, there will be a huge security risk on the network.
2. Secure Remote Employees ‘Access To Public And Private (Cloud) Data
The COVID pandemic became a significant eye-opener to the level of insecurity posed by remote systems. Security administrators discovered that their edge security products weren’t profitable to their remote workforce, who leverage the internet to connect to both private and public (cloud) assets.
VPNs are usually good options for remote work; however, they can appear burdensome and, as a result, become unused. Bandwidth and latency issue that is often not considered. Zero Trust becomes highly beneficial as all users must go through authentication before accessing resources.
3. Provide Edge-to-Edge Support For Employees Across Diverse Locations
Because the structure in many organizations today incorporates remote systems, many deploy cloud resources, and applications to connect the team’s from a wide range of locations. Relying on the traditional security system will prove abortive since these resources aren’t within the traditional network.
And unlike VPNs that some companies deploy to help remote workers reach access to company resources which may prove inefficient and burdensome, Zero Trust doesn’t require a direct .connection to the corporate network before remote workers can access data, understanding and verifying the user identity is necessary to ensure secure and appropriate connections.
4. Accessing Control Stations Or OT Management From The IT Environment
OT (Operational Technology) environments operate management stations regulating various industry devices, Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), etc. These OT environments possess a high demand for active operations, which may obstruct a decent security design.
Hence, a relative split between IT and OT networks used to be the traditional portending challenges which include:
- No security consciousness among OT staff.
- No visibility into the OT systems.
- Distributed network infrastructure between systems within the manufacturing floor.
- Expanded attack surface with widened OT/IT convergence.
- Patching the OT systems because of the inability to address security situations.
Zero Trust, however, will allow employers to bring securely verified users to build connections to the OT management stations. As a result, every other connection is unnecessary or permitted, lowering the monitoring time every season.
5. Protected Traditional Windows Applications
Traditional applications are unreliable for granting secure external access as they could utilize proprietary communication approaches, rely heavily on Microsoft Active Directory, and usually demand the Windows machine to operate the end-user-facing client software.
These traditional applications are usually critical to the business posture, and it offers no room for upgrading to modern architecture. However, Zero Trust makes access possible with no compromise to network security.
Zero Trust: The New Way Of Thinking About Network Security
As a new approach to the IT environment, Zero Trust doesn’t allow an implicit trust to be devoted to a user or device. Instead, the framework requires constant, dynamic authorization and authentication processes in assessing requests. This helps to bolster security and prevent external access to contract lateral movement when a potential intruder is detected within the network.
Building security defenses based on the static, traditional, network-based perimeter has become highly unreliable compared to the security demands of today. Zero Trust allows you to secure resources, assets, data, and users rather than depend on the network’s defenses. While its use cases vary from enterprise to enterprise, the provided situations warrant them.
Final Thoughts: Zero Trust Use Cases In Different Industries
Regardless of the Use cases, you find applicable to your company, adopting them as a critical security strategy helps your organization build a wall high for cyber thugs to climb. However, it is essential to note that Zero Trust is not a specific product or technology.— it is a concept.
It requires various processes and approaches to create an end-to-end Zero Trust framework for your organization. But you don’t have to start with the mind completing it all at once. Instead, build it up gradually and expand as you have the resources to.
