The coronavirus pandemic has led many companies to adopt a remote work regime with the safety of their employees in mind. However, the action left cybersecurity at risk with the strong wave of attacks plaguing various sectors. With that, a new security model is gaining momentum, the Zero Trust Edge (ZTE).
According to a report released by Forrester, the preference for ZTE has emerged as a way for organizations to unify network and security infrastructure, as well as protect and enable remote workers. ADVERTISING
While VPNs were quickly adopted to ease the stress of remote security during the pandemic, more than half of executives felt that purchasing VPN licenses during the lockdown was a temporary measure to keep people working from home, says David Holmes, senior research analyst. from Forrester.
“For 25 years, we’ve just laid Band-Aids on top of Band-Aids, hoping to stop the cybersecurity bleeding, but the carnage gets worse every year. The Zero Trust Edge (ZTE) model is more secure Internet access for organizations’ physical locations and remote employees,” Holmes wrote.
How Zero Trust Edge (ZTE) Works
ZTE is a virtual network that spans the Internet and can be accessed directly from every major city in the world. Users are identified and authorized from ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access).
“Zero Trust Edge protects enterprises from customers, employees, contractors, and devices in remote locations that connect across WAN fabrics to a more caustic, open, dangerous, and turbulent environment,” states the Forrester report.
According to the report, the ZTE concept is a solution that “securely connects and transports traffic, using Zero Trust access principles, in and out of remote sites, leveraging primarily cloud-based network and security services.”
“Both networking and security teams have been struggling to meet the new requirements of using the cloud and supporting home workers because the old approaches were based on dedicated on-premises software or hardware devices, unreliable local controls, and policy repositories, limiting the hardware-centric approach and breaking down security and network silos,” said Holmes.
The Forrester analyst explains that ZTE should be adopted gradually, as companies stop using the emergency tools they deployed at the beginning of the pandemic and implement new systems.
According to Holmes, another name circulates in the market, “Secure Access Services Edge” (SASE), corresponding to the same model. However, for Forrester analysts, it was necessary to highlight “Zero Trust” in the name.