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Is It Time For Zero-Trust Corporate Networks? (csoonline.com)
An anonymous reader quotes CSO:
"The strategy around Zero Trust boils down to don't trust anyone. We're talking about, 'Let's cut off all access until the network knows who you are. Don't allow access to IP addresses, machines, etc. until you know who that user is and whether they're authorized,'" says Charlie Gero, CTO of Enterprise and Advanced Projects Group at Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, Mass... The Zero Trust model of information security basically kicks to the curb the old castle-and-moat mentality that had organizations focused on defending their perimeters while assuming everything already inside didn't pose a threat and therefore was cleared for access. Security and technology experts say the castle-and-moat approach isn't working. They point to the fact that some of the most egregious data breaches happened because hackers, once they gained access inside corporate firewalls, were able move through internal systems without much resistance...
Experts say that today's enterprise IT departments require a new way of thinking because, for the most part, the castle itself no longer exists in isolation as it once did. Companies don't have corporate data centers serving a contained network of systems but instead today typically have some applications on-premises and some in the cloud with users -- employees, partners, customers -- accessing applications from a range of devices from multiple locations and even potentially from around the globe... The Zero Trust approach relies on various existing technologies and governance processes to accomplish its mission of securing the enterprise IT environment. It calls for enterprises to leverage micro-segmentation and granular perimeter enforcement based on users, their locations and other data to determine whether to trust a user, machine or application seeking access to a particular part of the enterprise... Zero Trust draws on technologies such as multifactor authentication, Identity and Access Management (IAM), orchestration, analytics, encryption, scoring and file system permissions. Zero Trust also calls for governance policies such as giving users the least amount of access they need to accomplish a specific task.
"Most organizational IT experts have been trained, unfortunately, to implicitly trust their environments," says the chief product officer at an IAM/PIM solutions supplier.
"Everybody has been [taught] to think that the firewall is keeping the bad guys out. People need to adjust their mindset and understand that the bad actors are already in their environment."
Experts say that today's enterprise IT departments require a new way of thinking because, for the most part, the castle itself no longer exists in isolation as it once did. Companies don't have corporate data centers serving a contained network of systems but instead today typically have some applications on-premises and some in the cloud with users -- employees, partners, customers -- accessing applications from a range of devices from multiple locations and even potentially from around the globe... The Zero Trust approach relies on various existing technologies and governance processes to accomplish its mission of securing the enterprise IT environment. It calls for enterprises to leverage micro-segmentation and granular perimeter enforcement based on users, their locations and other data to determine whether to trust a user, machine or application seeking access to a particular part of the enterprise... Zero Trust draws on technologies such as multifactor authentication, Identity and Access Management (IAM), orchestration, analytics, encryption, scoring and file system permissions. Zero Trust also calls for governance policies such as giving users the least amount of access they need to accomplish a specific task.
"Most organizational IT experts have been trained, unfortunately, to implicitly trust their environments," says the chief product officer at an IAM/PIM solutions supplier.
"Everybody has been [taught] to think that the firewall is keeping the bad guys out. People need to adjust their mindset and understand that the bad actors are already in their environment."
Defense in depth is a very valuable concept, but "zero trust" seems like it is taking things too far. Do you not trust a printer to print your document unless you, as the end user (or executive officer) have verified its firmware is authorized by the manufacturer and has not been subverted? What if it prints your document but injects errors or sends a copy to a foreign espionage organization? How does a server decide whether to trust a request from a computer where a known user is logged in, rather than rejecting it as a web browser that got subverted by malware or a new-fangled kind of attack ad?
Zero-trust corporate networks limits exposure to risk, which can cause you to not be able to reap the rewards of taking the risk. It is important to always take calculated risks in order to progress. If a person is afraid of the sun and they do not step into it, this can cause them to also not feel the warm sunlight. People want to preserve themselves and stand in the shade, but this will not allow them to prosper. An essay writer [myessaywriter.net] will always recognize this when they are writing. A writer needs to take chances to improve, and then they will reap the rewards of improving themselves.
Until the network gets in the way of an executive doing something executive-y or costs too much. Then it's right back to status quo.
The question "Is It Time For Zero-Trust Corporate Networks?" has been faced for decades, so how is Zero Trust any different? It seems to be based on two well known concepts: authentication (are you who you say you are?) and authorization (now that I know who you are, are allowed to do what you are trying to do?). The authentication and authorization model has been used to varying degrees for decades in Federated Naming systems, LDAP, Active Directory, NIS+. etc. etc. So, the question should be "How is Zero Trust new?" when we already understand the basics?
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How the hell are you going to do business like that? Do you have any idea how many companies don't have IT staff who understand TCP/IP networking but somehow are in charge of it? How much do you think it would cost when your network constantly has to be reconfigured to allow connectivity by IP and/or expiring certs rather than passwords?
