Zero-trust remote access solutions

Conventional perimeter-based security frameworks assume that all services, devices, and users within one’s own network are trustworthy. Traffic and access from outside the network, on the other hand, are considered potentially dangerous and must be analyzed and restricted. But this means that once someone has penetrated the company network, there are hardly any security measures left to prevent dangerous activities, e.g., an attacker trying to gain administrator rights throughout the network environment.

The zero-trust model stands for a change in thinking compared to traditional concepts as it treats all devices, services, and users as equally untrustworthy. The basic assumption is that in a digitalized work environment, the interpersonal concept of human trust is not a valid principle of cybersecurity anymore, if it ever was.

With zero-trust remote access, each action a user performs via the network is verified against a set of rules, enabling the detection of unexpected patterns. Consider this example: Monica usually works from an office in Berlin. One day, she tries to access the network from a Moscow IP address at 3am CET. This action either triggers an alarm or leads to her access being blocked immediately until the identity of the user can be verified.

This fundamental change has a significant impact on IT security architecture as systems must no longer only be protected at the boundaries but throughout the entire global network and at each step in between. Therefore, zero trust doesn’t mean we distrust our employees or other users, but that we must protect them, and our network not based on physical presence but by other means.