• Identify sensitive data: Determine where your sensitive data is located, such as internal departmental folders or storage areas for personally identifiable information (PII) or protected health information (PHI). It is important to know where your sensitive data is located and who has access to it before implementing appropriate protection measures.
• Limit access: Once you have identified your sensitive data, make sure that only those who need access to it have it. This will help to reduce the exposure of sensitive data and make it more difficult for hackers to gain access. You should audit access permissions at the individual, group, and organizational levels to ensure that only authorized users have access to sensitive data.
• Detect threats: To ensure the security of your data, you should continuously monitor and log all activity related to data access, including activity in the active directory, file and share access, and network perimeter telemetry. By comparing current activity to baselines of previous behavior and applying security analytics and rules, you can detect abnormal activity that may indicate cybersecurity threats from internal or external sources.

Benefits of Zero Trust

The adoption of a Zero Trust approach can bring several benefits to your organization. These include:

• Improved network and system visibility: By implementing Zero Trust and monitoring all data and computing sources, you can gain a deeper understanding of system activity. Every access request, including time, location, and application involvement, can be tracked and flagged for suspicious activity.
• Enhanced security for remote work: As more and more employees work remotely, traditional security measures may not be sufficient to protect critical data. Zero Trust ensures the security of distributed workforces by attaching identity to users, devices, and applications seeking access, regardless of location.
• Efficient compliance: Zero Trust helps maintain compliance with various regulatory frameworks by providing a transparent audit trail for all access requests. This simplifies the process of producing evidence for audits, making governance operations more efficient.

Limitations of Zero Trust

While Zero Trust can be a valuable tool in cyber defense, it has some limitations to be aware of when implementing it. These include:

• Managing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies and environments: In a BYOD workplace, the variety of devices, their properties, and communication protocols can make it more challenging to configure Zero Trust security measures.
• Handling a high number of applications: If your organization uses a large number of communication and collaboration apps, it can be difficult to implement Zero Trust for all of them. Carefully evaluate third-party data handling, storage, and the necessity of each application before adding it to your tech stack.
• Inability to determine user intentions: Even if users are fully authenticated, Zero Trust cannot determine their intentions. Malicious insiders or users with malicious intentions may still be able to compromise data or systems they are authorized to access.