Zero Trust Network Access is critical for today’s mobile worker

Zero Trust Network Admission is critical for today's mobile worker

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Today, more organizations are offering the option to work from home, in the office or a mix of both, and visitor leaders are being forced to contend with the bug that come with this work mural, looking for options to increase protection and achieve airtight cybersecurity.

Virtually the author

Aaron Kiemele is Chief Data Security Officer at Jamf.

When many employees were forced to piece of work from home during the COVID-nineteen pandemic lockdown, organizations quickly found their security measures were lacking in a new work-from-anywhere surround. Now, information technology's out with the old solutions like VPNs, and in with the new. Enter Zippo Trust Network Admission (ZTNA).

ZTNA operates on a model that does not grant firsthand or ongoing trust to whatsoever user, instead granting application access on a strictly need-to-know basis. ZTNA engineering zeroes in on each private user and device, rather than allowing full access to whatever given network. It's a tighter way to keep a visitor (and users) safe, working on an private basis to determine whether an admission request is trustworthy at a particular moment in fourth dimension. ZTNA determines if a user or device is suspicious past looking at a number of factors, giving you visibility into whether device security is put at take a chance due to an unintentional slip upwardly, one that could allow outsiders into a company's network and information.

Substantially, the ZTNA model has moved forward from trusting the entity to only trusting the transaction. In that location are a variety of reasons for companies to consider switching to ZTNA—here are a few.

Ideal for work-from-anywhere

Flexibility has proven an important tool in achieving piece of work-life residue, and many employees have shown they're just equally productive at home equally they are in the role. While some companies are returning to full in-house operations, many volition continue to offering remote piece of work options for employees.

However, working from anywhere exposes companies to expanded risk, especially as employees operate from multiple devices across multiple networks. VPNs and other traditional security simply can't keep up with emerging risks because of its cumbersome configuration and limited flexibility. ZTNA, on the other paw, allows configurable and precise access to applications across networks, with quick and seamless checks forth the way. This prevents whatsoever nefarious actors or malware from accessing an entire network at once—information technology'southward far easier to find attempted untrustworthy activity when users, devices, and services are making security decisions at each step along the manner.

Enhanced security gives companies and employees the freedom to safely piece of work from habitation, on other individual networks or in a public setting without having to worry or be burdened by cumbersome processes.

Enhanced power to piece of work from any device

Just as ZTNA reduces a user's and organization's risk by limiting the scope of whatsoever hallmark to a limited application or service, it also gives employees the freedom to piece of work from any device without compromising productivity OR security. From smartphones to tablets, personal laptops to visitor computers, the average employee accesses sensitive company data across a multitude of devices. Information technology's an important development in the work-from-anywhere model, and i employees rely on to complete tasks and communicate outside of an office setting.

The core philosophy of ZTNA is that trust is not given, it is earned through deep visibility into device posture and authorization. After all, devices can be stolen, multiple people may operate on i device, and mistakes happen. By requiring devices to pass security checks each time a device requests access to an awarding, company leaders can rest like shooting fish in a barrel, fifty-fifty while knowing their employees operate beyond multiple devices.

Protects companies from sophisticated attacks

Cyber-attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated as criminals take advantage of existing and emerging vulnerabilities around the globe. At that place is no longer a difficult beat out - soft center, no single point of ingress that could let an evildoer access to enter an entire network. Information technology lets you segment resources at a very granular level. It removes firewalls as potential keys to the kingdom.

Additionally, in a cipher trust globe, lateral motion and privilege escalation are much less likely. With constant iterative reevaluation of trust, an assaulter can't take the 1 matter they acquired and leverage it to access your neighbor's motorcar - they are also going to exist expected to have a good systems posture, authority and repeated authentication to services/information. Hackers are extremely familiar with VPNs, how they work and how to exploit the weaknesses inherent to those systems. Often this weakness is single check or basic authentication that once complete grants trust to all future activity.

VPNs are too expensive and only solve network access security problems—if someone tin hack or exploit their way into the VPN, they may gain access to an entire host of applications and sensitive data. VPNs are besides expensive and neglect to account for hallmark of users or devices.

ZTNA, on the other mitt, adds several layers of protection against increasingly sophisticated criminal efforts. Many companies take taken notice—a Gartner written report found that by 2022, 80 percent of new digital business applications will be accessed through ZTNA. Further, the same study found that by 2023, threescore percent of enterprises will phase out most of their VPNs, trading them in for ZTNA.

To protect against data breaches, information technology's essential to consistently exist improving your security posture to keep up with the criminals who are constantly improving their capabilities. You tin't apply yesterday's technology to solve for tomorrow'south issues. The ZTNA model provides that protection in a far more secure way than VPNs, as it is not a single gatekeeper for all your data, simply a real process for ensuring continuous monitoring, evaluation and RE-evaluation of the trust you are leveraging to access a resource. It'due south the kind of protection users want, presented in a streamlined way that can requite both users and organizations peace of mind.

Networks have to be secure, only that security shouldn't forestall innovation and forward move in business organization. The purpose of ZTNA technology isn't to stop users from accessing visitor information—it'southward to empower organizations to move at the speed of business to improve operations, without constantly worrying about the next security breach.

Aaron Kiemele is Chief Information Security Officer at Jamf. With xx years of experience, his background spans multiple industries, focusing on operational security and compliance.