Zero Trust Architecture and Securing the Remote Workforce

Posted January 12, 2021

Thousands of organizations around the world have transitioned to a completely remote workforce in the past 12 months. Students started learning from home due to school closures as parents, teachers and employers quickly adapted to the new demands of social distancing and flexible work. Workforces had been trending towards more flexible schedules and remote work opportunities for years prior but 2020 brought a dramatic shift in the trend almost overnight. When the shift happened, few organizations were prepared to effectively handle a new 100% remote environment. There were productivity challenges, information access challenges, video meeting challenges, and of course the huge IT security challenge.

Securing a remote workforce requires data, people, and infrastructure. The IT infrastructure and data access models for on-premise security doesn’t translate to a work-from-anywhere environment. To truly defend against the cybersecurity threats a remote workforce will face, we must take a ground-up approach and rethink security, permissions, and device-level access to data and networks. Technologically security and accessibility of the new workforce are established through VPNs and the cloud; but, a Zero Trust approach should be considered when defining data access and authentication. In a Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), an IT security model will consider:

Single strong source of user identity
User authentication
Machine authentication
Additional context, such as policy compliance and device health
Authorization policies to access an application
Access control policies within an application

The concept of a Zero Trust Architecture isn’t new, but the idea has grown in significance recently through the shift towards work-from-anywhere. Large enterprises such as Microsoft and Google (Alphabet) have taken the principles of Zero Trust in transitioning their own workforces which have furthered visibility of the approach.

In 2018 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and National Cyber Security Center of Excellence (NCCoE) published A NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture which defines Zero Trust as:

Zero Trust (ZT) is the term for an evolving set of cybersecurity paradigms that move defenses from static, network-based perimeters to focus on users, assets, and resources. A Zero Trust architecture (ZTA) uses zero trust principles to plan industrial and enterprise infrastructure and workflows. Zero trust assumes there is no implicit trust granted to assets or user accounts based solely on their physical or network location (i.e., local area networks versus the internet) or based on asset ownership (enterprise or personally owned). Authentication and authorization (both subject and device) are discrete functions performed before a session to an enterprise resource is established. Zero trust is a response to enterprise network trends that include remote users, bring your own device (BYOD), and cloud-based assets that are not located within an enterprise owned network boundary. Zero trust focuses on protecting resources (assets, services, workflows, network accounts, etc.), not network segments, as the network location is no longer seen as the prime component to the security posture of the resource. This document contains an abstract definition of zero trust architecture (ZTA) and gives general deployment models and use cases where zero trust could improve an enterprise’s overall information technology security posture.

Implementing the concepts of Zero Trust allows an organization to more effectively address security risks associated with devices not owned by an organization including employee or vendor/partner-owned devices or devices with limited security controls such as IoT devices. A Zero Trust infrastructure treats every access attempt as though it were originating from an untrusted network and device. Instead of assuming everything on-premise or behind the firewall is safe, a Zero Trust architecture assumes every access attempt is malicious and requires verification — never trust, always verify. In a Zero Trust environment, all access attempts are authenticated, fully authorized, and encrypted before access is granted.

Along with helping to secure corporate resources by eliminating trusted access based on devices or networks, ZTA helps to reduce the growing threat from insecure IoT devices through micro network-segmentation and least-privileged access principles.

Supporting an extended security boundary through Zero Trust in our “new reality” of work-from-anywhere includes expanding VPN capabilities with stronger identity management, device management and device health, alternate access for unmanaged devices, stronger network segmentation, and isolation of resources. To learn more about how a Zero Trust Architecture can benefit your organization, contact us.

Kyle Vinar

Kyle Vinar is Partner / President of Verus Corporation. He oversees all business operations and coaches Verus teams to continually improve on their solutions from client experience to product development and overall solution implementation. He works with all Verus resources to increase efficiencies and excellence in every aspect of their organizational roles. Kyle believes that people are the last real competitive edge that a company can have and constructing a rich culture is a vital step in running a world-class organization. Therefore he strives to create a culture within Verus that allows everyone to show up authentically and grow both personally and professionally, which in turn allows Verus Corp team members to provide clients with top-of-the-line service. Kyle helps balance strategy, capacity, and culture in such a way that has allowed Verus Corp to achieve exponential growth since he joined the company in 2013. One of Kyle’s greatest professional achievements has been in helping lay the foundation upon which Verus Corporation could be named the 2nd Best Place to Work by the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal. Kyle holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from St. Cloud State University. He lives in Champlin with his wife and 3 children. He has enjoyed volunteering as a soccer coach for over 6 years and was the former Director of Coaching for Rebels Soccer Club. If Kyle isn’t on the sidelines of one of his children’s soccer games or in the audience of his eldest’s musicals, he can often be found cruising scenic routes on his Harley, in a deer stand, or on the golf course.