Zero Trust refers to security principles based on the mottos “never trust, always verify” and “assume breach”. Always verifying approved access and operating under the assumption that breaches will happen.
The cornerstone principles of Zero Trust include:
- Verify explicitly: Verify the identity and authenticity of all users, devices, and services.
- Least privilege access: Users should only be granted the minimum level of access necessary to perform their tasks ,
- Segmentation: Network segmentation should be granular, limiting the potential impact of a breach.
- Continuous monitoring and logging:All activities should be monitored and logged to detect anomalies and potential security threat/
Let’s take a closer look at Zero Trust at the principles that make it such an effective approach.
What is Zero Trust Security?
The idea of Zero Trust as a framework isn’t new — it’s been around for more than a decade. In 2010, Forrester Research analyst John Kindervag used the term “zero trust model” to describe his view of the cybersecurity needed by organizations in the 2020s. Zero Trust was based on Kindervag’s belief that risk is an inherent factor for a computer network, regardless of its location. His motto was “never trust, always verify.” Organizations have increasingly adopted this attitude toward computer security since it minimizes the risk of data breaches and ransomware attacks from outside and inside the organization.
While businesses have been undergoing Digital Transformation, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 significantly increased the pace of this change. Organizations could no longer count on employees working in a single protected location. A workplace could mean anywhere: a kitchen table, the local library, a plane, or a neighborhood coffee shop. While this was a liberating experience for employees, it became a challenge for organizations as they needed to secure, protect, and defend corporate and employees’ personal devices. Cybeattacks have become more common, and as a result, organizations need Zero Trust principles applied to their data protection, what we now know as Zero Trust Data Resilience to protect digital infrastructure and data.
The increased interest in Zero Trust principles can be seen in its potential growth statistics around products and services offering security based on Zero Trust. Market research company MarketsandMarkets says the Zero Trust architecture market will be worth about $17.3 billion in 2023 and will grow to $38.5 billion by 2028 at a rate of 17.3%. Meanwhile, the Forrester Research Security Survey 2022 found that 83% of global companies have adopted or plan to adopt Zero Trust frameworks.
Applying Principles of Zero Trust Security
As noted above, Zero Trust isn’t a service or product; it’s about applying existing and new technologies to follow Zero Trust principles.
A key Zero Trust principle is the implementation of continuous authentication and authorization when a user, device, or application tries to access the network. For example, users may have to verify their identity through Multi-factor Authentication when accessing their workplace network or a specific application. Every time they want to use another part of the network, they must go through the verification process again. No person, device, or program is automatically granted unlimited access to an organization’s network.
Continual Monitoring and Verification
Zero Trust assumes the possibility of ongoing attacks from inside and outside the network. Users should be continuously monitored, and no one is automatically trusted. This includes verifying user identity, device identity, and user privileges. To reinforce the policy of continual verification, the system periodically logs users out and closes device connections.
Micro-segmentation
To minimize the impact of unauthorized user actions, administrators break up security perimeters into smaller zones, thus reducing the attack surface with multiple micro-segments, with separate security controls for each segment. For example, a data center may be segmented into multiple separate zones. Similarly, an application may have different and distinctly separate roles. A user must have explicit permission to access each part of the system.
Prevent Lateral Movement
Lateral movement occurs when a user or attacker can move within a network once they’ve gained access. Zero Trust micro-segmentation limits what an individual can access, and the requirement to log in periodically means users must reestablish their credentials each time they log in.
Multi-factor Authentication
MFA requires users to supply more than one unique credential when logging in. One of the more common MFA methods is the requirement to enter a password followed by a system-generated PIN or code sent to the user’s device. This provides two separate points of verification. Biometrics verification is another common method of MFA.
Least Privilege Access
Under this Zero Trust principle, users, devices, and applications are only given access to what they absolutely need at the moment they need it. When designing a zero-trust architecture, companies must decide who needs access to what resources to allow them to perform their tasks. This means that if credentials are compromised, that user only has limited access.
Assume Breach
It means that organizations should assume that a breach has already occurred or will occur in the future. Instead of relying on traditional perimeter security, Zero Trust focuses on protecting resources and data. Incident response plans should be in place to quickly detect and respond to cybersecurity incidents.
What are the Benefits of Zero Trust?
Zero Trust principles improve security strategy and security posture for any IT environment.
- Reduced attack surface: By implementing strict access control, organizations reduce the attack surface. It limits potential entry points for attackers, which limits the potential number of successful cyberattacks.
- Prevention of lateral movement: Micro-segmentation in computer networks restricts an attacker’s ability to move laterally to other parts of the network. If an attacker gains access to one segment of the network, but can’t move to another, organizations reduce attack surface and maks it easier to contain and/or quarantine the problem.
- Improved data security: Zero Trust relies on the principle of least privilege. This means only authorized users can access specific data — and only that data. The least privilege principle protects data and systems because it limit the risk of unauthorized access.
- Improved security for remote work: Anyone attempting to access the network (whether inside or outside the office) must undergo similar verification, ideally MFA. This makes it more difficult for threat actors to gain access.
- Automated detection: Because user behavior is continually monitored, any inappropriate behavior, whether by a valid user or attacker, is automatically detected. Defensive or mitigation actions can take place before a cyberattack.
- Regulatory compliance: Zero Trust principles helps maintain regulatory compliance by enforcing strict access controls and continuously monitoring user activities. This is particularly useful in heavely regulated industries such as health care, finance, and governmental organizations.
- Reputation enhancement: When an organization adopts a Zero Trust principles it enhances its security and reputation with partners, stakeholders, and customers. Zero Trust also shows increased commitment to protecting sensitive data.
