The Roman philosopher Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” In Vegas, when you are on a roll, you are on a roll. To beat the odds, you must be smart and disciplined. Whether winning big at the tables or championships on the basketball court, there is no better feeling. Often athletes are asked what it means to win and they often don’t have the words to describe it. Winning, regardless of the endeavor, almost always is a team effort.

Before I became a Sale Engineer I started my career working in operations and I don’t remember the first time I heard the term zero trust but I all I knew is that it was very important and everyone was striving to get to that level of security. Today I’ll get into how AlgoSec can help achieve those goals, but first let’s have a quick recap on what zero trust is in the first place.

Traditional security paradigms are increasingly falling short against sophisticated cyber threats in the dynamic and challenging cybersecurity landscape. This has led organizations to adopt the zero-trust security model, a paradigm shift that assumes no internal or external entity is to be trusted without verification.

Modern technology environments have become increasingly complex. This, as you might imagine, has had a wide-ranging impact on our organizations, IT teams, and priorities, especially when it comes to security.

In an ideal approach to zero trust, in which every user and device must continually prove their identity, automation is more than a useful tool, it’s essential to your federal agency’s success. You don’t need to take our word for it - security automation and orchestration is mandated by M-22-09 and M-21-31, and forms an integral part of the framework in CISA’s ZTMM (zero trust maturity model).

Organizations no longer keep their data in one centralized location. Users and assets responsible for processing data may be located outside the network, and may share information with third-party vendors who are themselves removed from those external networks. The Zero Trust approach addresses this situation by treating every user, asset, and application as a potential attack vector whether it is authenticated or not.

Few would argue that zero trust has become one of the most important principles of modern cybersecurity programs. But ever since the concept of zero trust security was first popularized by Forrester in 2009, many federal government agencies in the United States (along with private sector companies) have struggled to understand its requirements and implement it effectively. Critically, zero trust does not represent a single security method or a type of technology.

If you want to significantly reduce the attack surface and data breach risks for your organization, zero trust architecture may be the answer. This approach is becoming a priority for global organizations and tech giants like Microsoft that seek to reduce cybersecurity risks in their IT environments. It’s no wonder then that 10% of large organizations will have a comprehensive and mature zero trust program in place by 2026, according to Gartner’s predictions.