Business leaders are challenged to protect corporate communications that flow over multiple interfaces, involve at least three different user parties and must comply with good governance and regulation.
This is why a zero trust network architecture (ZTNA) should be a priority, said Andy Kennedy, senior solutions engineering manager, UK, Ireland and South Africa, at Cloudflare.
At the 4 annual ITWeb Security Summit hosted this week in Johannesburg, Kennedy explained that user parties – including employees, contractors, client customers, guests and general internet population – all engage with an organisation and communicate over various interfaces.
These include email, file sharing directory services, proprietary and SaaS applications, collaboration tools like MS-Teams and Google Meet, cloud storage services and more.
All these must be protected, said Kennedy, and this presents organisations with a conundrum: they need to secure communication flows but may lack the necessary controls.
“Controls must be applied to internet and external bound communications, but some organisations don’t have the luxury to start immediately with implementation.”
This is why cloud security platforms have emerged—to relieve organisations from the burden of managing all infrastructure and devices, including software patches and more.
In addition, the zero trust approach provides a way to externalise all applications and services, and apply the requisite controls. To effectively support modern hybrid work environments, network architecture must evolve from traditional VPN models to zero trust principles,
“However, independent research shows that between 60 and 70% of organisations have started adopting zero trust principles, but only half have completed the process,” said Kennedy.
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