People love to talk about zero trust right now, for a number of reasons. It has the word “zero” in there, which has some history in the information security world (e.g., zero-day vulnerabilities). It’s also a simple and eye-catching phrase, so it fits well into product marketing exercises.

Five worthy reads is a regular column on five noteworthy items we’ve discovered while researching trending and timeless topics. This week, we explore why organizations should implement Zero Trust in 2021. In 2010, John Kindervag introduced the concept of “Zero Trust” which has become a touchstone for cyber resilience and persistent security. Zero Trust is not a security product, architecture, or technology.

As more companies migrate to the cloud, the way that companies protect data changes as well. In a traditional on-premises network architecture, companies were able to follow the “trust but verify” philosophy. However, protecting cloud data needs to take the “never trust always verify” approach. Understanding what a Zero Trust Architecture is and how to implement one can help enhance security.

When it comes to Data protection, we used to talk about securing the perimeter with firewalls, VPNs, cybersecurity training for employees, to prevent data leaks - remember those days?? Well, these days, things are a little different as we now have remote working to contend with. As a result, Zero Trust has crept in and tilted the formula for Data security and securing network perimeters is no longer effective.

With the constant rise of modern cyber threats, many businesses are aiming for zero-trust infrastructure to keep themselves and their customers safe. But a zero-trust environment, where only authorized people can access information and resources, is often more difficult to implement than anticipated. If security teams and network engineers cannot visualize the network and its possible traffic paths and behaviors, they can’t possibly secure the environment.

I have often joked that IT, and in particular cybersecurity, is like fashion — not a lot is ever new, just reimagined and, in some cases, improved. As I sit pondering the beauty of my COVID-19 comb-over mullet, I have found myself thinking about how this fashion analogy applies to zero trust.