We often highlight an important philosophy, a particular mindset that should be taken when dealing with security. Organizations shouldn't sit around wondering whether or not they'll fall victim to a cyber attack or data breach. Instead, it's important to actually anticipate one. Don't ponder the "if" but ask yourself "when."

Statistics aren't on the "will it or won't it" side, either: ccording to a recent report, almost 60% of organizations have experienced a data breach in the past three years.

Information is power, and malicious actors and cyber criminals are interested in your data. And if we're following the statistics mentioned as well as the current state of cybersecurity, organizations need to take more charge in protecting their data. Not only are outsiders a danger, but insider threats have free reign. Organizations should trust no one.

"Trust but verify" and the perimeter security approach no longer cut it in the modern security environment. The time has come for better, more effective concepts and strategies.

In with "**Zero Trust.**"

In recent years, a large number of organizations have turned to the **Zero Trust security approach**, and the old castle-and-moat concept is getting pushed aside to make room for a "**never trust, always verify**" **mindset** that Zero Trust model holds at its core.

What is Zero Trust security?

Created by John Kindervag while working at Forrester Research, Zero Trust was coined once traditional security models demonstrated they were no longer enough for the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. In the traditional castle-and-moat model, the perimeter was defined and everything inside was trusted, while outsiders had a hard time getting in.

But since we're all aware that there is no such thing as absolute security, what will happen if an attacker does get into the network? If everyone inside is trusted by default, there's no way to predict how much damage attackers can do if they're able to access any part of the network.

What makes the traditional approach appear even more outdated is that today, a "perimeter" is no longer strictly defined. Organizations aren't storing data in one data center with a contained network. Now, they store their data both on-premises and in the cloud, and that data is accessed through numerous different devices and locations.

Data-driven protection and data-centric security architecture are the foundations of the Zero Trust security model, which tells us that we cannot trust anything either outside or inside of the network—and that anyone who tries to access your network needs to be verified in advance.

What does Zero Trust focus on?

There are a few main trust components to the Zero Trust network:

**Data**: As we said above, Zero Trust starts with data, and is a data-driven security model. In order to protect their data, organizations need to have visibility into it as well as their assets and who can access them, must classify it to designate which data is considered sensitive, and assign the least amount of privileges as possible. Monitoring data and data access will allow the organization to better understand network threats and respond to them more effectively, without relying solely on risk management.

**Users**: Unfortunately, humans remain the weakest link in cybersecurity. Even without malicious intent, human error can be made by anyone and at any time. That's why it's important to strictly monitor, limit and verify each user who tries to access the organization's resources, both inside and outside of the network. Deploy solutions that will help secure and verify each user, and strive to eradicate any possibility of human error with strong password policies, 2FA and MFA, and the like.

**Network**: Micro-segmentation and access and network restrictions will help stop attackers from gaining access to the network, hamper their lateral movement if they're inside the network, and defeat their ability to exfiltrate data. Ens...