Automating Zero Trust – More Than Just Technology

Zero Trust Architecture, simply described, is the methodology to protect your assets, using the assumption that a malicious entity has already penetrated your defenses, and they possess powerful credentials.

The natural instinct of most IT professionals is to leverage the best technology to fight this battle.  However, securing your environment with Zero Trust Architecture can’t be accomplished with technology alone.  It requires security best practices, organizational disciplines, and management commitment.  Without these other areas of focus, the technology will not be effective enough to protect the things you can’t afford to lose.

The number of threats will continue to grow at a pace faster than the types of technology to defend against it.  Automation is a key factor in addressing the threat, so let’s talk about some security automation best practices.

The first step is to understand the difference between process automation and cyber security automation.  Think of process automation as technology performing manual steps that people would do.  In these cases, tasks are well defined, and no decision-making is required.  Automation in this area allows IT and Security professionals to focus on their specialty areas more effectively, rather than on rote tasks.

Cyber security automation, on the other hand, happens when tools are used to address a volume of threats that is too high for a human to handle effectively, or too complex to understand quickly enough to identify and deal with a threat.  In those cases, technology is leveraged to make good/bad decisions, and to perform mitigation tasks automatically.

An example of process automation technology is Robotic Process Automation (RPA).  Software bots can be used to monitor and scan the environment, 24x7x365, versus having a human looking at a screen on an 8-hour shift.  That human can be redeployed to tasks that require higher cognitive skills.

On the other hand, an example of cyber security automation would be automated certificate management.  Since zero trust relies on validation of identity, certificates are central to that validation.  Ask yourself these questions:

• How many certificates have been issued for your organization, users, and domain(s)?
• What types of certificates have been issued?
• Were all of the certificates issued by the same certificate authorities (CAs) or different ones?
• Who requested them?
• How many keys does your organization have?
• Where are those keys stored?
• Who has access to those certificates and keys?

Most organizations can’t answer those questions effectively, leading to a justification for a certificate management platform, and automation of the certificates.

A best practice for automation, with respect to both process and cyber security, is to identify the processes that will result in the greatest return to automate.  The greatest needs of one organization will differ greatly from another one.  Assess the skills of the people tasked with managing and protecting the environment, and evaluate whether automating routine tasks or automatically managing complex threats is a better use of limited budget dollars.

With hundreds of security-related tasks, a multitude of technologies, and an ever-increase volume of threats, automation is not an easy initiative.  It makes sense to consult an expert, like Red River, when embarking on this quest.  Red River can assess where your organization is on the journey to security automation, and overall, to Zero Trust.  The security skills gap is real.  Let Red River assist with the protection of your organization’s valuable assets.

BE BOLD.