“Zero Trust” – not just what your parents thought when your buddy showed up on a Friday night, music blaring from his beat-up muscle car, and you responded to their query about evening plans with a with, “Nothing much. Trust us.”
Today, with the Internet rife with malware and ransomware, cyber attacks occurring every millisecond, breaches occurring from within organizations, too, “zero trust” describes the current, somewhat new approach to designing, deploying and managing IT networks.
The basic premise is that all network devices, and all parts of your system from edge to endpoint must come under scrutiny – and not be trusted – even if they were previously verified. Today’s diverse and highly distributed environments as so many connected parts, that it becomes harder and harder to put appropriate protocols and policies in place to protect everyone. It simply easier and more effective to trust no one. Hence the term, zero trust.
That’s an oversimplification, of course, but we invite you to read this blog from Cisco, our primary partner, to learn more. In it, you will also find the most recent Gartner report on the topic.
We hope you enjoy reading this network security installment. We look forward to connecting with you again next week. In the meantime, if you would like more information, or would like to consult with a Service Engineer, please contact us at [email protected] or (416) 429-0796 or 1.877.238.9944 (Toll Free).
I’m proud to share that Cisco has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q3 2020 report.
“Cisco pushes the Zero Trust envelope the right way,” according to The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Platform Providers, Q3 2020.
Through our Cisco Zero Trust platform approach we deliver innovative solutions that provide differentiated value, all while maintaining a radically simple approach to security. This has enabled our teams and partners to help tens of thousands of customers during this time of need, rapidly enabling organizations to continue their operations securely when it mattered most.
The impact the past six months have had on organizations cannot be overstated. In a matter of weeks, organizations experienced rapid transformation, moving to an all- or mostly-remote workforce and re-prioritizing business operations and resiliency. We understand that customers need our help now more than ever to navigate this new world.
The shift of the perimeter has been to this point gradual, but Cisco foresaw the road ahead and has been committed to providing security solutions to help customers on this journey. The company’s acquisition of Duo in 2018 is evidence of this commitment. The principles of zero trust were baked into Duo’s core product and ethos and have been fully integrated, providing solutions for the workforce to make sure users and devices can be trusted as they access systems remotely. This complements our workplace solutions designed to secure access to the network and what’s in the network, and our workload solutions that prevent unauthorized access within application environments irrespective of where they are hosted .
Cisco received the highest scores possible in the The Forrester WaveTM report in the criteria of market approach, ZTX advocacy, and ZTX vision and strategy. Members of our team are involved in workgroups such as the FIDO Alliance, developing standards for WebAuthn, and the committee that worked to define NIST’s SP 800-207: Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA) guidance. We launched a Zero Trust Strategy Service to help our customers with implementation plans around adopting zero trust.
Cisco was among the highest scores in the device security and the future state of zero-trust infrastructure criteria. Cisco has been committed to solving customer challenges and delivering security solutions, this is evidenced over the past year with product developments centered around dismantling the barriers of security and providing balance. Improved features and enhancements for endpoint security, network segmentation and micro-segmentation have been delivered across the portfolio, with the notable addition of SecureX for improved visibility, automation and orchestration.
“Reference customers spoke highly of the newly improved UIs for administrators and the ability of the system to leverage powerful internal analytics to push the control capabilities outside the perimeter all the way to the user and their devices,” the report notes.
We believe this recognition is a validation that our strategy and vision for customer-centric zero-trust security is working. I want to extend my gratitude to our teams and partners who work to deliver these solutions, and to our customers who trust us to help them operate securely. We won’t rest on our laurels. We’ll continue to work to provide simplified, secure solutions to help our customers achieve zero-trust security. We have a lot in the works. Stay tuned.
Learn More about Cisco Zero Trust and check out the full Forrester Report
