Page 47 - Cyber Defense eMagazine Special RSA Conference Annual Edition for 2022

Achieving Zero Trust through Automation

If a cloud infrastructure environment is pre-built, pre-configured, and standardized using automation —
with a cloud-native platform that deploys in a day (directly in your own AWS or Azure account) and is pre-
built to NIST 800-53 to enforce zero trust by design and default — then a modern zero trust architecture
can be achievable and affordable for any size enterprise or organization. As such, developers can now
build their cloud applications within the confines of zero trust principles as soon as they begin, even as
early as day one. This means access rights become an integral component of the DevOps process and
a critical part of automated configuration management practices. As new applications are added to the
environment, developers work more seamlessly with security practitioners and DevSecOps teams to
configure access rights, authorization, logging, and other key infrastructure components.

Now, rather than having individual people tinkering with security tool configurations and access rights,
developers can code rights into automation scripts, then run those scripts against test environments,
evaluate their success, and perfect those scripts over time. Security practitioners and secure DevOps
teams can likewise automate the evaluation of access rights, quickly identifying overly permissive rights,
compliance drift, and other potential threat vectors. As a result, security and SecOps teams can use
automation to quickly revert access, find and fix misconfigurations, and identify indicators of compromise
(IOCs).

All this boils down to the fact that a zero trust approach appears to be the right way to improve your cloud
security posture and the world is going in that direction. Of course, there are multiple ways to get there.
Some paths seem faster and more logical than others. Now it’s up to you to choose.

About the Author
John Vecchi is the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Anitian. As Chief
Marketing Officer, John brings more than 24 years of experience in high-
tech marketing, strategy, product marketing, product management, sales
and consulting. Most recently, John was Chief Marketing Officer at
ColorTokens and Anonyome Labs. Previously, he served as senior vice
president of product marketing and strategy for Blue Coat Systems, Chief
Marketing Officer for Solera Networks (acquired by Blue Coat), Vice
President of WW Marketing at Zscaler, Head of Global Product Marketing
& Strategy for Check Point Software, as well as executive marketing
consultant for Symantec and Sr. Director of Product Marketing for McAfee’s
Network Security Business Unit. John still serves as an Advisor at Signal
Peak Ventures and has a B.A. from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, focusing on international
business and foreign language. As CMO, John oversees global marketing, branding, communications,
press & analysts, and go-to-market strategy & execution.

John can be reached online on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnvecchi or Twitter:
https://twitter.com/johnvecchi and at our company website https://www.anitian.com/

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