What is Software-defined perimeter and Zero Trust?

In the digital age, experts are constantly on the search for the best model of information security.

While most improvements constitute tweaks or upgrades to existing paradigms, some designs have required a complete break with the past.

Two models, in particular, exemplify this.

Defining the Problem

The need for this ‘break with the past’ is really only appreciated in light of the major challenges administrators face with traditional security approaches.

Conventional security models, those based on firewalls, IDS, and the like, operate on the outdated assumption that everything on the inside of an organization’s network can be trusted. The weaknesses of this traditional fixed perimeter model have become more and more obvious due to one particular fact: users inside the perimeter are granted incredibly high levels of trust. Attacks to the network that relies on the manipulation of these trusted users such as phishing and other social engineering schemes have only served to highlight the drawbacks to the external perimeter model. Furthermore, as the technological landscape has developed, this danger has also increased. New modes of business operations have contributed to the overall risk. Companies are no longer centralized as they once were and are forced to diversify the locations of their applications from on-premises to the cloud. A single perimeter is no longer able to provide the necessary security.

Considering these factors, the consensus of experts that most data loss is the result of insider users should come as no surprise.

What is Software-defined perimeter and Zero Trust?

A software-defined perimeter is a security approach based on theories developed by the Defense Department’s cyber agency back in 2007.  As applied practically, Software-defined perimeter or SDP is a solution to dealing with the insider threat left unaddressed by the perimeter models.  SDP gives administrators the ability to deploy perimeters not just on the periphery but anywhere – in the cloud, on the internet, at a SOC, etc.   In an SDP-based approach, identity and device are verified before access to any application infrastructure is granted.

In a similar way, the Zero Trust model also seeks to take charge of the threat posed by the insider.  Based on the principle of “never trust, always verify”, Zero Trust promotes that even those already granted access to the system are not acting–either intentionally or by error–to compromise it.

Next-generation Smart DLP solution is the Data Loss Protection of the future. For companies and enterprises looking to shift from the old paradigm of cybersecurity to more robust approaches that take the insider into account,  Smart DLP is the answer.

By applying intelligent algorithms to data loss protection and nearly eliminating false positives, system administrators can keep a handle on the full range of activities that threaten enterprise data.