One of the biggest cybersecurity models being urged on CISOs is zero trust. Unfortunately, it means different things to different consultants, and, more importantly, to different vendors.
As a result, some CISOs have the impression that implementing a suite of products from one vendor gets them a zero-trust framework.
It won’t.
To get beyond the marketing hype, CSOonline this week exploded six myths about zero trust.
Before we get to that, first a definition of zero trust. It comes from Forrester Research, which came up with the idea. Briefly, it says trust is a vulnerability, so security must be designed with the strategy, “Never trust, always verify.” Forrester says it’s is about moving away from traditional perimeter-based security approaches and embracing a workload-first, data-driven, and identity-aware security model. It sounds simple, which is why there are so many myths about it.
But one analyst at the SANS Institute cautions that getting to zero trust first requires reaching the essential security hygiene level outlined by the Center for Internet Security’s Critical Security Controls. Only after that can the functions called out as zero trust be implemented.
Now, about those six myths: The first one to fall is the biggest – that zero trust addresses a technology problem. As the column points out, zero trust addresses a business problem. Or, as John Kindervag, the former Forrester analyst who created the zero trust model, is quoted as saying, “If you don’t know your business needs, you will fail.”