Security teams are under intense pressure to secure organizations against emerging and escalating threats like ransomware and from the challenges of an expanding WFH (work from home) workforce.

The Zero Trust ‘trust-by-exception’ model has proved to be effective in stemming these threats and overcoming the challenges. Much of its effectiveness depends on domain maturity, optimizing existing solutions and adopting integrated ones.

With the current popularity of hybrid cloud adoption, information assets often reside outside of organizational network perimeters, so reliance on standard perimeter security is no longer sufficient. With the advent of significant breaches and ransomware attacks, Zero Trust network architecture (ZTNA) has gained more visibility and attention as a serious cybersecurity strategy. Zero Trust security frameworks create localized micro-perimeter defenses around each asset in an organization’s extended network. Correctly designed, the frameworks protect assets regardless of where they reside —on-premises, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS or any combination thereof.

Simply put, the key tenet of Zero Trust is “Never trust, always verify!”

“The Zero Trust security model is becoming the mantra for CISOs in these times of rampant exploits, breaches and ransomware attacks,” says Sesh Ramasharma, Program Director, HCLTech.

In the continuously growing realm of information resources characterized by vanishing boundaries, an effective risk mitigation strategy involves managing access to privileged and shared accounts. Embracing the principle of least privilege serves as a crucial initial measure toward implementing the Zero Trust approach. It is essential to secure local, administrative and ephemeral accounts for both on-premises and cloud devices, restricting access. Applications or tasks necessitating elevated permissions should only be authorized through closely monitored approvals.

This underscores the significance of privileged access management as a pivotal tool within the framework of Zero Trust.