Unless highly skilled IT workers get a hell of a lot cheaper then this is pie in the sky. The cost of a breach is still less than the cost of wages needed to keep a scheme like this working _and_ have a functional network.
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The truth is that almost any organization that isn't heavily regulated against doing so is putting at least _some_ data outside the corporate firewall in public clouds. Even if the official IT department doesn't realize it, it's definitely happening. It's rare these days to see companies with a defined perimeter that nothing leaks out of. Anyone who's doing Office 365 is doing Azure AD and logging in from remote. The days of securing a fixed boundary and trusting everything that makes it in are numbered.
Almost every corporate environment I've been in assumes that once something is behind the firewall, either VPNed in or connecting directly, it's trusted. That's a very bad assumption, and I think that's where "zero trust" networks come in. Even if it's degrees, like "I'm not going to implicitly trust every device that plugs into an internal switchport," it's better than nothing. Doing it right is hard though...and there are a lot of companies that just don't want to re-architect their networks to accomodate a posture of limited trust.
Don't allow access to IP addresses, machines, etc. until you know who that user is and whether they're authorized,'" says Charlie Gero, ...
How about: "Treat your internal wiring like it's the wild-and-wooly Internet. Have both the the boxes and the applications/services - encrypt everything and authenticate each other before exchanging information."? (Apps authenticate both the other app and the box it runs on because a corrupted box can get into the app.)
Then you don't have to trust all the other boxes or the wiring between them.
It also means that it's not such a big deal if somebody manages to hang an extra box on your net or inserts it in a cable. The most it can do is use your bandwidth to talk to the outside rather than use its own radio, listen to its surroundings with its own sensors, or DoS what ever is going through the cable into which it's inserted. That means you can let your employees bring in their own equipment without compromising your firewall (or compromise your operation more than a tape recorder, camera, or box with sensors would do without the netk access).
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However, security must also acknowledge reality. The reality is that so long as you empower your employees to do, well, much of anything, they will become potential vectors of an attack. Lock them down to be harmless, they will often also be unable to be productive.
It is worth noting that many of these attacks that happen still do happen because someone dangled part of the information outside the defenses. An improperly set up cloud storage or service has become a frequent source of compromise. These attacks would be rarer in the 'castle and moat' because they happened inside a more protected network. Sure, they shouldn't have been configured that way even internally, but reality is *someone* is going to do something like this, and better for it to be mitigated than in the open.
So the lesson is sure, be as vigiliant as you already *should* have been, but also that going out of the moat is part of the problem, not that the moat is losing efficacy compared to before.
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So my work set up OTP authentication to get in remotely.
First time around, hadware tokens. Problem: people kept losing them.
Eventually, migrate to OTP for phone use. Problem, people would forget their phones.
Ultimate solution, a website to generate the token that's publicly accessible, that just accepts the same single username/password that they were trying to get away from in the first place.
Anyone in the industry knows *exactly* what'll happen when you inconvenience people with onerous security, they bypass it. Have no viable way to exchange large files? Those files *will* end up publicly shared on google drive. Refuse to set up an internet facing service for some department in a timely fashion? Someone in that department will buy an AWS instance and just do it themself, even if they use a few dollars of their personal money.
Security is about more than locking down access to stuff, it's about facilitating work to be done securely, but within reason. Sometimes that means doing something that isn't perhaps *as* locked down as you would like, but it is better than the alternative.
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Yes, this is the whole "shadow IT" thing. Official IT falls short, people wanting to get work done will start supporting each other in creative ways. *Those* well-meaning efforts end up causing the network to be more at risk than if the IT department were more "risky" and actually helped work get done.
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It's not new to IT, it's "new" to corporate management and C-level, who always complain when any security inconveniences them or their secretaries.
I thin you missed the " Don't allow access to IP addresses, machines, etc. until you know who that user is and whether they're authorized" part. It's not "zero trust" it's "zero trust until authenticated". Authenticate devices plugged into the network before you allow them to talk to other network devices. I learned about this about 15 years ago in Networking 101. That's why It should use a Radius server with 802.1X, created back in 2001.
Charlie Gero: ~"Everyone should catch up with the times and start using technology from 2001 designed to help prevent many of the issues involving securing internet networks."
The only reason I can see for this (old, bad) idea to be pushed again is that some people need to create the next hype to keep their own business-model alive.
On the actual subject, if you really want every system to be individually administrated and fully secured, then go ahead and run this model. For a small network, with, say, less than ten computers this may even work. But even there it can be excessively expensive. In actual reality, any network where people think about a perimeter does need that perimeter. It needs to be implemented right, of course. For example, the only network access must be via that trusted network (enforced VPN if you are not on-site) and software must come from that trusted network as well. Also, any user active anywhere must be identified reliably (password _plus_ chipcard, e.g.) and the trusted network must, of course, be divided into zones with effective firewalling between them. Data import must go via secured channels, no just plugging in an USB stick. So not only do you need that perimeter urgently, it is by far not enough. It is just one element.
