Zero Trust
What is Zero Trust?
“Zero Trust” is all in the name. Instead of assuming internal traffic within the network is trusted and “safe” for permitted access, Zero Trust eliminates automatic access for any source – internal or external. To guide organizations in their Zero Trust journey, Forrester Research developed the Zero Trust eXtended (ZTX) framework, comprised of seven components of an enterprise ecosystem where Zero Trust principles should be applied.
“Forrester recently concluded that Zero Trust can reduce an organization’s risk exposure by 37% or more. But it also found that organizations deploying Zero Trust can reduce security costs by 31% and realize millions of dollars in savings in their overall IT security budgets.”
Operationalize Your Zero Trust Strategy
with Micro-Segmentation
Focusing primarily on perimeter security and firewalls is no longer enough to prevent breaches. Many organizations are now adopting the Zero Trust security mindset of “Never trust, always verify.”
Trust nothing inside or outside your perimeter.
Verify everything – every user and every device – that tries to connect to your systems and applications.
Anticipate a breach and focus on how to prevent bad actors from moving laterally inside your environments.
This approach shifts the conversation from detection and prevention to containment and remediation – and as a result, micro-segmentation has become a foundational component for Zero Trust security.
Beyond the Hype: Conversations on Mobilizing Zero Trust – featuring Chase Cunningham,
Forrester principal analyst serving security & risk professionals
Illumio is a Leader in
The Forrester Wave™:
Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q4 2019
Receives highest score in current offering
How Illumio ASP Aligns with the ZTX Framework
Data
Network
Workloads
People
Devices
Visibility and Analytics
Automation and Orchestration
Manageability and Usability
APIs
Data
Network
Workloads
People
Devices
Visibility and Analytics
Automation and Orchestration
Manageability and Usability
APIs
5 Practical Steps to Enable Zero Trust Security
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Use a real-time map to identify your high-value systems, connections, and dependencies
Gaining deep visibility into users, devices, applications, and more is a critical first step of Zero Trust. Illumio ASP enables you to identify and visualize high-value systems and critical applications with an interactive, real-time map.
- Map the connections and flows of sensitive data across networks, workloads, and applications.
- Use the insights you gain from application dependency mapping to break down organizational silos and engage business and IT stakeholders and application owners in designing Zero Trust microperimeters.
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Architect and test your Zero Trust security policies
Zero Trust requires coordinating policies governing all of your internal defenses. Illumio ASP allows you to model and test those policies to ensure security and business continuity once it’s enforcement time.
- Architect the optimal micro-segmentation strategy for Zero Trust security.
- Visualize and test policies before enforcement without breaking applications.
- Select and apply the right level of segmentation across heterogeneous compute environments.
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Enforce Zero Trust with segmentation that's decoupled from your network
Effective segmentation is a core capability of Zero Trust. The key to segmenting down to a microperimeter level and maintaining policy consistently across your heterogenous environments? Decouple segmentation from your network and underlying infrastructure for a fast, safe, and effective approach to Zero Trust segmentation.
- Use a whitelisting model to define the authorized connections between workloads and ensure policy implementation is always default-deny.
- Ensure security policies always follow the workloads and adapt as the workload environment changes.
- Secure data in transit without requiring any changes or upgrade to the existing network infrastructure.
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Use vulnerability mapping for a risk-based approach to patching
Zero Trust is aimed at reducing your organization’s risk exposure. Illumio can help security teams prioritize patching strategies with a vulnerability map that enables you to measure – and mitigate – the risk and exposure of unpatched vulnerabilities.
- Overlay third-party vulnerability scan data with the application dependency map to visualize and identify an attacker’s potential pathways.
- Identify highest-risk workloads and applications based on vulnerability and East-West exposure and prioritize patching accordingly.
- Use segmentation as a compensating control for open vulnerabilities when patching is not possible.
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Orchestrate IT operations and security processes to accelerate remediation and recovery
Automation and orchestration are key components of Zero Trust. Illumio publishes and maintains a rich set of REST APIs so you can interface with Illumio ASP and orchestrate IT operations, security incident responses, and security operations workflows.
- Integration with orchestration tools bakes in security in the provisioning and remediation process.
- Quickly identify orphaned and mislabeled workloads to clean up configuration management databases (CMDBs).
- Integration with security information and event management (SIEM) tools to orchestrate a security incident response.
October 16 2019
“We did a security audit due to HIPAA. When we saw how much was involved in setting up traditional firewalls between our applications/servers...we discovered micro-segmentation. Illumio was by far the best choice."