When moving to a cloud infrastructure, businesses should be looking toward a Zero Trust strategy. This security model protects the cloud from the inside out using the principle of least privilege to grant secure access to any company resource. Eliminating implicit trust helps prevent cloud-related data breaches and provides a security shield for remote workers that use BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) to access corporate resources.
Zero Trust Prevents Compromised Credentials
Cloud environments are dynamic and require a lot of security, especially in a public cloud, where all data might not be protected and phishing attacks run rampant. In fact, 80% of cloud security incidents are due to stolen or lost credentials. Just earlier this year, the Lapsus$ ransomware group managed to breach a third party provider’s Okta authentication and even published screenshots for all to see.
This is where Zero Trust comes into the picture. Zero Trust helps mitigate unauthorized access in cloud environments by enforcing granular access to each user or device attempting to access a workload or resource. This added measure is essential for securing remote workers and third parties from any potential data leaks.
Organizations must adopt Zero Trust principles when building on cloud architectures. Here’s how your organization can successfully leverage the principles to keep cloud environments safe.
5 Ways Zero Trust Secures Cloud Environments
Always Assume a Threat
With traditional security methods, there’s no cause for concern until a threat is detected. And by that time, it’s too late. Zero trust automatically assumes by default that everyone using the network is a threat until verified.
Continuous Authentication
Following the ‘never trust, always verify’ motto, users will be continuously asked to verify themselves. Not on a one-time basis, but each time they require access to a cloud resource. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) technology is an integral component of a successful Zero Trust strategy.
Device Access Control
Zero Trust also monitors how many different devices are in the network as well as those trying to gain access at any given time. A proper Device Posture Check will ensure that every device is assessed for risk without any exposure to the network.
Microsegmentation
Microsegmentation is another way that Zero Trust protects cloud environments. It divides the infrastructure into smaller zones that require additional verification for access. This is also called minimizing the blast radius of a threat.
Lateral movement can occur when an attacker infiltrates the outside barrier and moves within the network. Even when the entry point is discovered with a traditional security method, it can be difficult to detect the threat. During the time it takes to find them, they can move laterally and exfiltrate data. Every user in the network is required to be verified when they enter different zones, drastically reducing the possibility of a breach.
Logging & Monitoring
Having several methods of verification means nothing without constant monitoring. Inspect and log all traffic to identify any suspicious behavior or anomalies. Analyzing the log data can help quickly identify threats and improve security policies.
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Zero Trust Security: An Enterprise Guide