Now, this is very expensive to run and maintain. I know that. But unless you have no secrets and no IT-based business processes to protect, this is your only chance to avoid a hugely expensive disaster in the long run.
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The summary sucks, so I can see how you might get that idea. It's very much NOT talking about jump boxes, though.
It's more about until you log in to your computer (via Active Directory / LDAP), you can't access sensitive internal resources. Once you're logged in, the DBA gets access to the database, while the UI developer doesn't. It's the idea that just because you have an internal IP address doesn't mean you should have access to every internal resource.
The summary sucks, so I understand why it was unclear.
A printer is a great example. This is about networking. The idea is to get away from the "security happens at the firewall" model, the idea if anything that has an internal IP address should automatically get access to every internal resource. In the firewall model, the printer can connect to your databases, and can send data out to the internet. Does that make sense to allow that?
The Zero Trust model is about WHO, a logged in user, rather an IP addresses. In other words, *logging in* to the network gets you access to the stuff you have access to. It's the idea that just because you have an internal IP address doesn't mean you should have access to every internal resource. The printer is inside the network, but it doesn't get access to the databases, or HR system, or anything else. Also the printer doesn't have access to the internet. Inside the network or not, access is allowed based on who is logged in, not just anyone with a local IP.
Regarding a logged-in user with a malware infested PC, the network itself can't prevent ALL damage from that, but the Zero Trust model limits the damage because the malware can only access the things that specific user accesses for their job. The marketing manager can't even ping the database, so if his PC is infected only marketing material is at risk, not the database, code repos, etc.
Zero trust is an obvious BOYD consequence. The only unexpected point is how long it took between the two concepts landing in corporate networks.
Once you get into a user's system you can do Active Directory attacks and legitimately escalate all the way to Domain Admin using tools such as BloodHound. There's also Kerberoasting and of course hash cracking once you've escalated on a system and run Mimikatz on it. Often you can just pass the hash and not even bother cracking them. All of this using legitimate credentials and "allowed" accesses within the scope of the users.
Sure this will keep a guy from plugging into an open ethernet jack and running all over the place, useful as part of defense in depth, but it's not a magic bullet.
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I can't remember how many times I heard people sit in staff meetings and argue against employing simple security practices when developing application using this excuse. You know what changed their minds? The time when some admin powered up a WinNT box sitting in an unused cubicle--inside the firewall--not realizing that it had been infected with Code Red and it DoSed several critical servers during month-end processing. Now their application design would likely have not had anything to do with protecting against Code Red, when they saw first-hand what can happen when the attacker is on the (supposedly) "clean" side of the firewall they finally figured it out.
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I've ran all my networks as zero trust systems, usually because the castle and moat system they call is managed by absolute morons.
Zero trust models were proposed decades ago. About 15 years ago the NSA/DoD security recommendations (When they started releasing SELinux) were all about securing your hosts from whatever was already running on it.
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802.1x is not new, and corporate NAC's / Radius / etc. are I thought pretty standard operating procedure to make sure some moron with a home PC doesn't wonder in and introduce crytolocker to the environment.
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First, I don't think most large corporate environments these days are castle & moat systems. If it is, it usually means that the company doesn't have more than one production facility, never did an M&A, no joint ventures, has no testing or R&D labs, hasn't been around for long, etc. Fragmentation naturally happens and it takes a lot of investment to keep things standardized.
So the largest security hole in these systems has always been the methane production units. Most corporations have all the latest jargon, policies, and governance document repositories. The problem is that almost none of them follow the spirit of the policy or even read said documents.
Examples: User access reviews are done but its basically a checklist of 1. Is this user with company. 2. Did they appear on last list. 3. Do I recognize it as someone who shouldn't be on this list. There is no validation of if person needs the access or have they been using it recently, etc.
Many times, rather than take the 2 hours extra in onboarding,companies just copy a co-workers security profile; giving the new hire access to random stuff that they know nothing about.
How many companies do security minded training for employees? Most appear to just explain their policies, enforcement rules, and repercussions.
How many companies have a process to patch a distributed information system (ie: laptops) against something like WannaCry (and no patch management isn't the solution)?
Why is the HR tech running around with real confidential information on his encrypted laptop?
Most of the above is the human component taking the easy road to compensate for the poorly funded tech component (lack of training, proper network bandwidth, lack of documentation, lack of testing info etc). But its not about lack of money, because we spend tons of money on all this technology with new labels. We spends tons of money on repairing and rebuilding stuff that got lost or hosed. We spend tons on writing the legal contracts and policy documents.
The problem is that no one really cares about security. Or else we would invest in hardening the weakest link: the human. The game is about passing the dice around and making it easier & quicker. Eventually someone has to roll and eventually one of them will roll bad. At which point the rest of us feel good because it was THEIR fault, not ours. We remove the unlucky one and start the game again.