The current trend to move to Zero Trust security architectures using the mantra “Never Trust, Always Verify” is a move that Teneo has long supported. The simple fact is that the traditional castle and moat approach to security built on VPNs is not fit for purpose in the modern world with hybrid users and infrastructures.
To defend modern organizations against today’s threats, you need a model that looks at every action a user or device takes and subjects it to some form of policy decision. The user may not see this, but it allows the organization to verify every attempt to access data or resources, making life very difficult for an attacker.
There are also a number of additional benefits of moving to Zero Trust over the enhanced security it offers. These include improving user experience by enabling Single Sign-On (SSO) and removing the need to backhaul traffic to a data center for inspection. It also can enable better collaboration between organizations by applying fine-grained access controls while providing IT with improved visibility and logging, facilitating the simplification of policy creation and management.
So, with all these benefits, why is Zero Trust not enough to protect you?
The problem is that applying a total Zero Trust policy is impossible: we must trust at some point. The value of the network is its ability to connect users to applications; if we block all user access, modern digital business will simply stop.
Therefore, when we design security architectures, we need to think beyond what level of access we apply to each user or machine, but also what happens if the trust is broken after we verify. This is where Segmentation and Micro-Segmentation come into play.
If a bad actor passes our verification checks, they can move laterally across the network and access key systems and sensitive data if there is no network segmentation.
But this threat is nothing new; we have been segmenting networks for years, so what’s the problem?
The challenge is the same issues that caused IT security departments to adopt Zero Trust in the first place. Modern networks are complex, dynamic, and span physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Trying to segment modern architectures with traditional methods is not straightforward and has become more than a full-time job. In addition, segmenting using traditional edge firewalls has little or no ability to segment east-west traffic.
Modern segmentation needs a modern solution.
That’s why Teneo has partnered with Guardicore (now part of Akamai) to remove the challenges of traditional segmentation. It provides pervasive visibility across hybrid architectures and simplifies the deployment of true granular end-to-end segmentation and micro-segmentation policies to remove the headache of trying to achieve it with traditional methods.
To find out more, speak to one of our security experts.
