Page 141 - Cyber Defense eMagazine January 2023

• Other reported sources included compromised applications, ransomware, and vendor
vulnerabilities.

Putting Trust in Zero Trust

This brings us to zero trust security (ZTS).
ZTS encourages network security professionals to think differently about how they set up and secure
their networks. It was a big part of our conversations with WAN managers during our latest survey effort.

First, some background. ZTS entails:

• Verifying users with more than one method.
• Simplifying how many passwords people need to keep track of.
• Restricting access based on identity so people only can access what they need.
• Segmenting the network to prevent horizontal movement across the organization by bad actors.

Positioning network security around aggressive user and device verification isn’t a new idea, but ZTS is
more relevant than ever.

Granted, secure access service edge (SASE) has also entered the security conversation as a framework
for combining SD-WAN-enabled internet networking with cloud-based network security to facilitate
BYOD, work-from-anywhere set-ups. But no matter how you slice it, research shows that WAN managers
understand the urgency and are trying to update their IT security regimes.

One WAN manager at a technology company mentioned that their network and security team are working
on revamping their systems along ZTS pillars and are “taking a 10-15 year old paradigm and making a
2021 philosophy.”

But what does this look like in practice?

We asked WAN managers how far along they were in implementing ZTS or SASE security policies on
their network. Implementation of one or more elements of ZTS or SASE jumped from just 8% in 2019 to
35% in 2021, a significant increase in just two years. In a somewhat connected discovery, we found a
narrowing of the knowledge gap. Only 8% of respondents were unfamiliar with ZTS in 2021 compared to
one in five in 2019.

Overall, we saw a shift down the deployment pipeline, with reductions in the percentage of respondents
who either had not started, or were just beginning their implementation journey.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – January 2023 Edition 141
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