For today’s IT organizations, establishing a zero-trust (ZT) architecture is an ongoing process of refinements for existing networks, resources, methods and security capabilities. Detection and validation of ZT designs and policies must be done continually to ensure adherence to the architecture and enforcement of network boundaries and detect when bad actors attempt to cross them.

The ZT model was designed to re-think the security paradigm to enable services that drive digital transformation, while also improving the security posture of organizations and protecting the network’s crown jewels. But how can organizations verify that their implementation of ZT principles is working as designed? It is not enough to have ZT frameworks in place. Organizations must understand how comprehensive network visibility is a foundational component of ZT, necessary to verify the adherence and success of the ZT environment as well as enable its incremental evolution.

ZT Maturity Requires Comprehensive Network Visibility and Analytics

The old security architecture of a solid external perimeter being the best (and often only) defense against compromise has become less adequate as the sophistication of attackers improves. The implicit security assumption with existing architectures has been that everything inside an organization’s network can be trusted. This almost always means that anyone can move laterally within the network – including attackers seeking further compromise once on the network.

As attackers continue to grow in sophistication, organizations are reconsidering their security posture. As the migration from traditional architecture to ZT architecture matures, perimeters blur or vanish altogether. East-West traffic, which includes essential business communications between customers, employees, applications and servers, needs to be seen and controlled to detect and prevent lateral compromise. In an optimized stage of ZT, complete visibility and advanced analytics and intelligence are necessary to validate the accuracy and enforcement of security policies.

This visibility and monitoring include continuous user validation, real-time machine learning analysis of access, constant device security monitoring, real-time risk analytics powered data access, machine learning-based threat protection, verifying encryption of all traffic and continuous application access authorization. Implementing and developing the ZT architecture takes time and will continue to evolve as policies, processes and tooling improve.

An Adaptive Approach to Network Security

Today, some solutions offer comprehensive visibility with instrumentation focusing on threats and vulnerabilities, allowing for immediate validation, detection, and back-in-time investigations of network traffic. To keep up with the challenges of threat detection in this landscape, advanced deep packet inspection (DPI)-based network detection and response (NDR) tools use pervasive network visibility and analytics to quickly identify and respond to cyber threats. With a comprehensive store of network data, based on highly scalable packet monitoring, these solutions offer critical network context to detect and investigate suspicious activities in real-time or retrospectively, thus improving incident response.

Network data provided by DPI-based NDR technology acts as the glue that connects and contextualizes inputs from other related categories of threat detection technology, namely endpoint detection and response (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), enhanced security information and event management (SIEM), and security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) systems. By enabling network data, these advanced solutions are far more effective for rapid threat detection, investigation and response.

A ZT architecture represents a paradigm shift in cybersecurity from a perimeter-centric approach to a more adaptive, risk-based approach that prioritizes identity, automation, continuous monitoring and assessment to find any anomalous traffic on a network at any given time. It’s impossible to know the effectiveness of any ZT architecture without comprehensive visibility, and DPI-based NDR solutions are the only tools to offer the degree of visibility required to verify the effectiveness of ZT environments.

With cyber threats continuing to evolve, a ZT architecture is the best approach for securing the modern enterprise.  However, implementing ZT policies alone is not enough – any organization must be able to verify network traffic continuously to ensure its security policies are enforced, and ultimately the network and services are secure.  Zero-trust security validation requires pervasive network visibility which will always be critical for IT organizations, today and in the future.