How the Zero-Trust Model Can Keep Your Remote Workforce Safe
To survive in today’s digital world, companies need to bolster their cybersecurity practices. And embracing a zero-trust model can help improve scalability and operations while reinforcing security across your network.
Cybersecurity is vital to adapting to hybrid work culture and the evolving ways that access is managed. Let’s take a closer look at how implementing zero-trust protocols can help businesses stay secure even while their workers are accessing important data from home.
What is Zero-Trust?
Remote workers are crucial to business ecosystems that are embracing hybrid workplace models. But many companies have realized through making the shift that their workers often inadvertently put businesses at risk by using public Wi-Fi, less-secure personal devices and poor authentication practices like saving their login info to their devices.
While there are simple ways to mitigate risks associated with authorized access, such as implementing multi-factor authentication, requiring employees to use a VPN and only using validated devices, mistakes still happen. In fact, 85% of data breaches are due to human error, so it’s crucial that remote workforces have the tools they need to be successful and secure.
Since only about 17% of workers in North America use a VPN consistently, and many others use workarounds to simplify the login process, more companies are adopting zero-trust practices to improve their cybersecurity posture.
Zero-trust is a cybersecurity framework based on the philosophy of “never trust, always verify.” This IT security approach also employs a concept known as least-privilege access. That means that users only have the permissions that are necessary to fulfill their role and functions and that their identity must always be authenticated, no matter where or when they are logging in.
For example, part of the remote workforce today includes those who work in the medical field in new roles such as telehealth. They rely on patient communication software to set appointments and practice medicine. A remote worker operating online without zero-trust protocols can spell disaster for the organization and its patients.
It’s not that remote workers shouldn’t be trusted, but a data breach could occur if an employee’s credentials were abused by bad actors. Instead of defaulting to trusted users, the default is to refrain from trusting a user or device unless it has been validated and to operate under the assumption that a data breach is already underway.
Zero-Trust Best Practices to Protect Your Remote Workforce
Enforcing zero-trust philosophy and integrating solutions that meet those needs can be a complicated process. It’s important to remember that zero-trust doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time for workers to get used to new ways of accessing their company devices, but they have already proven that they are capable of making dramatic shifts simply by participating in the remote workplace environment.
Businesses should slowly implement zero-trust policies over time to avoid overwhelming their workforce with a slew of new policies. However, it’s crucial to build a firm foundation based on zero-trust to make the most of your cybersecurity efforts. That means incorporating zero-trust across machines, devices, users, platforms, APIs and more.
Here are some key practices that businesses can follow to safeguard their organizations with zero-trust practices.
Holistic cybersecurity integration
Today’s bad actors are highly intelligent and proficient in a number of tactics, techniques and procedures to infiltrate business networks. Integrating tools, controls and telemetry companywide enables organizations to implement and enforce cybersecurity policies consistently. Some cybersecurity tools and policies that can work together to create tighter remote cybersecurity include EDR, continuous monitoring and offboarding checklists.
Secure by design
Building security into systems and processes from the beginning can help ease adoption. A security-first approach across product life cycles and stages of operations establishes a secure workplace and mitigates cybersecurity risks simultaneously.
Managing third-party risks
Beyond the organization’s internal operations and communication, zero-trust should also extend outside of the business. It’s vital that zero-trust is included in your privacy policies and vendor-facing applications.
Cybersecurity awareness training
There is only so much that technology can do to prevent data breaches caused by human error. That’s why employee education and cybersecurity awareness are crucial practices for businesses to enforce across the organization, from the C-suite to entry-level workers. Teach your workers things like how to identify phishing scams, secure access protocols and techniques to keep their devices secure.
Establish trust based on identity
A hallmark of zero-trust policies is identity-based trust. Organizations should build a well-defined process for identifying users (and machines). For example, businesses should ask users to assert information about their identity when they create company accounts to be verified and authenticated at login each time.
Risk-based authentication
Similar to establishing trust based on identity, each request for authentication must be evaluated based on context and composite event data. Zero-trust implementations operate under the assumption that users are malicious until they are authenticated to keep the network as secure as possible.
Unified policy enforcement
Disjointed and fragmented access policies for users leave space for bad actors to take advantage of organizations. In-office, remote workers and hybrid employees must have the same access policies, although their locations and working environments differ.
Automation, threat intelligence, and response
Finally, automating threat intelligence and response protocols is an essential practice under zero-trust frameworks. Since businesses that implement zero-trust are always on the lookout for threats and operate under the assumption that a threat is always lurking on the network, automation can assist with productivity, monitoring and mitigating data breaches.
Implementing Zero-Trust Policies for Remote and Hybrid Workers
Planning for a zero-trust architecture involves cooperation from personnel and data to assess the cybersecurity gaps and build a plan to enforce more robust security policies. According to NIST zero-trust guidelines, here’s how to implement zero-trust policies for remote and hybrid workers.
Prepare
First, teams must prepare to implement zero-trust policies by taking a full inventory of resources, network identities, roles and privileges. This step is focused on preparing businesses to manage their risks based on current cybersecurity conditions.
Categorize
Next, teams need to categorize their resources based on confidentiality, integrity and availability. Resources and workflows are typically categorized in terms of low, moderate or high risk. Then teams can attack each item according to their risk category.
Select
Now, teams must select the appropriate zero-trust policies to enforce for each attack surface. Plus, additional controls may be added or removed to manage risks to specific resources and workflows.
Implement
At this point, IT teams should implement the plans outlined in the previous steps. Don’t forget to keep future monitoring and maintenance operations in mind at this stage, and avoid solutions that involve numerous human actions. Zero-trust works best in conjunction with dynamic automated tools.
Assess
After implementing zero-trust policies, teams must assess the progress and report any impact on cybersecurity. And when it comes to zero-trust, controls should be assessed on a continual basis to address changing needs over time (more on this in the next step).
Monitor
Zero-trust requires organizations to monitor their resources, from endpoint hygiene and user behavior to network traffic and everything in between. There are many ways that this can be accomplished, and teams should use the solutions that make the most sense to their organization and automate wherever possible for the best results.
Final thoughts
Zero-trust isn’t a tool or technology. It’s a cybersecurity strategy that requires careful planning and cooperation from executives, managers and workers.
Remote workers are breaking the network perimeter and working from devices at the edge and under various Wi-Fi security levels. Zero-trust enforces user access privileges so that no matter where your workers are located or what networks they are connected to, your business data remains safe, secure and far from malicious cybercriminals.
