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Cybersecurity As A Service, What Is It? How Does It Work?

Industrial cybersecurity leaders are making considerable headway,
In today's digital age, cyber security is paramount for businesses and individuals alike. From basic passwords and encryption to more advanced strategies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, it's important to understand the latest tactics to protect yourself from cyber threats.

What exactly is Zero Trust?
Zero Trust is a security architecture that requires all users, both inside and outside an organization's network, to be verified, approved and continuously audited for security configuration and posture before gaining or retaining access to applications and data. Zero Trust assumes that there is no traditional network perimeter. Networks can be on-premises, in the cloud, or a combination or mix of both, with resources and employees located anywhere.

For today's modern digital transformation, Zero Trust is a framework for protecting infrastructure and data. It uniquely addresses today's enterprise issues, such as protecting remote workers, hybrid cloud deployments and ransomware attacks. While many vendors have tried to define Zero Trust on their own, there are a number of standards from recognized organizations that can help you tailor Zero Trust to your organization. Cybersecurity has become a major task for organizations with critical infrastructure due to increasing cyber threats and regulatory requirements.

Leader in industrial cybersecurity,
The gold standard for threat containment and blocking is a zero-trust security architecture, but there have been many doubts about the viability of zero-trust in operational technology systems (OT) with a mix of legacy and new equipment. Despite this pessimism, industrial cybersecurity executives are making significant progress, according to a Wakefield Research survey.

88 percent of cybersecurity executives at OT have already made efforts to implement zero-trust. That's according to a survey of 250 cybersecurity professionals in the energy, aerospace, port operations, transportation, utilities, and retail and warehousing industries. Remarkably, 58 percent have found a way to achieve Zero Trust without having to upgrade their technology, which would normally be a difficult, disruptive and expensive task for any industry organisation.

"Leaders in OT, IT and cybersecurity have had a difficult few years. It's difficult to reevaluate how to handle cybersecurity for operations, and the belief that they need to rip and replace technology only makes things worse. Fortunately, this persistent misconception seems to be fading, according to Duncan Greatwood, CEO of Xage.

"Leaders in OT, IT and cybersecurity have had a difficult few years. It's difficult to reevaluate the way they handle cybersecurity for operations, and the belief that they need to rip and replace technology only makes things worse. Fortunately, this persistent misconception seems to be fading, according to Duncan Greatwood, CEO of Xage.

The industry sector as a whole is learning that there are better ways to move forward, but the other half risks falling behind on implementation plans as a result. Infrastructure operators and the most vulnerable infrastructure in our country will be significantly better off if this information gap about the most useful techniques for implementing Zero Trust is addressed.

It is possible and inevitable to have zero confidence in the operation. There is no doubt that operations are moving toward zero confidence. Some are moving faster than others, but nearly half still see complete replacement of their current systems as the only viable option.

Here is a summary of the study's key conclusions:

  1. All OT cybersecurity executives intend to implement Zero Trust.
  2. 58 percent of respondents have found ways to achieve Zero Trust without overhauling their technology. However, 42 percent are vulnerable to longer implementation times and higher costs.
  3. 93 percent believe Zero Trust adoption is "inevitable."
  4. 88% have already begun implementing a Zero Trust security strategy.
  5. Ease of use and digital transformation are two surprising benefits of Zero Trust.
  6. User experience and digital transformation are two surprising benefits of Zero Trust.
  7. The Zero Trust trend in the industry is a paradigm shift from a reactive to a proactive security posture. The benefits of this shift go beyond security.
  8. 61% of respondents agree that reactive, attack detection-focused OT techniques are not enough to prevent security breaches.
  9. To stop and control threats before they spread, 64% of respondents said they have already switched to a proactive approach to security.
  10. 55% of respondents agree that implementing Zero Trust accelerates digital transformation.
  11. Other key benefits include improved user experience (60%), more effective operations (52%), and time or cost savings (42%).
  12. Nearly half (46%) of all respondents still believe that achieving Zero Trust will take several years. Fortunately, there are a number of strategies to increase adoption and avoid unnecessary delays.
  13. Lack of internal expertise (52 percent), inconsistent guidance from leadership (46 percent) and lack of resources are factors delaying Zero Trust adoption (39 percent).

Establishing a formal process to define Zero Trust goals (60 percent), assessing vulnerabilities in the current OT security architecture (68 percent), integrating identification and access management (IAM) practices or tools (66 percent), and implementing Zero Trust into the corporate culture are some strategies to accelerate implementation (60 percent ).

Use cases for Zero Trust,
Although Zero Trust has been referred to as the norm for many years, it has formally taken hold in response to digital transformation protections and a variety of complicated, deadly threats that have emerged in the past year. Zero Trust can benefit any organization, but you need to secure an infrastructure delivery architecture that uses multiple clouds, hybrid technologies and many identities.

Unmanaged hardware.
Outdated systems.
SaaS applications.

You need to address common threat cases such as:
Ransomware, a two-part problem that involves compromising identity and executing code.
Supply chain attacks often occur through privileged individuals using unmanaged devices remotely.
Insider risks - analyzing behavioral data from remote users is particularly difficult.
The following factors apply to your organization:
SOC /analyst expertise Difficulties.
User experience impact considerations (especially when using MFA).
Industry or regulatory requirements (e.g., financial sector or U.S. government zero trust mandates).
Cyber insurance concerns (due to the rapidly changing insurance market as a result of ransomware).

Each company has different difficulties, depending on its industry, level of digital transformation, and respective security policies. When done right, Zero Trust can be customized to meet specific needs and still guarantee a return on investment for your security strategy.

For this reason, organizations must constantly verify that an individual and his or her device have the proper permissions and properties. In addition to compliance or other criteria to consider before approving the transaction, policies must also be implemented that incorporate risk to users and devices. To control what and where they connect, the organization needs to know all of its service and privileged accounts. A one-time check is insufficient because both threats and user characteristics are dynamic. Therefore, organizations must ensure that each access request is thoroughly vetted before granting access to your corporate or cloud resources. Therefore, you have real-time visibility into hundreds of user and application identity parameters, such as:
User identity and credential type, is required for zero trust (human, programmatic) execution.
Credential permissions on each device.
Regular connections between the device and the credential (behavioral).
The type and purpose of the endpoint hardware.
Geographic location.
Versions of the firmware.
The risk and authentication process.
Operating system versions and patch levels.
Installed endpoint applications.
Security or event detections, including identification of attacks and suspicious behavior.

To enable improved algorithmic AI/ML model training for highly accurate policy response, the use of analytics must be combined with trillions of events, extensive enterprise telemetry, and threat intelligence. To mitigate attacks and reduce the impact of an intrusion, organizations should carefully consider their IT architecture and potential attack paths. Segmentation by device type, identity or group function can be part of this. RPC or RDP to the domain controller, for example, should always be questioned or limited to users with specific permissions.

More than 80% of all attacks occur through the use or misuse of network credentials. With the continued evolution of new threats to credentials and identity stores, additional credential and data protections are being extended to email security and secure web gateway (CASB) providers. Account integrity, compliance with corporate policies, and prevention of shadow services IT, which pose a significant risk, are improved in this way.

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