Currently, 43 percent of businesses don’t have any plans to deploy Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). This could be a pricey mistake, as the average cost of a data breach in a company that doesn’t deploy a zero trust model is a staggering £4.3 million ($5.04 million).
If you haven’t got any plans to deploy zero trust measures, talk to your IT department. They’ll help you understand your current security posture and where ZTNA can help.
To demonstrate why it’s necessary, let’s take a deeper look at ZTNA.
What is ZTNA?
ZTNA is a selection of technologies that allow your remote workers to securely access applications and services, as if they were on site. It keeps your company data safe, and your employees can still access it when they need to.
ZTNA isn’t like a VPN, it doesn’t grant full access to a network. It’s designed to deny access, and then only grant it for the services that the employee is allowed to use.
ZTNA improves your business’s security posture in two key ways:
- It controls data access. ZTNA uses identity-based authentication and access control to keep unauthorised users away from sensitive data. This reduces the risk of insider threats by denying access by default, until administrators authorise the user for the application or service.
- It grants visibility across your corporate network. With ZTNA, IT administrators can see who is using the services. This makes movement across the network easier to track.
In fact, Gartner expects by 2023, 60 percent of organisations will replace their VPNs with ZTNA services.
How does ZTNA benefit your business?
Benefits of ZTNA for your business include:
- Unprecedented security. ZTNA offers granular and adaptive security measures that are invaluable in the event of a data breach.
- Effortless scaling. With additional licensing, you can scale ZTNA up as your organisation grows. Whether it’s new cloud environments or on-premise networks, ZTNA can handle whatever capacity you need it to.
- Improves compliance. As ZTNA uses the ‘least privileges’ principle, it restricts access to sensitive information. This stops users being granted rights beyond those needed to do their jobs, and safeguards company data.
- Simplifies IT management. ZTNA simplifies your IT stacks as it removes the need for VPNs, DDoS protection and firewalls.
- Quick deployment. You might think that deploying ZTNA across your network will take weeks and weeks of painstaking IT configuration. You’d be wrong. You can deploy ZTNA in a matter of days and make full use of the benefits right away.
Sharpen up your security posture
There’s a £1.4 million difference in breaches between companies that deploy mature zero trust measures compared to those that don’t. If you’re one of the 43 percent of businesses that don’t deploy any zero trust measures, you may want to talk it over with your IT department.
Cyber-security is an ever-changing landscape, but ZTNA’s adaptive and content-aware approach to network protection can strengthen your security and help keep you safe from data breaches.
But, if you want to ensure the security of your network, consider a cyber security assessment. At HTG, we evaluate your security against CIS global benchmarks so you have a clear-cut understanding of your security posture, as well as actionable guidance on how to improve it.
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