Fighting Cyber Attacks with the Zero-Trust Model

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2851517/network-security-needs-big-data.html

In our rapidly evolving digital age, we have come to know that security is a big issue. In the last year, 60% of organizations targeted fell victim to a cyber attack. These breaches are a prominent side effect of our growing digital age but we should be working to make sure this risk is minimized. One option to improving our security situation is the Zero-Trust Model (ZTM). While older models worked to “trust but verify” data coming in, the ZTM works under the assumption that every file is a potential threat and works to inspect it. ZTM also says companies should be analyzing internal network traffic and giving employees very limited access to the network. So far, many organizations have jumped on board with at least a few of ZTM’s main concepts.

However, “ZTM will generate enormous volumes of real-time data, the analysis of which will have IT managers drowning in log files, vulnerability scan reports, alerts, reports and more.” This means a large amount of big data analytics will be needed to assist in gaining a more comprehensive view of the company’s security landscape. Furthermore, big data will be changing the nature of computer network security, ” including network monitoring, the authentication and authorization of users, identity management, fraud detection, and systems of governance, risk and compliance. Big data will also change the nature of the security controls, such as conventional firewalls, anti-malware and data loss prevention.”

Finally, in the upcoming years, data analysis tools will be evolving to further advance the capabilities of security models, meaning there is great opportunity for companies, new and old, to come out and introduce new products.

Questions to Consider:

1. There are obvious gains to adopting ZTM, but what are the risks? Risks associated with big data?

2. Why have companies been victimized in the first place? Should they try to improve already existing measures or implement new ones before applying the stricter ZTM concepts?