Implementing a Zero Trust Data Resilience Framework
The concept of extending Zero Trust principles to data backup and recovery aligns with the
holistic nature of cybersecurity, and protecting sensitive information involves more than just perimeter security. To address this challenge, Veeam defines the Zero Trust Data Resilience Framework that is designed to minimize risk, fortify data protection, and enhance an organization’s security posture.
Implementing and leveraging a Zero Trust Data Resilience framework involves several essential steps that align with Zero Trust’s core principles. Veeam provides feature capabilities to address these principles.
Least Privilege Access
- Controlled Access for Backup Infrastructure: Implementing Zero Trust policies for controlling access to backup infrastructure is essential to ensure that only validated users can establish connections to the backup solution. This crucial step helps prevent unauthorized access and potential data breaches.
- Granular Self-Service Roles and Restricted Backup Admin Roles: Providing granular self-service roles and restricted backup admin roles within Veeam demonstrates a commitment to the principle of least privilege. By ensuring that users have access only to the specific functions necessary for their tasks, the likelihood of inadvertent or intentional misuse is significantly reduced.
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) Best Practices: Enforcing IAM best practices, such as the use of Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), adds an extra layer of security to the backup environment. This measure is critical in preventing unauthorized access, especially given the high levels of privilege associated with backup solutions.
- “Four-Eyes” Principle for Critical Operational Decisions: Ensures that key actions require the approval or verification of at least two authorized individuals. This additional layer of oversight reduces the risk of malicious or erroneous activities.
Assume Breach
- Segmentation for Minimizing the Attack Surface and Blast Radius: Segmenting backup software and backup storage into separate resilience zones is a fundamental concept of Zero Trust Data Recovery. This approach minimizes the potential impact of internal or external threats by isolating critical components. Additionally, ensuring that backup software does not have OS or management-level permissions on the backup storage adds an extra layer of protection.
- Multiple Resilience Zones and 3-2-1-1 Backup Rule: The 3-2-1-1 backup rule stands out as a best practice for backup strategy, perfectly aligning with the principles of data resilience. This rule advocates for maintaining at least three copies of data, stored on two different media types, with at least one offsite copy and one air-gapped or immutable copy. This multi-layered security strategy significantly reduces the risk of data loss.
- Education and training for employees: Cybersecurity strategies often overlook this element, so make sure you educate your employees about Zero Trust principles, especially about data resilience. The more your employees know about its principles and why Zero Trust matters, the easier it will be for them to maintain a secure environment. Conduct regular exercises to train them on identifying phishing attempts and social engineering.
- End-to-end encryption: Encryption ensures data remains confidential and secure throughout its entire transmission path, from the source to the destination. It’s crucial for protecting sensitive information as it travels across networks and prevents unauthorized access and eavesdropping, aligning with the principle of continuous data protection within a Zero Trust architecture.
Proactive Validation
- Continuously monitor activity: Continuously monitor real-time user and device behavior and use Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools to identify unusual activity. Formulate an incident response plan that helps mitigate security incidents and quickly restores compromised data or systems. New threats occur all the time, so it’s critical to update and review your monitoring rules to adapt to these new threats. Leveraging tools like Veeam ONE for monitoring is a proactive approach to maintaining the health and security of backup and recovery environments. Veeam ONE’s ability to monitor various parameters, including CPU usage, datastore write rate, network transmit rate, and incremental backup size, provides organizations with valuable insights into potential issues.
- End-to-End Visibility: Veeam’s Threat Center aggregates insights from the entire platform and infrastructure, combining this into a single pane of glass highlighting threats, identifying risks, and providing organizations with a simple and powerful security scorecard for their entire data protection environment.
System Resilience
- Time Shift Detection for Immutable Backups: Implementing time shift detection is a proactive measure designed to prevent the deletion of immutable backups, even if the Network Time Protocol (NTP) is compromised. This feature significantly enhances the security and reliability of backup repositories, ensuring the integrity of critical backup data.
- Flexible Recovery Options: Veeam offers flexible recovery options that cater to diverse IT infrastructures, including physical, virtual, and hybrid environments. This adaptability ensures that organizations can achieve rapid recovery, even to dissimilar environments. For instance, it allows for seamless recovery from on-premises VMware to AWS or Azure, or from AWS to Azure, in case the original environment is unavailable. This flexibility is crucial for maintaining business continuity and minimizing downtime.
- Granular Data Restoration Options: The ability to restore data to various environments and at different granularities significantly enhances overall data resilience. This flexibility allows organizations to customize their recovery processes to meet the specific needs of different scenarios, ensuring that they can respond effectively to any situation.
Conclusion
Organizations must protect their most valuable resources from cyberattacks, unauthorized access, and insider threats. As work becomes more remote or hybrid-oriented, ensuring these resources are protected is even more critical. The Zero Trust principles provide these protections to improve the secrity posture of organizations.
In conclusion, it’s important to underscores the necessity of adopting Zero Trust principles to protect critical resources from cyber threats. Zero Trust is not a product but a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity that requires continuous monitoring, strict access controls, and a proactive stance against potential breaches. Veeam’s commitment to Zero Trust Data Resilience is highlighted as a key component in helping organizations safeguard their data and maintain robust security posture.
Veeam product line helps organizations implement Zero Trust Data Resilience.
Related Content
- Zero Trust Data Resilience White Paper
- Zero Trust Data Resilience Research Brief
- What Is Hybrid Cloud Security?
- Building a Cyber-Resilient Data Recovery Strategy