Zero Trust vs. Traditional Network Security: Key Differences

Principaux enseignements

• Zero Trust eliminates all implicit trust across an organization to reduce the risk of account compromise.
• Traditional perimeter-based security models fail to prevent lateral movement once attackers are inside.
• Zero Trust enhances security team visibility over network security, helping to protect cloud and hybrid deployment models.
• Segmenting networks and enforcing least-privilege access helps to reduce the total scope of breaches.
• Zero Trust platforms simplify security management while enhancing security posture.

How Zero Trust Works in Practice

Zero trust is founded on the main principle of ‘never trust, always verify.’ What this means in action is that any time an employee connects to a business network, your system would automatically trigger a process through which they can authenticate their identity. Instead of just blindly trusting that an employee on their account is actually the person they say they are, zero trust makes them go through additional checks to prove that reality.

From a security perspective, this core principle is underpinned by a few different mechanisms that help to make it more effective:

• Least Privilege Access: Businesses will ensure that every user and employee device only has the minimum possible level of access to complete its assigned tasks. Locking down company assets and networks with more intense permission restrictions helps to build a solid foundation for zero trust systems.
• NIST Standards: NIST SP 800-207 is one of the central guidance documents for Zero Trust Architecture. It describes general deployment approaches and implementation considerationsthat businesses can use to implement zero trust, including multi-factor authentication controls, segmentation, and continuous monitoring.
• Assume Breach: When security professionals assume that a malicious threat may already be inside their systems, they are more inclined to take steps to ensure that all lateral movement is minimized. Doing so reduces the total scope any attack can have within your business, helping to prevent major breaches and promoting the better management of your security posture.

Continuously validating users, implementing strong security standards, and focusing on an identity-first security system are the foundations of creating a strong zero trust network. 

Traditional Network Security vs Zero Trust: Why Traditional Security Models Fall Short

Traditional security models tend to focus on creating the strongest possible perimeter. By building up layers of security with pare-feux, logiciel malveillant prevention, and threat detection, these models aim to prevent threats before they enter a network. While, on paper, this is a sound approach, it fails to account for the fact that security breaches can happen to even the most prepared systems.

Even one small human error, like clicking on a phishing link, could be the event that allows a threat to break through the traditional security barrier. With such an externally focused system in place, enterprises are then left more vulnerable when there’s a threat within. This is especially the case when traditional security networks are unsegmented, allowing one threat to move laterally through the system and breach into other areas. 

A Zero Trust approach understands that security needs to be a continuous effort, one that goes beyond just focusing on egress and ingress points and instead takes a holistic approach to keeping networks safe. To do this, zero trust completely eliminates the notion of implicit trust. Even if a user has previously connected to company resources, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to do so again.

Mechanisms like continuous user authentication and network segmentation aim to prevent attackers from creating prolonged and extensive attacks. Zero trust networks don’t completely abandon the security perimeter approach but rather supplement it with inward-facing policies and technologies that help to ensure your company remains secure in a holistic fashion.

Benefits of Zero Trust

With zero trust, employees who want to connect to company networks or resources must verify their identity, typically through MFA or another similar authentication system. By imposing this simple rule, any threats that have already bypassed your security perimeter cannot penetrate further into the network. 

When combined with the other holistic systems that zero trust puts in place, it leads to an enormous range of benefits for companies that integrate it:

• Improved Support for Hybrid Work: Businesses that use zero trust are able to move to remote work or hybrid work scenarios with confidence. The potential threat of a stolen device or an unknown connection is significantly reduced because no user is ever implicitly trusted. Continuous authentication and device posture checking help to ensure that only real, approved users can access your sensitive business resources. Considering 88% of businesses support hybrid work models, this approach is essential. 
• Reduced Management Complexity: Zero trust networks consolidate several different traditional security products into one holistic platform. Businesses can use zero trust networks to simplify their IT infrastructure while improving it, offering both an operational and cost-effective benefit for companies.
• Cross-Systems Monitoring: Over the past few years, businesses have continually expanded their attack surfaces to integrate new systems, platforms, and technologies. Zero trust requires granular monitoring of these systems, allowing security teams to generate and collect more data on employee interactions with business resources. Not only does this allow for continual verification to prevent account takeovers, but the larger volume of data also lets security teams hone in on potential anomalies and add more telemetry to incident management tracking. 
• Reduced Scope of Breaches: Part of building a zero trust network is segmenting company networks to move away from singular network strategies. By creating smaller network compartments, the total scope of access that any one user can interact with is significantly reduced. This zero trust policy means that even if an account were compromised, they wouldn’t have nearly the same level of access as was the case with traditional security tools. By reducing the scope of account access, security teams can significantly limit the total negative potential of any one breach.

Across the board, the vast range of benefits that zero trust offers to companies alongside their existing security controls makes this an attractive option.

Top Considerations for Implementing Zero Trust

There are numerous options for businesses that are looking to implement zero trust into their security posture. But the transition to zero trust is as much a strategic change as a technical one. With that in mind, here are some top considerations to make when implementing zero trust:

• Intégration : A zero trust solution should be easy to implement into your existing security posture. Any major restructuring or architectural shifts may introduce unnecessary risks.
• Cloud Coverage: Any zero trust solution needs to expand to cover your entire network, rather than just your core systems. If your business uses third-party applications or relies on cloud technology, then your zero trust network must cover these as well.
• Encryption and Data Protection: Where possible, follow leading security recommendations, like using encryption at rest and during transit to prevent unnecessary data exposure. 
• Couple Identity Validation with Data Collection: Although a zero trust network primarily exists to improve your security posture, it’s also an invaluable opportunity to collect more data about how employees interact with your business, what assets are accessed, and how data flows through your organization. Coupling identity checks with closer monitoring will provide your security teams with the data they need to better understand your entire network ecosystem and better protect it.

Focus on Value: Zero trust networks should innovate your existing architecture, bringing something new that helps better protect your systems. Look to partner with solutions that offer a range of new risk reduction features to your company to get the most from zero trust beyond just identity verification.

Maximize Your Security with Check Point SASE

As organizations have increasingly expanded beyond a neatly confined security perimeter, traditional network security solutions no longer effectively protect entire companies. Businesses need to shift to a unified security platform that delivers advanced threat prevention across all attack surfaces.

Check Point SASE offers a zero trust, cloud-first platform that enforces leading security practices across secure web access, firewall-as-a-service, cloud applications, and ZTNA. It applies identity-driven policies consistently across a company’s users, devices, locations, and platforms, actively reducing its attack surface without adding complexity to security management. 

Backed by IA ThreatCloud with over 150,000 connected networks to detect and neutralize novel threats, Check Point SASE will give your team complete confidence in your cyber security. From achieving full visibility to regaining control of your sprawling attack surface, Check Point SASE is with you every step of the way.

Learn more or Demander une démonstration to see how Check Point SASE can improve your organization’s security.