Zero Trust
Today’s security must rely on verification at every access point, not trust.
Zero Trust Enables
Digital Transformation
Digital business is dissolving the traditional network perimeter, creating opportunities for business growth through the creation of new value chains and partnerships. Adopting a Zero Trust security strategy allows you to open your applications and data to anyone, anywhere, with minimal friction and maximum connectivity. This helps today’s mobile users consume resources hosted in private datacenters and public clouds from corporate and personal devices. It also enhances security.
Security is improved where network perimeters shift and shrink to become resource perimeters (micro-perimeters or micro-segments), and where network-based trust is replaced by confidence from verifying the risk profile of users, devices, applications and data flows. The guiding principle behind Zero Trust is a methodology where this confidence is used to improve access decisions.
Learn more with our white paper, Thinking Outside the Perimeter: Zero Trust and Digital Transformation.
Moving Beyond the Network Perimeter
You’ve been here before. The current business environment is already pushing corporate resources outside of your existing network perimeter. But to fully move beyond the perimeter, we need to understand what security controls it provides, which of these are necessary for which resources, and which alternative technologies can apply these controls to individual resources.
The short answer? Centrally managed authentication and authorization controls will define your new security methodology. For organizations engaging in multi-cloud deployment and rapid SaaS adoption—while also maintaining a portfolio of applications deployed on-premises—these controls can be applied to all resources, enabling more granular security enterprise wide. Watch our webinar to learn how to broaden enterprise security with Zero Trust.
The Zero Trust Ecosystem
From identity, device and transaction security to network and data security, achieving Zero Trust can involve numerous technologies to address a wide range of enterprise requirements. At Ping Identity, we work with diverse organizations to provide a complete Zero Trust solution.
Our Formula for Zero Trust Access
The Zero Trust ecosystem relies on verifying users, applications, devices and data flows. To make Zero Trust access possible, we provide critical controls for intelligent authentication and authorization.
- Authentication Authority
Zero Trust requires all access to be authenticated to ensure security. An authentication authority continuously validates and provides user identity, device and context data across a broad range of SaaS, on-prem and cloud resources via open standards and proprietary adaptors. Authentication authorities orchestrate complex authentication flows, leveraging attributes from multiple sources of data to set and fulfill diverse policy requirements.
- Granular Authorization
A shift from network-based trust to confidence means enabling increased granularity for access control decisions. Resource-level authorization enables you to dynamically restrict web application URL paths or HTTP methods used with APIs based on user identity, device and context data provided by an authentication authority.
- Data Access Governance
To govern access to user data, the perimeter needs to combine user identity, device and context data with fine-grained consent mechanisms. Today, consent is provided by proxy to apps and APIs to view and use data on behalf of a user. Zero Trust data security combines identity assurance with affirmation that the accessing party has permission to view or use the data in the first place.
- Continuous Adaptive Controls
Changes in user and devide context should alter the confidence level established at session creation. Continuous and adaptive controls enable you to guide users to reauthenticate, reauthorize or step-up authentication if key risk factors change with the user or their device. You can preserve a seamless user experience by leveraging biometrics and other user-friendly authentication factors.
- Behavioral Security
Rogue insiders and sophisticated bad actors project the right static and dynamic attributes to gain trust and access to resources. Despite meticulous web application and API security practices, attack vectors like end users and client-side applications are also targeted, resulting in stolen or compromised tokens. Behavioral security uses AI to enable continuous monitoring of key resources like APIs, providing better ways to establish confidence and secure your organization even if you can’t fully trust your own tokens.
Always Verify. Never Trust.
User attributes such as role, group membership, time and country of access are key risk factors which must be verified at each point of access. Device attributes are another. Information surrounding whether devices are rooted or jailbroken, have outdated operating systems or are unmanaged should all feed into an assessment of risk before access is allowed. In-session behavior that’s baselined against normal usage patterns must also play a role to adjust the level of risk established at the creation of a session, and it should also be used to validate transactions. Zero Trust means that all of these attributes must be verified anywhere an access decision is made.
Get insights from our Executive Roundtable on Zero Trust
Zero Trust Enforcement
In the Zero Trust security methodology, the principle of least privilege is enforced everywhere an access control decision is made. Zero Trust augments least privilege with the enforcement of even more precise access control based on real-time evaluation of risk. Applications, APIs, data stores and devices are each gateways to sensitive data, which means Zero Trust enforcement through a diverse set of micro-perimeters and access proxies is needed to secure your organization. We help you enforce Zero Trust with the support of an authentication authority, resource-level authorization, data access governance, behavioral security and continuous and adaptive security controls. This ensures that users, devices, applications and transactions are always authenticated and authorized, no matter which network hosts them. Learn about building a Global Authentication Authority, the foundation of a Zero Trust Architecture in the paper below.
The Road to Zero Trust
Security methodologies provide guidance to navigate the evolving landscape of digital business opportunities—and risks. Zero Trust recognizes the opportunities and the obstacles that prevent organizations from achieving better security. To take first steps down the road to Zero Trust, organizations often have to get cross-functional support and buy-in from senior leadership. But to get that support, you first need a detailed plan of how Zero Trust security will be achieved. Identity and access management (IAM) solutions provide core capabilities on which the Zero Trust methodology is built, which is a great place to start your journey. To see the key areas you can focus to guide you on your Zero Trust journey, read our Five Steps to Zero Trust Access.
Take the Next Step
See how Ping can help you stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving digital world.
