BrainBlog for Gigamon by Eric Newcomer
Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series. For part one, see, “Be Sure to Whack Your Cybersecurity Blind Spots.”
Introduction: Closing the Information Gap
Dead reckoning is how 18th-century sailing ship captains estimated their longitudinal position in the open ocean.
Dead reckoning relies on speed and time calculations from a known point, but it is subject to approximation errors and can be off by dozens or even hundreds of miles.
Similarly, the Zero Trust journey requires complete and accurate information about where you are starting from and exactly how you will get there. Approximation won’t cut it.
The Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline gives you the packet-level data you need to be sure you can trust your network. Without that level of detail, you are just approximating your position in the Zero Trust journey.
What Is Zero Trust?
Zero Trust is a concept, not a technology. Its basic tenet is not to trust anything in your environment that could lead to a breach or incident. Technology is essential to achieving Zero Trust, but technology by itself cannot tell you whether you have achieved it, let alone whether you can maintain it.
Achieving Zero Trust is a process relying on frameworks and methodology. No single solution is right for everyone. You must go through the steps and pay sufficient attention to Zero Trust to be confident that you have achieved the goal.
Frameworks such as those published by NIST, CISA, SABSA, and OWASP help by giving you lists of things to evaluate and the context within which to understand whether you have adequately identified and addressed your risks and vulnerabilities.
Zero Trust means evaluating and remediating risks at every layer of the stack, every network communication point, every application/integration point along the way, every access to the database, and back again.
The Challenge Is Bigger Because of the Internet
Cyber threats have expanded from targeting and harming computers, networks, and smartphones — to people, cars, railways, planes, power grids, and anything with a network connection.
Data is the building block of the digitized economy, and the opportunities for innovation and malice around it are incalculable.
Estimates have half the world’s data in public clouds by now, and with generative AI, the need for data and processing will continue to grow unabated and with no end in sight. While the world focuses on the benefits of these technological advances, cybercriminals focus on exploiting the new attack surfaces.
It’s an arms race — the criminals are investing heavily in the latest technology and building tremendously powerful data centers, intent on infiltrating organizations for financial gain.
The moment you let your guard down is the moment you leave yourself open to attack. And the network serves as the gateway for attacks.
Read the entire BrainBlog here.
