Zero Trust: The security paradigm for the modern organization

Illumio’s Zero Trust Segmentation is a foundational component of any Zero Trust architecture

Zero trust: the security paradigm for the modern organization

What is Zero Trust?

The attack surface is expanding and threat actors are getting increasingly sophisticated and targeted, with breaches ever more catastrophic.

Detection, response, and recovery are no longer sufficient - containment is essential.

Effective containment begins with an "assume breach" mindset which, in turn, drives a least-privilege approach to building security controls — this is Zero Trust.

Why Zero Trust now?

Accelerated adoption of digital services needs a security approach that is equally as agile.
Hyperconnectivity means that a single compromise can test the cyber resilience of the entire organization.
Business transformation makes an "assume trust" model obsolete.

The benefits of a Zero Trust solution

An assume breach mindset is imperative as the attack surface expands. Build a Zero Trust model and contain breaches with segmentation.

^$20
million
$20 million saved in app downtime
5
5 cyber disasters averted
14
14 digital transformation projects accelerated

An “assume breach” mentality delivers modern security

Starting with the premise that the unexpected can happen at any time drives the following behaviors

Visibility everywhere
to ensure that every interaction on the network is accounted for
Least-privilege access
to prevent unexpected breaches from propagating
Adaptability and consistency
to guarantee consistent network behavior everywhere
A proactive posture
to always be on the lookout for an attack

These are the principles of Zero Trust security and are essential in supporting modern business needs.

What is a Zero Trust architecture?

NIST defines the following tenets for any Zero Trust architecture:

Everything (data, users, devices, etc.) is considered to be a resource
All communications are secured regardless of location
Access to individual resources is granted on a per-session basis
Access to resources is governed by dynamic policy
Integrity and security posture of all enterprise-owned assets are monitored
Authentication and authorization are strictly enforced before access is granted
Constantly monitor the state and activity of resources to improve their security posture

Zero Trust Segmentation applies these tenets by:

Continually visualizing how workloads and devices are communicating
Creating granular policies that only allow wanted and necessary communication
Automatically isolating breaches by restricting lateral movement proactively or during an active attack

How Illumio helps

Starting with the premise that the unexpected can happen at any time drives the following behaviors

See and understand risk
Understand relationships and communications to map exposure risk of systems and data
Establish the right protection
Identify the right security posture and secure applications through least privilege policies
Respond to changes
Ensure Zero Trust security posture adapts to changes in your environment to maintain the least privilege state

“...one of the things you need to do post breach is take a Zero trust approach... Illumio actually gets you in front of the game because you already can establish a Zero trust environment.”

Jamie Rossato

Chief Information Security Officer
Lion

Read the story

Lion Co. employees inside a bottling factory discussing security.

"Illumio made it remarkably easy for us to design, build and operationalize a Zero Trust architecture with massive scale."

Edwin Leong

Data Security Architect,
MGM China

"Together with Illumio, we are helping our customers adopt Zero Trust solutions that enable them to address today’s complex cybersecurity challenges."

Michael Wolkowicz

VP of Cyber Security for the Americas,
BT Security

"Illumio is a strategic partner in our Zero Trust journey...Illumio Core will only further our ability to create and enforce modern security policy and transition parts of our business to the cloud with confidence and at hyper-scale."

Jessica Ferguson

CISO,
DocuSign